Never again is now

I once thought that the greatest test of our generation was empathy. On Yom HaShoah in 2017, I wrote: “When we remember the six million victims and say, ‘never again’ this year, let’s be empathetic and compassionate against all forms of hatred, prejudice, and discrimination.” Of course, I still believe that it’s important to be an empathetic person. But it seems like many of today’s social justice advocates are missing the nuance and the bigger picture. I now realize that empathy must have boundaries.

So much has changed in the last few years. The world is a different place for Jews post October 7. As Jews, we can’t advocate for tikkun olam at all costs, including at the expense of our own safety and survival. Israel did not start this war, and Hamas continues it by refusing to release 59 hostages. There is a saying that “all is fair in love and war.” The fight is not over, and Israel is allowed to defend itself until the enemy is defeated. As an American Jew, I fully support Israel’s decision about how to defend itself.

I think it’s been a failure of Holocaust education in this country to extrapolate the lessons of genocide to all forms of hate, prejudice, and discrimination. We need to distinguish that what happened during the Holocaust was a genocide against the Jewish people. The Holocaust was a specific effort to exterminate the Jews.

Unfortunately, we have learned these failures in Holocaust education the hard way. Since October 7, it’s more important than ever to find effective ways to combat antisemitism, which is closely linked to anti-Zionism. We live in a world with real evil in it, and we need to be able to clearly distinguish between good and evil to eradicate it.

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October 7 was a mini-Holocaust. Israeli children were kidnapped and killed for one reason: because they were Jewish. Kfir and Ariel Bibas can be compared to Anne Frank, the most famous childhood face of the Holocaust. There are parallels to be made between Yarden Bibas, who survived 484 days as a hostage in Gaza only to be released and learn that his wife and two sons were brutally murdered by Hamas, and Otto Frank, who survived Auschwitz only to learn that his wife and two daughters were murdered by the Nazis. Dara Horn, the author of “People Love Dead Jews,” said on a recent Tablet Magazine podcast that we have a window into Anne Frank only when she was in hiding. When Anne wrote in her diary, “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart,” that was before she was captured by the Nazis. We don’t have a window into her thoughts once she was sent to a concentration camp, confronted true evil, and was murdered.

Anne Frank’s diary is currently on exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Holocaust education needs to take it one step further and make the connection to what is happening in Israel right now. Hamas is still holding Edan Alexander hostage. He’s an American who grew up in my own backyard, in Tenafly, and he’s been held in the tunnels in Gaza for more than 530 days.  Every American should be outraged by this. He should be a household name.

As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I naively thought that their generation’s sacrifice, and our commitment to Holocaust education and the principles of zachor, would mean “never again.” October 7 taught us that the Holocaust is no longer a history lesson, and that “never again” is now.

Sarah Kukin Gretah, who works as a grants manager at the David Berg Foundation, is passionate about philanthropy in the Jewish community and is a fierce advocate for the State of Israel. She lives in Tenafly with her family.