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Since the corona pandemic broke out, a comparison with the Second World War can often be heard to illustrate the extent of the crisis.

With this frivolously used image it is often forgotten that there are still many people alive today who had to experience death, suffering and persecution for themselves.

Especially Holocaust survivors.

Two organizations in Austria and Switzerland have now set themselves the task of accompanying survivors of the Shoah through the Corona crisis.

You can tell how these people experience the pandemic.

In Austria, for example, Jewish students have set up a hotline that survivors can contact twelve hours a day.

When you want to talk.

Or when they need practical help, for example when shopping for groceries.

The medical student Lara Guttmann, 21, coordinates the 120 volunteers who are spread across the country.

She herself spent many hours on the phone.

She reports that one topic in particular has come up in many conversations: Concern about increasing anti-Semitism in the Corona crisis.

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"Many have spoken about the fact that the growing anti-Semitism and the relativization of the Holocaust to the 'lateral thinker' demos worried them," says Guttmann.

The student is referring to a narrative that is spread about the so-called hygiene demos and accordingly the Corona containment measures mean similarly severe cuts as those that the Jews suffered during the persecution in World War II.

Guttmann warns against this unhistorical belittling: “Such tendencies have always existed.

But due to Corona the taboo to speak it out has become smaller and at the same time the crowd of listeners has grown. "

There is also a Corona aid offer for Holocaust survivors in Switzerland.

Anita Winter, 58, runs it.

As the daughter of two Shoah survivors, her family history is shaped by the persecution and extermination of the Jews by the German National Socialists.

With her Gamaraal Foundation, founded in 2016, she takes care of educational opportunities on the Holocaust and around 450 Holocaust survivors in Switzerland on a voluntary basis.

Shortly after the start of the lockdown in Switzerland, Winter set up a 24-hour hotline out of concern for the survivors, for which she was able to recruit numerous students as assistants.

In contrast to Austria, the survivors spoke less about the “hygiene demos”.

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But the concern about a flare-up of anti-Semitism is also a big issue in Switzerland.

The silence of the lockdown caused many survivors to reflect on their lives, reports Winter - and to talk about it in order to leave it as a warning for posterity.

"What matters to them is that we, the following generations, never forget, never keep quiet and are never indifferent - never."

Therefore, with the agreement of the survivors, the foundation also recorded minutes of the conversations.

In about half of them, the survivors draw parallels between the pandemic and World War II.

One survivor relates to Covid-19: “Of course we don't have Nazis, but we have a terrible, deadly enemy who suddenly appears.

You don't know how, where, what, but it's a very dangerous enemy.

(...) The streets are empty.

People are not allowed to go out, they are scared. "

Another survivor is reminded of how he followed the news from Switzerland as a young man.

Especially in the early days when the Germans' approach became clearer.

“You listened to the radio every day and followed the war: How close are the Germans?

How is it and what happens?

Are we being deported?

Will bombs fall?

You had to follow all of this every day. "

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But: The other half of the survivors made no parallels in their conversations.

Some even expressly reject them.

When asked whether one could compare the Corona crisis with the war, one survivor answered decisively: “No.

Certainly not.

It's not a war.

People are cared for in hospitals when they are sick;

in World War II they were killed, simply shot.

I know my uncle was on the sidewalk in Amsterdam, walking down the street, being put against the wall and shot down.

That was World War II.

That now has nothing to do with it. "

Another says: "In the last year of the Second World War I spent five months in Bergen-Belsen, when I was eleven years old." He was still too young to consciously experience it.

But from the conversation there is a clear appeal: concentration camps and quarantines should never be compared.

This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

We will be happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.

Source: WELT AM SONNTAG