2026 Holocaust Remembrance Day
TODAY IS HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY:
HERE ARE MY THOUGHTS
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We are reminded to “never forget.”
But have we already forgotten? I wonder.
This date, January 27, marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945, the dreaded Nazi concentration camp in Poland where an estimated 1,155,000 people perished — most of them Eastern European Jews. The extermination facility and labor camp was a massive complex of fortified walls, guard towers, barbed wire, gallows, barracks barely fit for animals, gas chambers, and cremation ovens. It was a cruel totalitarian state-run mechanism intended not just to inflict terror both inside and outside, but also to commit mass genocide.
One need not be Jewish to remember and honor them. We only need be human.
Today, the remnants of Auschwitz-Birkenau stand as a memorial to the memory of victims. This worldwide day of remembrance attempts to avert any possibility that such horrors can –or will– ever happen again.
But it has happened again. All over the world, on multiple occasions. It doesn’t help that some people, even those among us now including our own national leadership, are diabolically intent to erase history, or at least re-write it. While many do attempt to keep the candle flame of light and the comforting glow of warmth burning on, others are determined to blow it out.
To borrow terminology typically associated with Christianity —- have Holocaust remembrances become the symbolically-meaningful but otherwise useless rituals of “preaching to the choir?” Do all the special dates, emotional speeches, granite memorials, tear-jerking movies, and hundred-million-dollar museums about the Holocaust and the horrors of hate really accomplish anything?
Of course, remembrances should exist. Because the opposite — which is doing nothing — is far worse. We desperately need them, especially right now. But It also seems to me that those who should be the most impressionable to this critically-important messaging and the abundance of historical warnings sadly, pay this date little or no attention. In other words, the intended targets aren’t sitting in the audience.
It’s hard to teach historical lessons when so many people are so appallingly ignorant of it. According to a recent survey, nearly one-third of all Americans and 40 percent of millennials believe that substantially fewer than 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Almost half of all Americans (45 percent) cannot name a single concentration camp – and this percentage is even higher amongst millennials. I find this staggering. I find this frightening.
How is this possible? How can someone go through life so unaware and so uneducated? This defies my comprehension.
Nazi comparisons hurled about the political situation today are common. I’m not sure these comparisons resonate with people under a certain age, who have no actual idea what a Nazi is. They’re not versed in world history. They don’t comprehend the dangers. The historical reference (or insult) is mostly a void portending a lack of knowledge. Calling someone a “Nazi” who doesn’t understand what Nazism is and the horrors of what they did becomes staring back at the dear caught in the headlights.
Is there such a thing as “Holocaust fatigue?” Maybe. Unless it impacts them directly and absolutely, many people tend to tune things out over time. This is especially true when the victims of oppression are not members of our own tribe. They were of a different religion, from a different place, and lived in a different and distant time — so long ago. Why would anyone now so far removed from the victims care, let alone empathize?
Popular culture (especially in America, but other countries, too) used to crank out an assembly line of “entertainment” with laudable anti-authoritarian messaging. Most notably, movies helped entire generations to understand what happened. They were often told from the victims’ point of view. So, we share glimpses of their experience and suffered along with them. It helped that so many “Holocaust movies” also happened to be outstanding cinematic achievements. Many even won Academy Awards. One would expect the messaging of those powerful movies, which impacted everyone who saw them, to stick and stay with us forever. But it hasn’t stuck with us, at least no on any meaningful scale. Given that movies with WW2 themes aren’t made much anymore, the latest generations as well as future generations are quite likely to disregard those important lessons.
Of course, there are plenty of crackpots and lunatics, too. Anti-Semites. Conspiracy cranks. Haters. And Jews are often the convenient targets of blame for society’s many shortcomings. This extremist contingent isn’t small. It numbers in the millions. They aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they are becoming even more empowered. Many don’t even brother to hide their hate and prejudices anymore.
Yes, today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This should not only be a look backwards. Rather, it should be a deeper gaze into the mirror which shows a reflection of where we could be headed.
