Avi Benlolo: Holocaust Remembrance Day should be a call to action against antisemitism

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As we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, we ponder whether the world has gleaned any lessons from the largest hate crime in history, which ended just 79 years ago. This was the question I posed earlier this week at the national headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The reprehensible surge in antisemitism on our city streets since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel leaves us questioning why, despite increased investment in Holocaust education over the last two decades, antisemitic incidents have been on the rise in North America and Europe.

The issue primarily lies with young adults who seem to be influenced by social media and Holocaust denial. In a poll released this week, for instance, the Campaign Against Antisemitism found “worrying levels of anti-Jewish prejudice among the British public, with particularly frightening rates among young people.”

It should have been the opposite. There should have been more sympathy and understanding for Jews and for Israel. However, social media has been inundated with antisemitic tropes since Hamas’s barbaric assault. An Angus Reid survey released last month revealed that young Canadians between the ages of 18 to 34 falsely believe that Islamophobia is a bigger problem than antisemitism.

This is despite police statistics across the country repeatedly reporting that the Jewish community is most affected by discrimination. The implications are disturbing. It suggests that antisemitism has become normalized; that the hate sown on university campuses and now in high schools is seeping into the mindset of our youth, outpacing our own ability to educate about the Holocaust.

Had he been alive, my friend and mentor, Holocaust survivor Max Eisen, would have been disappointed, not only by the 1933-like levels of antisemitism but also by the silence of those he imparted his wisdom upon. Like numerous other survivors, Max had invested decades in Holocaust education, specifically to prevent antisemitism.

Part of our work together was in Vancouver, where we advocated against antisemitism. Despite these efforts, and the unparalleled work of Vancouver’s police service, reports of antisemitism increased there by 62 per cent last year. In Toronto, police said in December that antisemitic incidents had increased 211 per cent since the Oct. 7 massacre.

The central question is whether the lessons about how antisemitism motivated the Nazis to commit genocide have been internalized by young adults. It may be true that previous Holocaust pedagogy needs an update, as young people consume more information from social media than from books and museums.

Holocaust education must also place more emphasis on complicity. The most critical lesson about the Holocaust is the complicity of the masses. Had the German population risen up against Hitler and his henchmen, they would have halted his momentum and prevented him from reaching a genocidal stage. Those who actively helped Hitler were accomplices; those who stood by and said nothing were complicit.

This complicity extends to the antisemitism we witness today on university campuses, in unions and corporate in boardrooms. For those of you who stay silent while your Jewish neighbours are revisiting the trauma of the Holocaust (and of Oct. 7) through daily antisemitic attacks, you are complicit.

We often see organizations like the United Nations marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day while simultaneously defaming and attempting to delegitimize the Jewish state. This is hypocrisy. Commemorating the Holocaust (or dead Jews) does not give cover for disproportionate attacks against Israel.

The lessons the Holocaust provided humanity are vital for anyone who struggles to promote a society based on integrity and morality. If you truly want to observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day, honour its victims and survivors by standing up to antisemitism today.

If you once pledged to adhere to the precept of “Never Again,” speak out against modern hatred and misinformation, particularly as it relates to the rape of Israeli women and the heinous acts of murder that took place on Oct. 7.

And if you believe yourself to be an advocate of human rights, follow the basic golden rule of loving your neighbour and doing unto others as you expect them to do unto you. Don’t stare silently out of your window as the world around you darkens. Before it’s too late, speak out against the hatred being paraded through the streets.

Observing and memorializing the Holocaust is more than standing at a memorial in Ottawa or drawing a picture at school. It’s a call to action to recognize that the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945, was not the end of antisemitism. It was the beginning of a new human era that was supposed to change the world for the better — to eradicate the evil scourge of racism from the face of the earth. Today you can start fulfilling that dream.

National Post

Avi Abraham Benlolo is the founder and CEO of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.