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HOW INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY FAILS JEWS

Writer's picture: Rabbi Jeffrey L. FalickRabbi Jeffrey L. Falick

Yesterday was International Holocaust Memorial Day. Established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, it falls on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Soviet troops in 1945. We Jews prefer to remember the Holocaust on Yom Ha-Shoah, the springtime anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the most significant efforts by Jews to save themselves when no one else would. The uprising is a powerful reminder of Jewish resistance and resilience during the darkest chapter of our history.


When America, Israel, and other nations voted to create yesterday's commemoration, they intended it to be a day of reflection about the evil fruits of the disease of antisemitism. Now, as antisemitism surges to unbearable levels, it has become clear that such reflection has been useless. Not only did the horrors of October 7, 2023—the day when Hamas committed unspeakable atrocities against Jews in Israel, including Holocaust survivors—do nothing to stanch the rise of Jew-hatred, it actually made things worse.


Yesterday, Israeli author and advocate Hen Mazzig wrote this on social media:


Posting about Holocaust Remembrance Day is a convenient way to honor the memory of the 6 million Jews who were senselessly murdered. But an even better way to honor them is to speak out against antisemitism and hate when it’s inconvenient. If you’re going to talk about the Holocaust, please don’t be afraid to say it happened predominantly to Jews. A lot of people like to talk about the horrors that were committed against Jews, but can’t stand it when Jews stand up for themselves. We are not artifacts in a Holocaust museum. We are human beings.


As Mazzig reminds us, Holocaust remembrance without action against antisemitism is hollow. Yet something that we are also seeing is even worse—a weaponization of the Holocaust against its own victims.


I saw much of this yesterday on social media. Statements like “Hitler was right. You people should have been eliminated completely” and “Even if there were six million, many weren’t Jews” desecrate the truth and perpetuate lies. Others, like “You had it done to you, and now you commit genocide against Palestinians,” slander our people. These and dozens more—many so disgustingly hateful that I won't repeat them—show how acceptable it has become to twist history and erase the reality of Jew-hatred.


Since my days in the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, Natan Sharansky has been a hero of mine. I was in the very first group to welcome him to freedom in 1986. Since then, he has become a beacon of moral clarity for the Jewish people. A few weeks ago, writing for The Free Press, he pointed out the irony of commemorating the Holocaust under United Nations auspices at a time when Israel, the only Jewish state, is being vilified by the UN and much of the world community—even as they ignore atrocities committed by regimes like China, Iran, and Ethiopia.


You may be aware that the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC) recently charged Israeli leaders with "war crimes." In a perverse irony, Poland's threat to carry out his arrest on behalf of the court barred Prime Minister Netanyahu from attending the Holocaust commemoration at Auschwitz. Even critics of Netanyahu, like myself, recognize the injustice of this grotesque inversion. As Sharansky pointed out, the UN effectively excluded the leader of the world’s largest Holocaust survivor community from the ceremony in Poland, a country deeply complicit in the genocide.


The betrayals don’t end there. The United Nations, established, among other things, to safeguard human rights, employs senior figures like Francesca Albanese who frequently compares Israel to the Third Reich and Israeli leaders to Hitler. And then there is Tlalang Mofokeng, another senior UN official, who calls Israel “Israhell” and refers to Zionists as “human scum.” These individuals have been empowered by the same UN Human Rights Council that recently allowed Iran—a regime actively working for Israel’s destruction—to chair a human rights forum.


Sharansky draws a chilling parallel between today’s demonization of Israel and the medieval blood libels that accused Jews of heinous crimes to justify their persecution. Today’s accusations of “genocide” against Israel are equally false, yet their repetition penetrates global consciousness, legitimizing antisemitism—the very same antisemitism that led to the Holocaust, that led to the atrocities of October 7, 2023, and that has fueled the tsunami of Jew-hatred that has followed.


If the words “never again” are to have any meaning, the world must do more than post and hold empty ceremonies about the Holocaust. It must begin to confront antisemitism wherever it arises, not just when it is convenient or politically expedient. The Holocaust was a unique crime targeting Jews, and its memory demands vigilance—not lip service.


Jews are not artifacts in a museum. We are human beings—fighting for our right to exist and for the world to finally take responsibility for the part that too many have played, and are continuing to play, in spreading hate against us.


Powerful slides published to the Instagram page of The Center for Jewish Impact, each slide depicting a scene from the Holocaust on top and a very recent example of Jew-hatred on the bottom.
Powerful slides published to the Instagram page of The Center for Jewish Impact, each slide depicting a scene from the Holocaust on top and a very recent example of Jew-hatred on the bottom.

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