#WeRemember: International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27th

"It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere." - Primo Levi, 1986 The Drowned and the Saved

Never Again is Now.

Today, January 27, 2024 is recognized by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is observed around the world.  

We must never forget what happened,  6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and remain vigilant now and in the future to battle against the mass destruction of innocent human beings.

 

 

Primo Levi was right, it can happen anywhere - even in Israel, and even here.  

Three months and twenty one days ago on October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded and attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostages. This strike ignited a Middle East war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, which has its base of operations in Gaza. This was the largest mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Two days after the Hamas terrorist attacks, before Israel had responded to the attacks, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in Australia over a thousand protesters chanted, “Gas the Jews.” Sadly, the Cuban dictatorship backs Hamas, and is spreading anti-Semitic tropes.

Three years and twenty one days ago on January 6, 2021, when the citadel of American democracy was laid siege by an angry mob that resulted in five deaths - Nazis where there in the crowd. Robert Keith Packer, age 56, was wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" t-shirt, making light of the notorious death camp. Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives there.

“The moment infants are killed in their beds, women are raped, people are thrown on the ground and murdered, cruelly, satanically, and having done no wrong - that is a Holocaust”

Ruth Haran survived both the Holocaust and the October 7 Hamas massacre. pic.twitter.com/hOP2Q4IbY5

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) January 26, 2024

 Five years and three months ago on October 27, 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue with an AR-15, and three handguns shouting anti-Semitic slurs and opened fire killing eleven, and wounding six others. It was believed to be the deadliest attack against Jewish people in U.S. history, but it was not the first.

Unfortunately the international community has failed more than once since 1945 to prevent another mass slaughter. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge murdered between one fourth and one third of its population between 1975 and 1979, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff pointed to another genocide that could have been stopped in Rwanda in 1994, and in 2016 we witnessed another in Syria where religious minorities, including Christians were being targeted. Today, we are witnessing the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China.

It is also important to remember that antisemitism is on the rise world wide and people of the Jewish faith need our solidarity and support now more than ever in confronting rising hatred and intolerance to ensure that what Nazi Germany did never be repeated. 

At the same time it is important to remember and honor the martyrs and heroes who resisted the Nazis.  Including Raoul Wallenberg, who saved 140,000 Jewish people, and was disappeared by the Soviets in January 1945. They are exemplars in moral courage that are much needed today. 

In 2017 in the United States we saw Neo-Nazis on the march in Charlottesville, North Carolina first in a torchlight parade chanting anti-Semitic rants that the following day turned deadly in violent clashes that claimed an innocent life. We must remain vigilant and denounce this evil ideology wherever and whenever it arises.

It can happen here. It can happen anywhere. We are not "OK".

When violence erupts in a society where the rule of law exists, it must not be tolerated, but dealt with an expeditious manner through the judicial system. However, where the poisonous tropes of anti-Semitism, and hatred against the Jewish people arise, it must not be censored by the government, but challenged by people of good will in the battle of ideas to expose both its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. 

Hate speech has Marxist origins that are in opposition to free expression. Perversely, it claims that language can be violence to censor speech while at the same time defending physical violence as justified. When you outlaw speech and drive it underground you imbue it with power and credibility it does not deserve. They tried this approach in Wiemar Germany and it only helped the Nazis take power.

"To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death." - Elie Wiesel