By Greg Bouwer on the Israel Institute of NZ…
As Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day — approaches, Jewish communities around the world prepare to honour the memory of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, along with millions of others targeted for who they were. In Israel, a siren will sound and the nation will freeze mid-step, in traffic, in work, in thought. Elsewhere, we light candles, recite names, and hold vigils. We remember. Because we must.
But remembrance, while sacred, is no longer enough.
“Never again.” These words, once a solemn vow born from the ashes of Auschwitz, now echo with disturbing hollowness. What was meant as a universal imperative is increasingly recited like a ritual — unmoored from the urgency and clarity it once carried. We speak the phrase. But do we still mean it?
Antisemitism is surging globally, both in its oldest forms and in new guises. Holocaust denial and distortion flourish online and even in schools. Some public figures peddle dangerous historical revisionism. Others cloak hatred in political slogans. Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors — living witnesses to the darkest chapter of the last century — are passing from this world, their stories too often unmet by the world’s will to heed them.
Read the full article on the Israel Institute of NZ HERE.
