By Belle Etra Yoeli
American Jewish Committee
NEW YORK — It’s unfathomable that today—the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz—antisemitism is surging around the world and displays of Holocaust denial and inversion are becoming increasingly commonplace.
Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and every day, American Jewish Committee (AJC) is standing against antisemitism, including Holocaust inversion, and demanding that world leaders demonstrate the moral courage and leadership that this moment requires. AJC leaders around the world are holding and participating in major remembrance events in Berlin, Poland, Belgium, Italy, New York, and more.
From the former Jewish Ghetto in Krakow, Poland, once the beating heart of European Jewish life, AJC Central Europe held what was the only commemoration around Auschwitz ensuring that senior Israeli government officials—whose nation was the target of an actual attempted genocide by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023—were given a platform during this important anniversary.
Together they honored the victims and survivors of the Shoah and pledged their support for Israel, whose existence is inextricably linked to the history of the Holocaust.
As AJC Europe Managing Director Simone Rodan-Benzaquen points out in her piece published today, those engaging in the antisemitic Holocaust inversion trope by disgustingly portraying Gaza as the new Auschwitz is not only absurd, but also perpetuates the very same Jew-hatred that led to the extermination of six million Jews.
Similarly in New York today, following the official International Holocaust Remembrance Day event at the United Nations, addressed by both UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, AJC leaders and diplomats from around the world convened for an event hosted by AJC’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for Human Rights that called on UN leaders and diplomats to confront and reject surging Holocaust distortion and inversion as they implement the newly-launched UN Plan of Action to counter antisemitism, and to bring to a close the dark chapter since Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023, attack against Israel that has instilled in many Jews an acute sense of alienation and hostility from the United Nations.
Today, we honor the six million Jews who were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. With antisemitism surging once again around the world, AJC will never waver in its work to combat this age-old hatred in all its forms and to shape a new, safer future for Jews everywhere.
*
Belle Etra Yoeli is the Chief Advocacy Officer for the American Jewish Committee
Perhaps it was almost inevitable. The Holocaust, once universalised to make an uncaring world give a damn about what the Nazis did to the Jews, is now being used against us to the point where we have now seen Jews dragged out of a Holocaust Memorial Event which attacked Israel.