What You Should Know About The Holocaust
By JOHANNA HILLMAN ‘28
“To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice.” — Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and author of Night
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly declared January 27 – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day is meant to commemorate the genocide of six million Jews, 250,000 Roma, and millions of other minorities. When honoring this day, it is important to remember that the Holocaust was not a random event that happened to random people, but rather the culmination of millennia of European antisemitism.
In early modern European history, Jews were treated as scapegoats, blamed for every woe a kingdom could have, from financial troubles to disease. Jews were often victims of blood libels: accusations that Jews had killed Christian children and used their blood for ritual purposes, or that they had poisoned wells to harm their Christian neighbors. Jews were often the victims of pogroms: violent attacks on Jewish villages often triggered by blood libels that had been spread in Christian communities. By the 1930s, the Third Reich used blood libels and scapegoating as strategies to alienate the Jews. The Nazi newspaper “Der Sturmer” spread propaganda claiming that Jews were planning murder “against Gentile Humanity” (according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The Nazi Party also scapegoated Jews for the economic woes that befell Germany in the aftermath of World War I, enabling them to rise to power with popular support.
The Holocaust was not only perpetuated by Nazi Germany but also by the complicity of thousands of collaborators and Allied countries that refused to take in Jewish refugees. In 1941, the Polish town of Jedwabne came under German control after having been controlled by the Soviets. Almost immediately, the Polish townspeople attacked the Jews of Jedwabne, forcing them into a barn and setting it ablaze, killing about 1000 Jews. This massacre was not perpetrated by the Nazis, but by Polish collaborators who were all too willing to brutalize their Jewish neighbors.
While Britain took in some Jewish refugees during World War II, the United States and Canada were largely unwilling to help Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. They established quotas and policies that greatly restricted the number of refugees able to enter the country, even those who had managed to secure visas. In 1939, a ship of 900 Jewish refugees was turned away from Cuba, the United States, and Canada before being sent back to Europe. It is estimated that at least half of the passengers died during the Holocaust.
Antisemitism neither started nor ended with the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, Jews who tried to return to their homes in Europe were often attacked. In 1946, just a year after the end of WWII, Holocaust survivors in one Polish town were massacred, causing many Jews who had decided to remain in Poland to flee. Today, antisemitism is on the rise. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hate crimes against Jews in the United States skyrocketed after Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel, becoming more frequent than ever before. However, the vast majority of Holocaust survivors will not be alive 25 years from now, and today, Holocaust education is lacking. A study conducted in 2020 found that among adults under 40, over one-third of those surveyed believed the death toll of the Holocaust to be under two million. Furthermore, many could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto. Even more disturbingly, about one in ten of those surveyed believed that Jews caused the Holocaust.
Today, antisemites are more emboldened than they have been since the end of WWII. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and political ally of President Trump, has repeatedly used dog whistles, outright Nazi rhetoric, and has shown support for neo-Nazis. In Europe, far-right parties have become more and more popular, and Jews around the world have been victims of antisemitic attacks. Now more than ever, it is necessary to learn about and acknowledge the Holocaust to prevent it from repeating.