Lessons to be learned from the Holocaust

Iwrite on the occasion of Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day — a poignant moment of remembrance and reminder, of bearing witness, of learning and acting upon the enduring and universal lessons of the Holocaust.

I write also as a member of the coalition of Special Envoys Combating Antisemitism convening now in Jerusalem, and having just visited Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, where we have borne witness to horrors too terrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened.

I write also amidst the international drumbeat of evil, including the Russian crime of aggression and crimes against humanity in Ukraine; the ongoing mass atrocities targeting the Uyghurs, Rohingya, Afghans and Africans; China's multipronged assault on the rulesbased order; and the increasing imprisonment of human rights defenders and the culture of impunity accompanying it — all occurring amidst an international community of bystanders.

And I write amidst a global resurgence of antisemitic acts, assault and violence. For example, the annual audit of antisemitic acts in Canada, just released by B'nai Brith's League For Human Rights, has reported the highest annual escalation in the past 40 years. The annual audit of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, also just released, reported similar findings in the U.S., and the North American experience has been paralleled by similar findings in Europe.

And so, at this critical historical moment, we must ask ourselves: What have we learned in the past 80 years — and more importantly, what must we do?

❚ Lesson One: The danger of forgetting and the imperative of remembrance — le devoir de mémoire:

As we remember the victims of the Shoah — defamed, demonized and dehumanized as prologue and justification for their killing — we must understand that the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of non-Jews is not a matter of abstract statistics. As we say at these moments of remembrance, “Unto each person there is a name, each person has an identity, each person is a universe.” Thus, the abiding universal imperative: we are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other's destiny.

❚ Lesson Two: The danger of antisemitism — the oldest and most enduring of hatreds:

Let there be no mistake about it: Jews were murdered at Auschwitz because of antisemitism, but antisemitism itself did not die at Auschwitz. It remains the bloody canary in the mineshaft of global evil today, toxic to democracies and an assault on our common humanity. And as we have learned only too painfully and too well, while it begins with Jews, it doesn't end with Jews.

❚ Lesson Three: The danger of Holocaust denial and distortion — an assault on memory and truth:

It is our responsibility to unmask the bearers of false witness, to expose the criminality of the deniers, to combat the proliferation of Holocaust distortion — particularly in social media — as we protect and ensure the dignity and memory of the victims. Indeed, we have witnessed the weaponization of the COVID pandemic, where the Jews have been blamed for manufacturing the virus, promoting its spread and profiting from it, as we witness the weaponization of the “denazification libel” by the Russians in Ukraine.

❚ Lesson Four: The responsibility to pay tribute to the rescuers, the righteous among the nations:

Canada's first honorary citizen, Swedish non-Jew Raoul Wallenberg, is here metaphor and message. For Wallenberg demonstrated how one person with the compassion to care, and the courage to act, can confront evil, prevail and transform history.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED IN THE PAST 80 YEARS ...

AND WHAT MUST WE DO?

Lesson Five: The danger of indifference and inaction in the face of mass atrocity and genocide:

In the face of such evil, indifference is acquiescence, if not complicity in evil itself. What makes the Holocaust, and mass atrocities in Rwanda and Darfur, and more recently in Myanmar (the Rohingya) and China (the Uyghurs) so unspeakable is not only the horror of the genocides — which are horrific enough — but that these genocides were preventable. Nobody can say we did not know. We knew but we did not act. The international community cannot be bystanders to such horror — we must act.

❚ Lesson Six: The dangers of impunity:

If the 20th century, and the first two decades of the 21st century, are the age of atrocity, they are also the age of impunity. Few of the perpetrators have been brought to justice. It is our responsibility, therefore, to ensure that these hostis humani generis — these enemies of humankind — are brought to justice. For it is the culture of impunity that found expression in the inaction following Russia's invasion of Georgia, seizure of Crimea and indiscriminate bombing in Syria, that incentivized the mass atrocities now happening in Ukraine.

It is these lessons that underpin my work as Canada's inaugural Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, as part of the larger struggle for the promotion and protection of human rights and human dignity in our time. May Yom HaShoah be not only be a day of remembrance, but a remembrance to act on behalf of our common humanity.