Eighty years ago, as Allied forces moved through a broken Europe in the final days of World War II, my great-grandfather, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, walked into a place that changed him forever: the Nazi concentration camp at Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald.
What he saw there – piles of corpses, skeletal survivors and evidence of unimaginable cruelty – would stay with him for life. He feared the world might one day try to deny it ever happened. So, he took action. He decided to etch it into the annals of world history.
He immediately ordered American troops, members of Congress, and international journalists to visit the camps and document the atrocities.
“The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering,” he wrote to Gen. George Marshall, “I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.”
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That foresight now feels painfully prophetic.
In 2020, a nationwide survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany revealed that 63% of U.S. millennials and Gen Z did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Forty-eight percent could not name a single one of the more than 40,000 Nazi concentration camps and ghettos.
These aren’t just troubling statistics – they’re a warning. In a world where misinformation spreads quickly, and where antisemitism is once again on the rise, these gaps in knowledge are dangerous.
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In parallel, antisemitic incidents in the United States have reached record highs. According to the Anti-Defamation League, in 2023, there were 8,873 documented antisemitic incidents – the highest number since the ADL began tracking such incidents in 1979.
That’s a 140% increase from the year before. These included physical assaults, vandalism of synagogues and Jewish schools, and a growing presence of antisemitic rhetoric in mainstream discourse and on social media platforms.
This year, as we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I will participate in the International March of the Living, walking from Auschwitz to Birkenau alongside the president of the State of Israel, 80 Holocaust survivors, survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel, and students from across the world.
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We will walk in silence – but our presence will speak loudly. It will say that we remember. That we bear witness. That we will carry forward the testimonies of those who survived and those who perished. It is an honor, as General – and then President – Eisenhower’s great-grandson, to continue that legacy of truth-telling by standing on the very soil where the Nazis tried to erase a people.
While my great-grandfather is best remembered for his leadership during the war, his legacy as president also includes support for the Jewish people throughout his presidency. During his presidency, Eisenhower oversaw the United States’ strengthening of Israel’s right to self-defense, its support for Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, and an unmissable condemnation of antisemitism and bigotry in all its forms.
In 1958, he dedicated the cornerstone of the Jewish Theological Seminary library, stating, “We must affirm human dignity and decency. For unless we do, civilization itself is in jeopardy.” He understood that the battle against hate didn’t end with the war, nor with the Jews – it was universal.
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That is still true today. Holocaust denial and distortion are no longer creeping into our public discourse, they are flooding it. On college campuses, in political rhetoric, and in online forums, attempts to minimize or erase the truths for which Eisenhower and millions of others fought are shockingly left unchallenged. In this context, education isn’t just a tool – it’s a responsibility.
We must teach young people not only what happened in the Holocaust, but why it happened – how hatred, dehumanization and silence allowed genocide to unfold.
We must ensure they hear the voices of survivors, see the remnants of the camps and understand what “never again” truly demands of us.
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When Eisenhower visited Ohrdruf in 1945, he stood as a general. But his decision to shine a light on those horrors was also the act of a human being unwilling to look away. As his great-grandson, I feel the weight of that decision – and the privilege of carrying it forward.
He once said, “The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers.” That wisdom begins with memory. With truth. And with ensuring that future generations never forget what he, and so many others, saw with their own eyes.
