Holocaust Memorial Day 2024: Kurt Marx is one of 245,000 survivors keeping memory of the Shoah alive

International Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 is a globally recognised event to reflect on the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust and educate people on the dangers of all forms of extremism.

Around six million Jews were killed in the Nazis so-called ‘final solution’, around two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. There were more than three million Jews in Poland in 1939 but by 1945 there were fewer than 400,000 Polish Jews still alive, many were prisoners of war or held in concentration camps.

It’s hard to grasp the sheer numbers involved in the attempted extermination of all of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis - at the height of the atrocities, 15,000 Jews were being murdered each day. 

Yet, despite the horrific acts of genocide, millions of Jews survived the Holocaust - some successfully went into hiding throughout the war, thousands somehow survived the brutality of the concentration camps, and some found refuge in the allied powers ahead of the outbreak of war.

How many Holocaust survivors are still alive?

Around 245,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors are estimated to still be alive - most were children during the Holocaust, but many remember horrific events of their years of persecution.

During the Nazi’s reign of power from 1933-1945 six million Jews were killed across Europe, around one third of Europe’s Jewish population in 1933. Globally the Jewish population has only recently increased beyond what it was in 1933.

There were roughly 15.3 million Jews worldwide in 1933, before the Holocaust. It was not until September 2023, 90 years after the Nazis rose to power, that the worldwide Jewish population passed 15.3 million. 

Who is Kurt Marx?

Kurt Marx is a 98 year old Jewish refugee and Holocaust survivor who was born in Cologne, Germany. Though he lived through the rising tide of antisemitism in Germany, Kurt says that his parents protected him from the harsh realities of this persecution and he doesn’t recall specific incidents.

However, following Kristallnacht, a pivotal night on November 9 1938 in which Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues across Germany were damaged or destroyed, with the Jewish community later charged to clear the damage, Marx’s teacher began to organise to get Jewish children places on the Kindertransport.

The Kindertransport was a series of train transports which took Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, to Britain, where they would be housed with English families during the war. Parents were not able to accompany their children on the journeys as it was only available to those under 17. Around 10,000 Jewish children, including Kurt, and this author’s grandmother, were saved from the horrors of the Holocaust because of the Kindertransport.

During the war, Kurt lived in Bedford and found work repairing radios, and after the wat he met his future Ingrid, a Holocaust survivor who had been at Auschwitz concentration camp. He learned that his parents had both been deported to Minsk and murdered, and that he was the only survivor of his mother’s side.

Despite the trauma of the Holocaust, Kurt regularly travels back to Germany to speak at schools about his experience, and in 2021 he was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition for his services to Holocaust education. Kurt believes that the best way to combat rising antisemitism that he has witnessed is through education.