Eighty years ago, Britain and the United States led the Allied forces that defeated the Nazi regime and liberated the concentration camps of Europe. My great-grandfather, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, arrived at Ohrdruf in April 1945 and insisted the world bear witness to what he found there. He ordered the camps to be filmed, documented, and shown to future generations so that no one could ever deny what the Nazis had done.
I grew up knowing these stories, but like many in my generation, I believed they belonged to history. It wasn’t until I began engaging more deeply with Holocaust education and meeting survivors myself that I understood this legacy is not something you inherit. It is something you choose to carry.
Earlier this year, I joined the March of the Living, walking through the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau with survivors, students, and educators from around the world. Nothing could have prepared me for standing in the place where more than a million Jews were murdered, or for the realisation that those walking beside me were likely the last generation to hear direct testimony from those who were there.
But it was my meeting with Holocaust survivor Eva Clarke earlier this year that made everything personal. Eva was born in the Mauthausen concentration camp just days before its liberation by American forces, one of the very few babies known to have survived such a birth.
At a Washington event marking a new collaboration between my family and the International March of the Living, she made a surprise appearance. It was the first time we had ever met. She hadn’t come to thank me for anything I had done, but for what American soldiers did when they liberated her and her mother eight decades ago.
Weeks later, I had the honour of marching alongside her at Auschwitz during the March of the Living. I have replayed those moments in my mind many times since. It is one thing to read about history. It is another to walk beside someone whose life exists because your great-grandfather insisted the world bear witness to the horrors he uncovered. Eva did not just share her story. She passed me something - a responsibility, a torch I could either ignore or choose to carry.
That is why I am currently in the UK, marking 80 years since the liberation of the camps. Britain played a crucial role in that victory, and has since led the world in Holocaust remembrance and education. Yet even here, rising antisemitism and fading historical knowledge should alarm us all.
This visit forms part of a focused commemoration and education tour, meeting survivors, students, community leaders and educators. I am not coming as a historian or a politician, but as someone who believes the Holocaust’s lessons must remain central to our shared moral compass as the survivor generation fades. Memory does not survive through inheritance alone. It survives through choice.
During the March of the Living, there was one thought I will never forget: we need to remember what happened to humanity during the Holocaust. That is the heart of this mission. The Holocaust is not just a Jewish story. It is a human story about how far societies can fall when hatred becomes acceptable, and the extraordinary courage required to rebuild afterwards.
As we mark eighty years since liberation, I hope Britain will continue to lead in ensuring that remembrance translates into action: in education, in confronting antisemitism, and in defending the values that bind free societies together.
My great-grandfather carried out his duty as a soldier and as a witness. Eva survived the unimaginable and chose to devote her life to teaching others. Their torches now rest in the hands of my generation. The question is whether we, and those that follow, will choose to carry them forward.