In recent months we have witnessed a disturbing acceleration of anti -Semitism in the United States. From Ivy League campuses to large cities, Jewish Americans are selected, threatened and – in far too many cases – are silenced.
The hatred is open and unaffordable. The institutions that were once in favor of pluralism and free speech are becoming increasingly impotter in the light of old prejudices that have been repaired for modern times.
This is not just a Jewish crisis. It’s an American. And it’s a moral one.
At Yad Vashem USA Foundation we are led by a unique mission and by my personal family bond with the Holocaust to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is never banned to the margins of history, but stays centrally in our collective moral vision.
This is not just about the Jews. It was never
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is not just a museum. It is the conscience of humanity. It keeps the names, the testimonies and the lived experiences of 6 million Jews not killed what they did, but for whom they were.
Protesters gather for an anti-Israeli demonstration outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to condemn the Israeli attacks on Gaza in Washington DC, November 1, 2023. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu)
We support this holy work because we understand a profound truth that is forgotten a condition for repeating.
The expression “never again” is often pronounced. But it is rarely lived. It is not enough to remember the Holocaust as a historical atrocity. We must internalize it as a warning. The Holocaust did not start with Auschwitz. It started with words. With disinformation. With dehumanization. Turn with neighbors. With silence of those who knew better.
Today we again hear the rhetoric that corrodes civil society. The conspiracies that Jewish deny. The songs that call for Jewish extermination. And, alarming, we see it more and more tolerated in elite settings – in the name of nuance, in the name of activism.
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Let’s be clear: there is no reason on earth that justifies the hatred of Jews. History has proven time and time again that when anti -Semitism is unleashed, it will not remain contained. It infects the wider body policy. It has democracies. It numbs the moral sensitivities of entire societies.
This is precisely the reason why Holocaust reminder is not just an act of Jewish continuity. It is also a universal imperative.
Children look at photos of kidnapped Israelis during a rally attended by hundreds in solidarity with Israel and those who were held hostage in Gaza, in Bucharest, Romania, November 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)
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We bring these lessons to life at the Yad Vashem USA Foundation. We finance programs that bring Holocaust education to US classrooms. We conduct research that makes an in-depth and accurate understanding possible of the events of the Holocaust and their consequences in an era of post-truth. We support advanced digital archives and compelling exhibitions. We enable scientists and educators to not only teach the Holocaust as a chronicle of tragedy, but as a framework for understanding the vulnerability of civilization and responsibility of the individual.
We also acknowledge that we are at a bending point. There are even fewer survivors to tell their stories. Fewer witnesses from first hand run among us. The memory burden will soon fall completely on our shoulders. That is both a privilege and a test. If we don’t get up to meet, we run the risk of having the Memory of the Holocaust distorted, diluted or deleted.
In a time when the truth itself is besieged, the preservation of historical integrity is an act of moral resistance. That is why we should not only train the spirits, but also weigh.
We need leaders – in the political spectrum, about faith traditions, between institutions – to speak with moral clarity. To say unambiguously that anti -Semitism has no justification. No context. No place in a free society.
And we need Americans of every background to join us, not from charity, but from the shared destination. Because the lessons of the Holocaust are not only Jewish lessons. They are human lessons.
A visitor looks at the display at the Yad Vashem Holodcaust Memorial in Jerusalem on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945. (AP)
As the world becomes more polarized, more volatile and more vulnerable for ideological extremism, we believe that the antidote starts with memory, with the courage not to remember not only what was done, but what was allowed.
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“Never again” is not an explanation from afterwards. It is a call for vigilance.
At Yad Vashem USA we take that phone call seriously. We ask you to participate with us in honoring the past, to confront the present and to protect the future.
The path forward starts with memory.
