Schools and educational institutions throughout Israel hold ceremonies in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Millions of students stand still for two minutes as the sirens cut through the air, reminding us, if only for a brief moment, what brought us back to the land of our forefathers and to live here as a free people in our own land.
It was not a desire for conquest, nor a need to go to war and kill.
It was the need to exist, to continue.
Two thousand years of exile have shown that nowhere in the world are we ever truly welcome. We were not killed, abducted, and driven out just once or twice. That is not a victim mentality. It is a fact. The Jewish people have suffered from hatred throughout history. Here and there, the peoples among whom we lived may have “loved” us a little, may have shown us favor for no apparent reason. Yet even that very quickly turned into hatred.
Hatred—for what? Unknown. Hatred for hatred’s sake.
And so a cruel and sophisticated Holocaust, inflicted upon the Jews about 80 years ago, accelerated the pace of liberation; and the Jewish people dared once again to dream of returning to their only and eternal homeland. The only place in the world where they could lay down their heads at night and feel whole. Where they could rise in the morning to go to work and feel that they belonged.
And now even this small place is shaken. Even today, the Jews on this tiny patch of land—barely more than a dot on the map of the world—have no peace. The nations want to take even this from them. They want to drive the Jews out from here, just as from so many other countries. The truth is that they do not only want to expel them—they want to annihilate them. Hatred of Jews has not disappeared from the world. It is alive and present even in our “modern” age.
And that is why Holocaust Remembrance Day carries double meaning this year. Every baby, every child, every girl, every soldier, every man and every woman living in Israel must understand what was—and what will be—if we do not have a state in which we can live in safety.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is not only a day of remembering what was, but also a day of sober reflection on what is now. Not only on the past, but on the present. Not only remembering those horrors, but internalizing what they mean for us today.
The Holocaust did not begin on a single day, nor did it end only in the camps. It was a process. A process of delegitimization, exclusion, and turning an entire people into a problem. And once one understands that, one realizes that remembrance is not merely a ritual, but a responsibility: to see, to recognize, not to repress, and not to grow accustomed to it.
For remembrance obligates us not only to recall what was, but to act within what is happening.
For the most dangerous thing is not only hatred itself, but growing used to it and living with it as though it were an unavoidable part of reality.
The moment hatred becomes routine is the moment the danger no longer comes only from outside, but also lies within ourselves. Holocaust Remembrance Day reminds us not only of what was done to us, but also of what can happen when a people loses the ability to defend itself. When it has no home. When it has no power to determine its own fate.
And so this state, the State of Israel, is not something to be taken for granted. It is not merely a political or geographic solution. It is the deepest answer to an ancient question: Does the Jewish people have a place in the world where it is not dependent on the goodwill of others?
That answer is not given once and for all. It is tested anew in every generation. And it depends not only on external strength, but also on the quality of our internal cohesion as a society. This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day is therefore not only a call to remember the past, but also a call to wake up and understand that history is not merely a distant story that once happened to other people. The same story can repeat itself at any moment. And that is why we must choose life, responsibility, mutual obligation, baseless love—and above all, refuse to allow indifference.
And perhaps our first and deepest responsibility begins precisely here, within the walls of Jewish society: to learn, despite all disagreements, to exclude hatred from among us—to remember that we are one people, and to understand that the ability to contain differences without shattering our unity is a condition for our survival.
Then, out of that inner strength—when we are fortified within—we will also know how to face what comes against us from without.
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