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Last family photo of Lily Ebert and her siblings before their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

© Lily Ebert

When he was 16, Dov Forman came across a German banknote in the back of his great grandmother’s living room cabinet. On the day that Lily Ebert had been liberated from a death march (forced evacuation) in 1945, an unknown American soldier had inscribed a message of hope onto the only paper available, a banknote, and gave it to her – the first act of kindness anyone had shown since her deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1944. 

Dov immediately launched a social media campaign on Twitter, joking with his great-grandmother that he would be able to find the liberator within 24 hours. Eight hours later, they had learned his name: Private Hyman Schulman from Brooklyn, New York.

That was the moment that I realized that as a young person I have a voice and through social media I can harness that voice and actually make change in the world", Dov said.

Following its increased popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dov and Lily, now 98, set up a TikTok account to share Lily’s testimony about her experiences during the Holocaust and educate people about Jewish life and culture. Their videos have been viewed 400 million times since opening the account, giving them a chance to ask questions directly of a Holocaust survivor.

Holocaust denial and distortion on social media

The irreplaceable testimony of survivors and the undeniable historical record are under threat by Holocaust denial and distortion that is virulent on social media. New research has found that 16 per cent of Holocaust-related content on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and Twitter concludes denies or distorts the facts of the past.

The study, published by UNESCO and the United Nations together with the World Jewish Congress, finds alarming levels of Holocaust denial and distortion present and easily accessible on online platforms in English, French, Spanish and German. It sheds new light on contemporary forms of antisemitism that take advantage of new technologies to infect online spaces.

“When I read this report, I saw statistics such as 49 per cent of all Telegram posts related to the Holocaust are distorting or denying the Holocaust,” Dov said. “It’s all very upsetting, especially as the great grandson of a Holocaust survivor. To see people distorting and denying this history makes me worry about what happens in the future and we don’t have Holocaust survivors or eyewitnesses still alive.”

Lily's mother Nina, younger brother Bela and younger sister Berta were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, while Lily and her two other sisters worked as slave labourers until their liberation in 1945.

The events leading up to the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi German regime and its aftermath are among the most well-documented and researched episodes in history – there simply is no doubt about the historical record.

Mocking the Holocaust threatens us all

Memes, so-called ‘jokes’, coded references and deliberate disinformation continue to deny and distort the reality of the genocide of the Jewish people during the Second World War, proliferating on social media and normalizing antisemitic narratives and the dehumanization associated with so much hate speech.

The recent report identified posts mocking the Holocaust through videos and memes that make light of the immense suffering of Jewish children, women and men during the Nazi genocide. By framing content as humour, these trends can spread faster across online platforms, being viewed, shared and sometimes copied among more “mainstream” internet communities.

“My great-grandmother and I receive harmful, abusive comments almost every day. But I try and not take this to heart, Dov said. “One of the best ways and the only vaccine to counter antisemitism and to counter denial and distortion is to educate and to use social media for good.”

© UNESCO/Studio Hortenzia

Holocaust denial and distortion is not only offensive to the victims – it attempts to rehabilitate the violent and antisemitic ideology of the Nazi regime. At the most extreme, these posts amount to incitement to violence and genocide, which left unchecked pose a threat to the safety of Jewish communities, and the security and well-being of societies as a whole.

Memes have provided a new library of codes and symbols, documented by organizations such as the U.S.-based ADL, that covertly signal and spread violent extremist ideologies. This shared language provides a sense of group identity, which has been used as a tool for far-right recruitment and radicalization.

“The visual power and transmissibility of antisemitic memes runs the risk of such ideas being normalized online without effective counter-messaging”, said lead-researcher of the report Jonathan Bright.

As violent hate crimes clearly demonstrate, such as the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 which killed eleven people and wounded six, understanding this online ecosystem of disinformation and hate speech is critical to countering evolving forms of extremism and the harms caused to Jewish people and communities.

“The report reveals that there are still social networks where Holocaust denial and distortion spread without moderation, and that this content is used to fuel hatred. We can fight against these phenomena by taking action on content and educating users,” said Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO

The power of education

As the UNESCO and United Nations report clearly warns, the rapidly evolving online ecosystem requires new approaches based on education, media information and literacy, and addressing hate speech on social media that counter hate speech and better protect groups targeted.

This is at the heart of UNESCO’s and the World Jewish Congress’s shared global commitment to counter antisemitism. Since 2021, people searching for information about the Holocaust on Facebook are being redirected to UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress’s website AboutHolocaust.Org, which provides accurate information in 19 languages in response to regularly asked questions about the Holocaust. Since January 2022, the partnership has been extended to TikTok as well, attracting about 15,000 daily users. Total users number more than 1 million.

“I think it's so important that we teach young people that social media is incredibly dangerous, but I think it's also equally important that we teach young people how you can make a positive impact,” Dov said.

Learn more about UNESCO’s programme to educate about the Holocaust and genocide and read the full report.

URL:

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/survivor-and-her-family-stand-strong-against-holocaust-denial-and-distortion