In the last two days, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy dedicated a new Holocaust and Genocide Research Center at a high school in his state and announced that he intends to join this year’s International March of the Living in Poland, describing both as “pretty solemn but pretty special” events “bound by history.”
The governor, a Democrat, told JNS on Tuesday that both trips were not responses to “the unspeakable level of antisemitism” that followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in southern Israel but acknowledged that they certainly could focus attention on the issue.
“One of the humbling parts of this job is when you make a move with the size of the bully pulpit that we have, that that move is noticed, whether it’s an event you go to, a trip you take, a speech you make, a bill you sign, an executive order you promulgate,” Murphy told JNS.
“You know that it’s got a specific implication for whatever the topic is,” he said. “But also, New Jersey is a big state with a big platform. It has a signalling impact. God willing, in this case that will, in fact, be the case.”
The Anti-Defamation League reported a record 8,873 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2023, with 5,204 coming after Hamas attacked the Jewish state.
On Monday, Murphy visited the research center at Kittatinny Regional High School in Newton, N.J., with the Holocaust survivor Maud Dahme and Mary Houghtaling, Sussex County’s teacher of the year.
“The sobering part is it’s the only entity of its kind anywhere in New Jersey,” Murphy told JNS. “And so in the ‘never again, never forget’ category, you’d like to think that it has a broader reach. But that shouldn’t take away from how incredibly impressive and sobering this was.”
As for the March of the Living, Murphy told JNS that he and his wife Tammy Snyder Murphy had always wanted to participate but couldn’t until now.
As U.S. ambassador to Germany, Murphy visited the concentration camps and memorials in the country, but he has not been to those in Poland, he told JNS.
“With antisemitism on the rise, we must always stand alongside our Jewish friends and neighbors to reject hate,” he said in a statement, announcing the visit.
In the same announcement, Tammy Snyder Murphy called the march “an important reminder of the horrific suffering and loss that Jewish people endured in World War II.”
New Jersey State Police Col. Pat Callahan intends to join the governor and state’s first lady in Poland and to lead more than five dozen fellow law enforcement officers on the march.
“As we walk the same path that so many innocent victims once took, we reaffirm our commitment to remembering history and eliminating hatred and intolerance from our world,” Callahan said in the announcement.
