80 years on
Hatred against Jews is again at levels unseen since the horrors of the Shoah, a fact the survivors themselves who spoke on Monday at Auschwitz-Birkenau highlighted.
Eighty years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, Jews around the world find themselves in a precarious spot.
When pure and unadulterated antisemitism led to the wholesale murder of six million Jews – over a million at Auschwitz alone – that should have been the moment the world took notice and took action.
And indeed, we have heard many times, and many times again on Monday as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was observed, the platitudes about “Never Again” and the dangers of hate.
Yet hatred against Jews is again at levels unseen since the horrors of the Shoah, a fact the survivors themselves who spoke on Monday at Auschwitz-Birkenau highlighted.
A survey has found that there is fading knowledge of the Holocaust globally, while a majority of people in seven countries believe a mass genocide of Jews could happen again.
And just 16 months ago on October 7, 2023, exactly such a bloodbath was attempted when Hamas committed the single largest slaughter of Jews in a day since the Holocaust.
The response of many in the global community – those same actors who filed into their seats at Auschwitz-Birkenau a few days ago – has largely been to apply a double standard to the Jewish state in how it has responded. The hypocrisy is staggering. Others have slandered the victims of Hamas’s attempted genocide as the committers of one.
Here in Australia, where so many survivors of the Nazi slaughter came to find refuge, our community has been under siege with regular graffiti and arson attacks, doxxing of Jews, discrimination on campuses, businesses being shut down and weekly rallies calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.
We welcome funding announcements this week for Holocaust remembrance and education institutions in Perth and Canberra. But has the world actually learned anything from the Holocaust?
As Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin said this week, “Mankind is essentially unaltered. We’re no better, wiser or more compassionate than we were back then. We are just as susceptible to missing the signs, taking the easy road, shrugging the shoulders and just going along. Just as bad at recognising evil.”
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