Another Yom Hashoah has come and gone, honoring the memories of 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their cohorts during the years of World War II and the Holocaust. This year, we can name 5 million of these individuals, as documented in the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names and in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
I cannot help but reflect on the lessons my father, an Auschwitz survivor, and what he taught me about the Holocaust and what I learned over the years.
In 1933, in Germany, college students were in the vanguard of a movement to push Jewish students and professors out of universities. They and their stormtrooper buddies are recorded in photos from the period brazenly barring access to university buildings.
The images are eerily familiar, embodied in the so-called Gaza encampments that were set up at many universities, which barred access to those who were visibly Jewish, identified by the Star of David necklaces or those who wore kippahs. Many universities condoned this misbehavior, some professors joined in the abuses, and there were even local governments that reportedly did not permit police forces to intervene.
Fortunately, many universities did not allow this condition to fester and did something about it. However, where this did not occur, it begs the question of why. It is also reminiscent of the events of Kristallnacht in 1938 Germany, where the police were given a stand-down order so that the violence and abuses could continue unabated.
The National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party), under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, was elected to the Reichstag (German parliament). The government was beset by severe discord and paralysis because of the malignant influences of the warring Nazi and Communist parties. The Nazi Party never constituted a majority, but it was accorded influence and eventually power by the aging and weak president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg.
The scene is all too familiar. Malign actors of the far left and right, both in and outside Congress, are accorded undeserved and outsized influence, even as they espouse false and anti-American rhetoric that ought to be reviled. The artificially divisive atmosphere in Congress—stoked by those seeking power and the complicit legacy media—amplify these extreme voices.
There are also philosophical similarities between the 1930s and now.
The Nazis began a systematic program to exclude Jews from Germany, leading to the so-called “Final Solution,” a euphemism meaning the genocide of the Jews and the Holocaust. The parallels to our times are uncanny. Even the term “Democratic socialism” appears to be just a tawdry copy of its spiritual forbearer.
Euphemistic slogans, such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” and “There’s Only One Solution, Intifada Revolution,” correlate to the genocide of the Jews. In this regard, I can’t help but note the obvious connection between “One Solution” and “Final Solution.”
There are other similarities, but there are also striking contrasts. Most important is the creation of the modern-day State of Israel. My father would painfully recount how, during the Holocaust, there was nowhere for the Jews to go. There was no country willing to intervene and save them en masse. Some individual heroes managed to rescue individuals or groups of Jews, and we honor them for their selfless good deeds taken at great personal risk. Still, many more could have been saved.
A callous, uninterested world was complicit because not only did countries worldwide not rescue Jews wholesale, they even frustrated attempts to save Jews by closing off escape routes and preventing the funding of rescue efforts. Again, there were exceptions outside of Europe—in places like Shanghai in Asia; Brazil and Mexico in Latin America; and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean.
Unlike in Germany in the 1930s—and unlike the isolationism of the United States during the early part of the Second World War—America now has a president and an administration devoted to fighting antisemitism and to supporting Israel, its strongest ally in the Middle East. Jews also have genuine allies in mainstream America—fellow citizens who share democratic values, and who reject hatred and bigotry. And we can all vote and lobby our elected officials to do what is right to combat the scourge of antisemitism.
Yom Hashoah reminds us we cannot be complacent. We must join together with our allies and not shirk from the battle against antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in all its forms.
“Never Again” is not just a slogan. It’s a continued call to action.
