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World Jewish leader warns of second Holocaust

“I believed that the slogan of ‘Never Again’ truly meant never again. Well, I was wrong,” said WJC Israel president Sylvan Adams ahead of the March of the Living in Poland.

Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress Israel, at a press conference ahead of the March of the Living at Auschwitz, April 14, 2026. Photo by Sahar Cohen.
Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress Israel, at a press conference ahead of the March of the Living at Auschwitz, April 14, 2026. Photo by Sahar Cohen.

Oświęcim, Poland—Rising antisemitism around the globe, heavily funded and organized by Qatar and promoted on social-media platforms, risks creating a second Holocaust, the Israel president of the World Jewish Congress said on Tuesday at the Auschwitz concentration camp on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Sylvan Adams expressed this sentiment during a press briefing ahead of the annual March of the Living educational program at the site of the Nazi death camp where more than one million Jews were murdered during World War II.

“I never believed that in my life we would see what we have seen since Oct. 7,” said Adams, the son of Holocaust survivors, referring to the 2023 Hamas massacre in southern Israel. “I believed that the post-Holocaust slogan of ‘Never Again’ truly meant never again. Well, I was wrong.”

The Jewish leader cited figures released by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, according to which 46% of adults worldwide—around 2.2 billion people—hold antisemitic views, while one in five has never heard of the Holocaust.

Adams pointed to Doha to highlight the phenomenon.

“Qatar, and the Emir of Qatar, while pretending to be a benefactor of the hostages, is playing a double game and fomenting the worst antisemitism since the Holocaust,” he said.

He noted that the Gulf country, which is a U.S. ally, has long funded the Muslim Brotherhood and, over the last three decades, has invested more than a trillion dollars in the pan-Arab Al Jazeera TV station in an effort to destabilize the West.

“Their campaign against the Jews is just the appetizer dish,” he said. “The main course is the entire West that they wish to convert and subjugate.”

In his remarks, Adams also called the Chinese-run TikTok “the most virulently antisemitic of the social-media platforms,” coupled with Beijing’s covert and overt support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime.

He praised the administration in Washington for forcing the creation of a majority American board for the social platform in the United States, where it has 200 million users.

“What began here did not begin with gas chambers,” Adams said on the site of the ultimate symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust. “It began with words, with permission and with silence.”

Etgar Lefkovits, an award-winning international journalist, is an Israel correspondent and a feature news writer for JNS. A native of Chicago, he has two decades of experience in journalism, having served as Jerusalem correspondent in one of the world’s most demanding positions. He is currently based in Tel Aviv.
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