Jewish Cultural Changes
Liberation of Auschwitz
80th Anniversary – January 27, 1945

The date of the liberation of encamped inmates at the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz-Berkenau, Poland, was January 27, 1945. January 27, 2025, was 80 years since that day. Many of the 2,819 prisoners were children, as seen in the photo taken by the Soviet army on the day they entered the camp to free them.
How do such catastrophic and tragic experiences affect cultural changes afterward? Most of the prisoners held in the 40,000-plus Nazi camps across Europe were Jews. The Nazis believed the camps were the “solution” to the Jewish problem. What exactly was the “Jewish problem?” It is difficult for scholars and historians to pinpoint exactly how hatred and antisemitism came to be so volatile in Hitler’s Germany.
The hatred of Jews, as we know, has a long history in European societya group of people who are all interdependent and interconnected by their cultural connections; they live in patterned ways and their behaviors in various circumstances are well established; for instance in the Western world most people adhere to lines (cue) at bus stops, or movie theaters, or when checking out at a grocery store; patterned and regular ways of doing things are expected and accepted. There were pogroms, expulsions, persecutions, and executions during the Spanish Inquisition. In examining this long history, we must also examine the cultural practices of Jewish populations. Unfortunately, cultural practices are what drive others to either like us or dislike us.
Before the Holocaust, Jewish cultureculture is not genetically inherited, it is shared, learned, and dynamic- never static varied depending on the locations where they gathered. One thing we know about Jewish culture is that the Jews tend to be concentrated in areas where their beliefs and customs are celebrated and ritualized without constraint from others. They have always had strong community ties, with a focus on religious traditions and their dominant languagea system of symbols that allow people to communicate with each other, also the MOST symbolic way that culture is passed down, Yiddish, especially among the Orthodox faithful populations.
In Eastern Europe, Jews often lived in small areas known as Shtetls. In Shtetl neighborhoods, Jewish populations spoke their ancestralof, belonging to, inherited from, or denoting an ancestor or ancestors Ashkenazi Jewish language. Yiddish is a dialect of German with Hebrew influences, and it was the primary language spoken in those Shtetls. Remember, language is the primary way culture is passed down through generationsthose people that are born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively; usually a generation within families is considered about 20 years.
In Western Europe, Jews were more assimilated into the mainstream culture. They participated in public life and were hardly noticed by their non-Jewish friends and neighbors. Some were doctors. Others were lawyers or businessmen. Before the Holocaust, there were restrictions on land ownership by Jews, so their livelihoods were tailoring, shoemaking, merchandising, and other pursuits. Studying the Torah and Jewish law was highly valued, and Rabbis were important players in Jewish communities.
Jews have always had a strong emphasis on their religious observances within familya family is group of people consisting of parents and children living together in a household; family members can also live away from parents or in a different household settings. Marriages outside of Jewish boundaries were not encouraged. After the Holocaust, however, Jewish culture now emphasizes methods of survival due to the horrendous losses of lives and material cultureMaterial culture: all tangible objects, which are created, used, kept, and/or left behind by past and present cultures. In other words, the physical evidence of human experience. Material culture may be dwellings, pottery, tools, furniture, weapons, ornaments, art, and/or complete structures of cities. throughout Jewish communities across the European continent during WWII. The Yiddish language suffered near extinction, which has negatively impacted Jewish cultural practices. Though the statea state is an independent political entity with a centralized government and set geographical boundaries where control is exercised by police or military; a state claims the right to defend itself from both internal and external threats by use of force; a state may have many villages and cities and/or millions or billions of people as in China and India of Israel has been restored, Jews seek a more globalized Jewish cultural identitythe name of a person, along with the qualities, beliefs, etc., that make a particular person or a group different from others. Younger Jews want to carry on their faith and traditions in a more modernized way. They are incorporating some elements of secular culture but leaning on their connections to a Jewish identity The Holocaust’s aftermath led to the large-scale migrationthe movement of populations (a collective) of people from one area to another; migration is usually a response caused by climate, diminishing food supplies, war, disease, or catastrophic natural events (floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes); may be by land or by sea, or in today's world by evacuations of Jews to their restored homeland. Israel is a place of refuge where Jewish identities have also been restored. The shared trauma of the concentration camps has been passed on in history books, museums, memorials, and other repositories.

People visit the Memorial and Museum in Auschwitz-Birkenau, a former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp, in Oswiecim, Poland, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025.
(AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
The commemoration of the death camps’ liberation on January 27, 2025, in Poland, had survivors warning us about antisemitism, hatred, and prejudices in our contemporary world. They reminded us that understanding the past brings awareness of the cost of intolerance and the importance of taking action. Human rights do matter.