There are places where history should impose a particular seriousness upon us.

Mauthausen is one of them.

A concentration camp is not merely a historical attraction. It is a place where human beings were stripped of their names, their dignity and, ultimately, their lives because they were Jews, political opponents, Roma, prisoners of war and members of other persecuted groups. To walk through such a place is to confront what happens when hatred becomes ideology and when the humanity of an entire people is treated as expendable.

That is why the video gone viral showing students wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the Palestinian flag and the image of a Palestinian terrorist responsible with the Avivim school-bus attack of 22 May 1970 is so morally jarring and repugnant. In that attack, a bus carrying children from Avivim was attacked near the Lebanese border with RPGs and machine-gun fire. 12 Israelis were killed, including 9 children, and 25 were wounded.

It raises an uncomfortable question: have we remembered the Holocaust in a way that we have forgotten its moral lessons?

Holocaust memory was never meant to be simply about learning dates, visiting museums or repeating the words “Never Again.” It was meant to teach something more demanding: that the murder of Jews is wrong regardless of the political circumstances in which it occurs. Jewish lives do not become less valuable because Israel exists, and terrorism against civilians does not become morally acceptable because its perpetrators invoke a political cause.

Israel has made Holocaust remembrance an important part of the education of its young people. Israeli school students visit Holocaust sites and memorials, including former concentration camps in Europe, and are taught that the destruction of European Jewry carries lessons about human life, responsibility and the protection of others. Those lessons form part of the broader values expected of Israelis, including those who serve in the Israel Defence Forces.

This is important because Israel’s........

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