Posting something my friend Michael Stein wrote a few years back for this day – Holocaust Remembrance Day. Once some posters here are done with the obligatory “that’s what Jews are doing to Palestinians” maybe they will take some time to read this.

“I wrote a thing. It’s long. You’ve been warned.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as designated by the United Nations General Assembly. January 27, 1945 was the day that Auschwitz-Birkenauthe, the largest Nazi death camp, was liberated by Soviet troops. The final death toll included the systematic murder of six million Jews and an additional eleven million other people by the Nazis and their collaborators.

The word “holocaust” originally derived from the Greek word holokauston, meaning “a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering,” or a burnt sacrifice offered to a god. The biblical word Shoah meaning “calamity” in Hebrew (and also used to refer to “destruction” since the Middle Ages), has become the standard Hebrew term for the 20th-century Holocaust as early as the early 1940s. It specifically refers to the Jewish victims of the Nazi death machine.

There are 14,511,000 Jews in the world, some two million fewer than on the eve of the Nazi destruction of European Jewry. Let that sink in. 74 years after the Shoah the Jewish people have yet to recover.

In 2018 there are 6.45 million Jews living in Israel, more than in any other country. The United States has the world’s second largest Jewish population, with 5.7 million people, France has 456,000 Jews, and Canada has 390,000. Further down the list, Britain has some 290,000 Jews, Argentina is home to 181,000, Russia has 176,000, Germany has 117,000 and 113,000 Jews live in Australia. Statistics show that since 1948, the world’s Jewish population has increased by 26 percent, while the general population of the globe has increased 300 percent. In effect, Jews are becoming an ever smaller minority relative to the rest of the world.

Two-thirds of American millennials surveyed in a recent poll cannot identify what Auschwitz is. Twenty-two percent of millennials in the poll said they haven’t heard of the Holocaust or are not sure whether they’ve heard of it — twice the percentage of U.S. adults as a whole who said the same. We have to do better with the Holocaust education.

Just so we are on the same page:

1) There are still less Jews in the world than there were before the Shoah.

2) As the global population increases, Jews are becoming an ever smaller and even more vulnerable minority.

3) Ignorance is only getting worse with each successive generation.

But wait, it gets worse.

We are seeing an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism today. The ADL reports that there were 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents reported across the United States in 2017, including physical assaults, vandalism, and attacks on Jewish institutions. That figure represents a 57 percent increase over the 1,267 incidents in 2016. Every part of the country was affected, with an incident reported in all 50 states for the first time in at least a decade. The sharp rise was in part due to a significant increase in incidents in schools and on college campuses, which nearly doubled for the second year in a row. (It is my personal experience that student led anti-Israel activism devolves into anti-Semitism real fast.) FBI statistics show that anti-Black and Anti-Jewish hate crimes are the most prevalent types of hate crimes in the country.

Not long ago America endured the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the country’s history, a shooting that killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh. BDE.

Meanwhile, anti-Semitism seems have gone mainstream across American politics. The right seems rather obsessed with blaming every perceived evil on George Soros (a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust.) The left spends it’s time throwing blood libels at Israel and giving a platform to anti-Semites like Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, and Louis Farrakhan. My point being is that anti-Semitism is endemic to both sides.

I wish I could tell that what is occurring in America was an anomaly, but that is not the case. We are seeing some truly concerning trends across the globe, but I want to focus on Europe for a second. Why Europe? Because the entire continent of Europe is a freaking disaster when it comes to anti-Semitism. Again it is endemic to both left and right wing politics. We are seeing historic rises in anti-Semetic hate crimes across Europe, but it is notably worse in France. There are Jews living in Europe who fear walking the streets. On the left, Jeremy Corbyn and Labour in the UK just keep getting caught saying undeniably anti-Semitic things. The list of anti-Semitic incidents over the last few years involving Labour is positively massive. The rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric coming from Labour has motivated many British Jews to immigrate to Israel. Meanwhile the far right under Orban in Hungary continues to demonize George Soros. In Poland the far right wing government passed legislation in an attempt to blame the Holocaust entirely on the Nazis while denying that there were Polish collaborators, participants and enablers. In summary, 74 years after the end of the Shoah we are seeing the rise of anti-Semitic violence, bigotry, and ignorance across The United States, the entire continent of Europe, and across rest of the globe.

Just a few last thoughts. I’ll try to be brief.

Yad Vashem (literally, “a monument and a name”) is Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Shoah. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the dead; honoring Jews who fought against their Nazi oppressors and Gentiles who selflessly aided Jews in need; and researching the phenomenon of the Shoah in particular and genocide in general, with the aim of avoiding such events in the future. Yad Vashem bestows the honorific “Righteous Among the Nations” to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Shoah to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. (The term originates with the concept of “righteous gentiles”, a term used in rabbinic Judaism to refer to non-Jews, called ger toshav, who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah.) In total, 26,973 (as of 1 January 2018) men and women from 51 countries have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, amounting to more than 10,000 authenticated rescue stories. At the time, there were billions of people in the world and hundreds of millions in Europe, but only a handful stepped up and risked their lives for Jews. The majority of the world stood by, they said nothing, and they did nothing. In fact, many countries like the US turned Jewish refugees away. (The most well-known example being the tragedy of the MS St. Louis.)

I have no panacea to prevent another Shoah. I have no wise words for solemn days like today, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do to honor the memory of those that were taken from us. I’ll continue on as proud and unapologetic Jew. I’ll continue support efforts to preserve Jewish culture and history. I’ll continue to support my tribesmen. I’ll continue to foster community among the Jewish people. I will continue to push for a just, tolerant, diverse, and inclusive society. I’ll continue to encourage dialogue, good will, and solidarity between Jews and other minority communities. I’ll continue to speak up and stand up against hate, bigotry, ignorance, and genocide. I’ll continue being a Zionist. (Yep, I brought up Zionism.) Saying “never again” just isn’t enough, we need action. As detailed above, there is no reason to be particularly hopeful, every metric shows the world is regressing, but I will continue to be defiant.

Lastly, I am going to say there have been numerous genocides since the Holocaust. By and large the world silently stands by. There are genocides and acts of genocide that are still going *TODAY.* It’s time to step up and actually do something before we watch history repeat itself yet again.”

Before you comment, remember it’s Holocaust remembrance day, and I am centering Jews here, a tribe I am a part of..nothing more.”