Yom HaShoah and Oct. 7, 2023

Deborah Rosen Fidel, JD, MAJPS Executive Director

Almost immediately after the first reports started to come out about the high number of civilians murdered in cold blood on Oct. 7, 2023, it was said to be the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. President Joe Biden, “It was the worst act of antisemitic violence since the Holocaust … like Anne Frank, Jewish children hid in attics from these monsters, and they were found and butchered.”

When President Biden visited Israel on Oct. 18, 2023, he too referenced the Nazis when he promised the U.S. would not abandon Jews to genocidal enemies for a second time in living memory. Likewise, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Hamas attack had “harrowing echoes” of the Holocaust.

The similarities are indeed jarring. Jewish communities were decimated as hundreds of Jews were murdered by killing squads. Jewish mothers hid with their babies with no food or water, praying not to be discovered. Ruthless butchers took aim at close range at entire families, including children. Hundreds were burned alive.

So, it is not hard to understand why the barbarous slaughter of unarmed innocents draws upon our people’s collective memory of the Shoah, which is deeply etched into the Jewish psyche. Holocaust images and themes lurk in the individual and collective consciousness of Israelis and Jews worldwide, serving as our default frame of reference for a catastrophe befalling the Jewish people.

The three emaciated hostages who returned home in February, after 16 months of captivity, conjured up images of concentration camp survivors. Seeing Shiri Bibas embrace her children, Ariel and Kfir in a blanket, helpless and terrified before they were taken away by masked terrorists and brutally murdered, recalls the darkest chapter in Jewish history.

The failure of the Jewish state to protect them in that moment seems to mock our oath, “Never again.” Zionism was supposed to be the answer to the Shoah, not the latest iteration of it. That is why the images of helpless victims cowering in fright, being slaughtered in their pajamas so unmoored Israelis, whose self-image is built around providing a safe haven for Jews.

The history of the Jewish people is not merely one of expulsions and terror, but of rebirth after these events, rising from the dust and hoping for better times to come. Yes, we have suffered, but the Jewish story is about so much more. The survivors of the Shoah had all the reasons in the world to give in to despair, but they did exactly the opposite. At their lowest point, they rebuilt their families, their communities and established the state of Israel. Similarly, Oct. 7, 2023, was a terrible blow seared into our personal and national memories. Since that day, we have seen antisemitism spike around the world, but we must not allow the ongoing trauma to overshadow the extraordinary achievements of 3,000 years of Jewish history and 77 years of sovereignty in our ancient homeland, with our own army and government. The Jewish people are no longer powerless, and we have allies.

After this war, Israel and world Jewry will rebound with renewed vigor and vibrance. We are already seeing an unprecedented surge of interest and energy in Israeli civic society and American Jewish institutions. We will continue to write more chapters in our own Jewish story.