The author and her father, Joseph Kanarek, at lunch in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2018.
During coverage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, I spotted a man wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt. My nails digging into my palms, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing any more than I could understand how 48% of U.S. adults under 40 could not name one concentration camp, including Auschwitz.
I knew the name of the camp well. My father, before his death last fall, was one of fewer than 2,000 Auschwitz survivors worldwide. A few weeks after his 94th birthday, I opened my laptop and watched him disclose the secrets of his childhood I’d waited decades to hear.
Guest Writer
Lisa Kanarek has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, CNBC, and PBS’s Next Avenue. Her father’s video was recently added to the video archive collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
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