Less than a life time away is no time at all

As I have grown older, I keep having the odd combination of thinking that World War 2 now seems a long time ago; but also that anything that happened less than 100 years in the past is not so far away from now, really. *

I'm sure it's a result of the combination of formerly knowing many people, including my parents, who were in the war but have passed away quite a few years ago, while also feeling that anything that has happened within a life span that I might achieve isn't that far in the past.   

Anyway, this is just by way of preamble that I was a little surprised to realise that today is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and later this year it will be same anniversary of the end of the war.   (I had this thought about the end of the war last year, and now here it is, upon us.)   

 It adds some..complexity?...to the feelings about the situation in Israel/Gaza now, too. 

*  And in the bigger picture - my "meta" take on the current unsettled state of the world is that it's due to the revolution in self understanding that came with Darwinian evolution, Einstein and the realisation of the incredible age and size of the universe all happening only a "short" time ago - barely 150 years - which is not enough time for cultures to come to grips with it.