This is our generation’s Kristallnacht
By David Mildenberg Posner
It’s hard to imagine that there can be Jews among us who haven’t learned about the Holocaust. It is so pivotal in our learning of Jewish history that I can remember learning about it since the age of seven while attending Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School in North Miami Beach. I also can't forget our yearly assemblies for Yom HaShoah in the school courtyard while attending Colegio Colombo Hebreo in Bogotá, Colombia. We learned extensively about the details of this horror; from the events that took place on Kristallnacht, to the names of the concentration camps and the number of Jews murdered at each camp.
Later in life, I learned about the Second World War in more detail, and have come to learn additional details about the Holocaust. However, our Jewish education pretty much covered the better part of it. I can say from having attended two different Jewish schools in different countries that our educators have not failed us when it comes to teaching this critical portion of our history.
On October 7th, Israel and the Jewish people suffered its greatest loss of life since the Holocaust.
While living in Liverpool during my university years and then in Madrid shortly after, I suddenly began to hear revisionists challenging the historical account of the Holocaust. I learned from acquaintances that they had been taught very superficially about the Holocaust, and most of them didn’t even know that six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazi regime. Some even questioned if that was even possible from a logistical standpoint. I came to the realization that the emphasis placed on this portion of history by Jewish educators was not necessarily shared throughout the non-Jewish world. Many of the people I knew even suggested that Jews tend to bring up the Holocaust too much and that it was time for us as a people to move on. That kind of speech progressed, and roughly two decades later, I began to hear more and more people claiming that the Jews had manipulated the world through self-pity so that we could steal land from the Palestinian people. A significant part of the world was now claiming that the Jewish victims had become the tormentors of a weaker people.
And when Israel showed the world the atrocities, much of it questioned the validity of its claims
On October 7th, Israel and the Jewish people suffered its greatest loss of life since the Holocaust. More than 1500 people of all nationalities and religions were massacred by Hamas and associates through acts of violence more extreme than even ISIS’s. So brutal that Hamas terrorists were supplied with Captagon, a drug that allowed them to perpetrate these heinous crimes with a perfect sense of calmness and indifference. Hamas documented the slaughter on their bodycams and smartphones, and even went so far as to post them on their victims’ social media accounts. They left evidence everywhere, purposely, to ensure as much terror and rage among the Israeli people, eliciting action that would sabotage a groundbreaking historical peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. This deal would have led to normalized relations between Israel and most Arab nations, restarting peace negotiations with the Palestinians and bringing closer a two-state solution. And when Israel showed the world the atrocities, much of it questioned the validity of its claims. A large part of it refused to condemn Hamas for the massacre. Huge crowds even blamed Israel for what had happened, going so far as to call them acts of resistance against the “occupation”. They debated whether babies were beheaded or simply burned alive. They promoted fake news about Israel targeting a hospital, which was quickly proven to have been hit by Islamic Jihad’s own failed missile launch. Even with the evidence, they did not retract their statements. In almost every metropolitan city in the world, they continued to follow the marching call from Iran and its proxies.
We were not taught about the Holocaust to dwell in our past; we were taught about the Holocaust to guard our future
And now, everything makes perfect sense. We were not taught about the Holocaust to dwell in our past; we were taught about the Holocaust to guard our future. You see, every time Hamas fires a rocket into Israel, sirens go off, giving Israelis a few seconds to take cover. It isn't much time, but it is a warning, nonetheless. Thanks to preparedness and the advanced systems that Israel has deployed over the years, casualties on the Israeli side have been low, until October 7th, that is.
No one can deny that the Israeli government is responsible for having let its guard down, even if no one can deny that what Israel has done up until now is commendable. But right now, we shouldn’t be finding whom to blame; we should be applying the lessons we have learned about the Holocaust. October 7th is our siren telling us we have seconds to take cover. This is our generation’s Kristallnacht. On that horrific night, instigated by Goebbel’s words, a pogrom took place in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Over thirty thousand Jews were sent to concentration camps and hundreds were raped and murdered. Businesses and synagogues were ransacked and burned. Jewish dignity was absolutely shattered. This was the turning point in National Socialist antisemitic policy since the indifference of the German public allowed the Nazi regime to radicalize even further. It was this indifference and silence that led to the Holocaust.
it is very clear that the relative period of tranquility that Jews have enjoyed after the Holocaust is no longer. It is very clear why the Holocaust deniers want to erase our history
Now, on Iran’s orders, Hamas, one of its several terrorist proxies, gave an order to slaughter, rape, and kidnap Jews. On Iran’s orders, we are being tested on several fronts by its proxies, like Hitler’s Storm Troopers, funded by money released by the Obama and Biden administrations. Iran’s radicalization has been enabled by the silence and appeasement of the international community, and sadly, by the educated left-leaning elites who have embarked on an intersectional war on white colonialism. They have shoved Israel into the box of nations that have robbed indigenous people of their homeland and committed genocide to replace the population with a white male-dominated society.
I will not go into the absurdity of these claims in this article, but the sight of scores of youths at the most prestigious universities in this country, marching to chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, is akin to the Hitler Youth who were so eager and proud to parrot the propaganda carefully prepared by the Third Reich to conquer Europe and the World. Not just Israel, but the Jewish community around the world has been hearing the sirens for quite some time now. Many have ignored them, others have prioritized their political allegiances which demand that they join a very ambiguous intersectional war, but many have been screaming fire, only to be dismissed as hawkish paranoids.
We are here now, and it is very clear that the relative period of tranquility that Jews have enjoyed after the Holocaust is no longer. It is very clear why the Holocaust deniers want to erase our history: because it’s the easiest way to disable the lifesaving sirens that can prevent another Holocaust. Have we awakened really, or will we choose as a people to ignore the lifesaving sirens that can be clearly heard with the ears of history?
