As we commemorate Yom HaShoah at a time when the war with Iran remains unsettled and antisemitic violence continues to grow, avoiding the continuing diminution of the Holocaust while still learning from it for today’s world is an ongoing challenge. 

The waning of Holocaust influence continues to be an enormous problem. As Holocaust survivors (the most influential witnesses to generations who did not live through the tragedy) die, as greater distance from the events makes it harder to establish their relevance and reality to younger generations, and as anti-Israel sentiment in the world grows, it is hardly surprising that the Holocaust is in danger of losing the power it had over the decades to influence a better world. 

These factors have a life of their own and pose great challenges to combat. At the same time, it is critical not to contribute to this diminution through acts that either trivialize the Shoah or make it harder for people today to relate to it or even acknowledge it. 

One of the most significant manifestations of this phenomenon is the tendency to use the Holocaust to describe anything people dislike. The glib use of either the murder of six million Jews or the evils of the Nazi regime to denigrate any and all things unlikable (whether abortion, the Trump Administration or even Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank) plays directly into the hands of those who seek to minimize what the Shoah was about and make a mockery of the greatest evil perpetrated on this earth. 

It is important to continue resisting this tendency and to offer full criticism when these analogies are deployed. 

In doing so, however, we must not make it more difficult to learn the lessons of the Holocaust when, in a world such as exists today, it is more important than ever to do so. 

Clearly, not every political evil is the Holocaust. Calling so many things a coming Shoah debases the reality of what it was. 

On the other hand, as antisemitism expands, becomes more violent and (most significantly) is being normalized in too many places around the world, the experiences Jews went through between 1933 and 1945 are relevant without being comparable. It should not be taboo to refer to events in Germany at that time, as long as one makes clear that there is nothing comparable in whatever current issue one is discussing to the enormity and extreme evil of the Shoah. 

Having said that, there are processes that took place in Germany and in the world’s reaction (or inaction) to those events that are valuable in establishing guideposts for today’s expansive Jew hatred. 

Examples include the willingness in some circles to blame Jews for a nation’s involvement and defeat in war. One significant theme that propelled Hitler’s party from an insignificant group of extremists to a major player in Germany was the “stab in the back” conspiracy theory about how powerful Jews betrayed Germany during World War I. In recent weeks we have seen a modern version of that theory blaming Jews (in this case Israel and its supporters in the US) for influencing America and Trump to initiate a perceived unwise war with Iran. 

In the 1930s in Germany, soon after Hitler assumed the chancellorship, boycotting Jewish businesses became a primary vehicle for spreading Jew hatred. Today, formal and informal boycotts of Israelis and their supporters in the US and elsewhere have become primary ways not only to harm the Jewish people but to create norms that view Israel and Zionists as beyond the pale. 

When Jews are excluded from groups they long participated in (such as civil rights organizations and educational institutions) simply because they are assumed to be supportive of that “monstrous” state, activists are using techniques that succeeded in Germany in isolating the Jewish people. 

The normalization of Jew hatred in Germany became so pervasive that it was taken for granted and generated complete apathy if not support for vicious anti-Jewish policies and actions. 

Again, there is nothing in today’s antisemitism that resembles what happened then, but the increasing normalization of antisemitism in many places is a worrying sign. Where it can lead if not countered should not be understated. 

All of these factors created an atmosphere in Germany in which good people who realized how wrong and dangerous these policies were became afraid to speak out because it could reverberate against them in many ways. 

Today, particularly on college campuses but elsewhere as well, we too often see reluctance by too many (including many faculty) to stand up against these extreme actions out of fear of being criticized or worse. 

All in all, these are immense challenges. We must do everything to counter the weakening of the Holocaust experience in society, particularly by avoiding the destructive habit of comparing things we abhor to the Shoah. 

But in an increasingly dangerous world for Jews, where some of the techniques employed in Germany in the 1930s are being used again against the Jewish people, we at least need to understand how dangerous and reckless they are and convey that to society at large. 

Yom HaShoah is primarily about remembering and honoring the victims, but facing up to these complexities in a dangerous world should be part of the discussion as well. 

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)