For Holocaust Remembrance Day, TikTok is doing its part to ensure that the atrocities of the Nazi regime are not forgotten. As the app elevates Jewish voices, one of its biggest stars is broadcasting her memorial message across multiple platforms. Montana Tucker has published her documentary How To: Never Forget across TikTok and YouTube.
Tucker, who has 8.8 million followers on TikTok, is the grandchild of multiple Holocaust survivors. To honor her ancestors, the dancer, singer, and content creator linked up with the philanthropic organization CharityBids, which arranged for her to travel to the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
How To: Never Forget was the result of that trip. The documentary initially premiered on Tucker’s TikTok and Instagram pages, but it is now available in multiple formats on YouTube. On Shorts, the film is cut into ten episodes, which is how it was first released. A full-length video of the entire doc can also be found on Tucker’s channel.
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“My whole life, I always knew my grandparents’ stories,” Tucker told Variety. “I’ve always felt very, very attached to them. They used to speak at all the schools down in Florida. My [grandfather] would always say that his life goal was to educate, educate, educate, to make sure that people would never forget. He would wear a pin that said, ‘I’m a survivor.’ That was always very important to both my grandparents.”
The title of How To: Never Forget echoes the phrase “never again,” which is spoken by Jews as a reminder that the Holocaust must not slip from our collective cultural consciousness. TikTok also invoked that saying to characterize its Holocaust Remembrance Day initiative. It has partnered with Unicef, the World Jewish Congress, and media brand ATTN: to bring the stories of Holocaust survivors to For You Pages around the globe.
“The promise to millions of Jews to ‘never forget’ the horrors of the Holocaust’s gas chambers must never become an empty one,” said ATTN: Co-Founder Matthew Segal in a statement. “With few living witnesses still alive to tell their survivor stories, ATTN: is honored to produce these profound videos that confront our history and enlighten the truth about the Holocaust.”
Those stories are available via the #HolocaustMemorialDay hashtag on TikTok. As Segal expressed, these remembrances are more important than ever. According to the Center For Countering Digital Hate, 66% of millennials couldn’t identify Auschwitz, and 25% of respondents described the Holocaust as fake or overstated.
With help from TikTok, Holocaust skeptics will be confronted with survivor stories. The ByteDance-owned app often elevates the stories of marginalized individuals on holidays and memorial days. For example, TikTok highlighted some of its top Indigenous creators as part of its effort for Native American Heritage Month.
