I now understand how the Holocaust happened

Like many Australian Jews my age, the Holocaust profoundly affected my upbringing. Both of my paternal grandparents survived the concentration camps. I was reminded of that every Sunday when I would see the Auschwitz tattoo on my late grandmother’s arm as she served us lunch.

As a student at a Jewish day school, the Holocaust was a key area of study. We read books, watched videos and visited the Holocaust museum. We boarded buses to see Schindler’s List. When it was my bar mitzvah, we didn’t visit Disneyland; we went to Israel and spent an afternoon in sombre contemplation at Yad Vashem.

Despite studying and being immersed in the Holocaust my whole life, one question always nagged at me: how did the Holocaust happen? We were told the Germans were highly educated and cultured. How could such sophisticated people give birth to the insane barbarism of the Final Solution?

It has taken me several decades, but I have finally found the answer.

It’s right in front of us – in Australia and around the world in 2026. The best vantage point is the professional social networking site, LinkedIn. Prior to October 7, 2023, LinkedIn was a place where professionals prosaically boasted about their latest corporate achievement – getting promoted, or completing a project or transaction.

Today, at least based on my algorithm, LinkedIn demonstrates how the Nazis rose to power.

We always knew there were ratbag antisemites among us. You learnt that as a kid playing inter-school sport. I learnt it playing the genteel sport of squash for Maccabi. In the wider world, we also knew there were genocidal jihadis prepared to commit deranged acts of violence in the name of religion.

But LinkedIn shows us something different and far more worrying. Since October 7, it has become a clearing house for unhinged, unquenchable Jew hatred. And let’s call it what it is: Jew hatred. I don’t play the Israeli versus Jew, Zionism versus Judaism game. If the result is dead Jews – wherever they live and whatever they believe – it’s Jew hatred.

So, why is LinkedIn such a concern? Because the people incessantly posting and sharing Jew hatred are not the obvious skinheads, Hamasniks or members of the lunatic fringe. They are our doctors, our lawyers, our engineers, our journalists, our social workers, our writers, our academics.

They are the people upon whom, at least in theory, our liberal democracy depends for its survival. They are our educated elite. They attended our best schools and universities. They are the ones who should understand history and know where hatred – and especially Jew hatred – leads. It leads to Auschwitz.

These LinkedIn members with hundreds and thousands of connections, impressive lists of higher degrees from esteemed institutions and sparkling professional achievements either don’t know or don’t care. I’m not sure which explanation is worse – total ignorance or complete indifference.

Since October 7, they have become obsessed with Israel and the Jews. Virtually every one of their posts or comments focuses on Israel, Gaza, Netanyahu, Likud, Greater Israel, genocide, war crimes, innocent civilians, indiscriminate bombing, famine, dead babies, Jewish influence, deliberate starvation, Zionist lobbies. On and on.

They are fixated on the Jews and our one, tiny state – despite so many other conflicts and tragedies around the world that should also be vying for their concern. The murder of Iranian anti-regime protesters. Putin’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. Anti-democratic crackdowns in Hong Kong. Yemen. Sudan. Pakistan.

These educated elites will respond by pointing to “whataboutism”. And perhaps they have a point. The war in Gaza has been tragic; the loss of life, the level of suffering and destruction have been catastrophic. It is entirely reasonable and, indeed, even commendable that our best and brightest are deeply concerned.

But their legitimate concern has mutated into unbridled Jew hatred, and in the process our educated elites have been exposed.

They in theory are the ones trained to doubt and question, to look at issues from multiple perspectives using multiple sources. They are meant to be the ones who have been taught to think flexibly, critically, to see nuance and shades of grey, to suspend judgement and avoid emotional reasoning.

They have failed dismally, publicly and seemingly proudly. They have shown themselves to be guilty of catastrophic groupthink when it comes to Jews and the Jewish state. They have been enthusiastically prepared to believe the worst about us, to imbibe the most viciously antisemitic stereotypes – and to propagate them with zealous fervour.

That’s how the Holocaust happened.

Jason Rose is a Jewish dad living in Melbourne.