Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Lessons of Our Past Are Painfully Relevant Today

Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, released the following statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day: 

“As we honor the six million Jews and many others murdered, our call to action must not be simply to remember the Holocaust – but also to truly heed its lessons at a time when they are so painfully relevant.

As the granddaughter of survivors, Holocaust Remembrance Day was always a day of particular note. My grandparents somehow survived, through an unlikely combination of courage, luck, and the goodwill of non-Jews. Their families weren’t as fortunate.

In recent years, my grandparents’ stories have shifted from a piece of history to a far-too-relevant cautionary tale about where hate and dehumanization lead. 

It’s not lost on me that last night, as we marked this day, I organized a group of friends and colleagues to support our local Jewish and Israeli American restaurant that was targeted in a heinous antisemitic attack this weekend – part of a post-October 7 surge in antisemitism that celebrates terror and uses opposition to Israel as an excuse to target Jews around the globe.

The incident in my neighborhood in New York follows a week in which we’ve seen bigotry and extremism from the highest levels of our own politics: Elon Musk’s Nazi salutes, which were followed by an appearance at a far-right German political rally where he urged that we ‘move beyond’ the horrors of the Holocaust. President Trump’s pardoning of violent extremists responsible for an attempted insurrection. A flurry of hateful and dehumanizing policies targeting immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, the Black community, and others – often rooted in antisemitic and other conspiracy theories, such as the “invasion” rhetoric that has already fueled a cycle of violence against Jews, Latinos, Black people, and more.

We know where this increasingly normalized antisemitism, hate, and extremism lead. When Jews are targeted it makes every community and our democracy itself less safe – just as when any other community is targeted and our democracy is undermined, it makes Jews less safe.

That is what motivates our work at JCPA, countering antisemitism and broader hate and defending our democracy. None of us have the luxury of sitting by right now. Each of our futures depend on us collectively standing up and mobilizing in this critical moment.”