United States Archives - The New Antisemitism

May 10, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 2 Comments

The Six Stages of Antisemitism: It’s About to Get a Lot Worse!

Antisemitism, also known as the longest hatred, didn’t happen in a vacuum. It progressively grew, morphed and reinvented itself. It has been creatively adapted to fit the times. As one surveys the history of the Jewish people, it quickly becomes evident that it has been and continues to be punctuated by acts of antisemitism.

Forced baptisms and conversions, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, the Holocaust and the Middle East crisis are just a few of Satan’s creative ways to turn the world against the Jews. He succeeded in millions of casualties even though God promised never to forsake Israel completely(Jeremiah 31:35-37.)

He has been busy on two fronts toward the same goal: the destruction of the Jews. First, he works hard at turning the Jewish people against Yeshua by erroneously making them believe that following Him is antithetical to remaining a Jew. Second, he has turned many within the Church against the Jews throughout history and even today with the growth and influence of Replacement Theology.

Some believe that antisemitism was at its apex stage during the Holocaust and stopped after that. If history stopped, I could agree with such a statement. Still, almost eighty years have passed, and outside of maybe slowing down a bit for two decades after the Holocaust, antisemitism is alive and well. It has been on an uninterrupted continuum since biblical days.

We can also look at antisemitism as existing on a spectrum throughout the history of the Jewish people. To understand the gravity of the current situation, we must study that spectrum. This will allow us to determine where normalization sits on the spectrum and what it means to us today.

As we study the spectrum of antisemitism, one thing will become evident: Antisemitism doesn’t vacillate through history, going back and forth on the spectrum from non-existent to full force. Instead, it keeps moving in the same direction, never looking back. It might slow down a bit when a particular historical figure appears on the world scene and sees Jewish people with favor, such as–within reason–Charlemagne (747-814) or Napoleon (1769-1821). Still, it never completely ceases, even with their favorable treatment.

So, the spectrum moves only in one direction at various speeds but never reverses direction. It is driven by Satan from one end to the other, without exception.

The starting point of antisemitism is found in the biblical record of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament.) Pharaoh who didn’t know Joseph (Exodus 1), Haman in the book of Esther, the Amalekites (Exodus 17) or even the list of people groups provided by Asaph in Psalm 83. Those are obvious examples of the enemies of Israel. Still, the animosity goes back to Genesis 3:15, when the seed of the serpent (Satan) fights the seed of the woman (Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah).

At the origin, it was nothing more than biblical pagan jealousy. The people around Israel were jealous of the “chosen people” status of Israel declared by God (Deuteronomy 7:6-8; 14:2; 26:17-19; 2 Samuel 7:23-24, Psalm 105:8-15; 135:4; Isaiah 41:8). The Jewish people have been set aside by the God of Israel for His purpose, and that makes many people jealous, For You have separated them from all the peoples of the earth as Your inheritance, as You spoke through Moses Your servant, when You brought our fathers forth from Egypt, O Lord God.” (1 Kings 8:53).

Moving into the Greek Scriptures (New Testament), we find many passages that paint part of the Jewish leadership as antagonistic to Yeshua and His followers. This doesn’t validate the antisemitic tone that many have tried to attribute to the Greek Scriptures. That part of the Bible is not antisemitic, but it is not within the scope of this article to address that issue.

After the closing of the Canon of Scripture, from the late 1^st century forward, many of the ante-Nicaean Church Fathers contributed to the building of an early anti-Jewish sentiment. The following generations of Church Fathers continued the diatribes. This section of the spectrum could be called theological anti-Judaism. It continued throughout history with various degrees of intensity, peaking at times such as the Crusades or the Inquisition and specific recurring times on the calendar such as Holy Week as it became Classical Antisemitism.

Unbeknownst to him, Martin Luther set the stage for the Holocaust in his pamphlet “On the Jews and their lies.” He never intended for the Jews to be mass-murdered, but his words carried much weight, which led to tragic consequences. Martin Luther couldn’t look forward to the future or Adolf Hitler, but Hitler most definitely looked back at Luther and chose to act upon the theologian’s every word and beyond. There was another shift, and Classical Antisemitism became Racial Antisemitism. Hitler described the Jews as vermin and sub-humans to be eradicated for the betterment of mankind. He tried to support his lethal agenda against a backdrop of science by promoting Eugenics (debunked soon after, but seeing a bizarre comeback in the 21^st century).

Then came the interlude—two decades of relative respite for the Jews. The words “antisemitic” or “antisemitism” became taboo after the Holocaust. To be sure, while the words were avoided, the thoughts and actions continued. Yet, it was time for Satan to reinvent the oldest hatred. So, he repackaged it in the form of anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism so that an antisemite could continue their nefarious agenda without being called an antisemite. Most scholars now agree that this period, which continues to this day, is known as the New Antisemitism. It has benefited quite a bit from the advent of the Internet and social networks. People feel good about being social justice advocates while they demonize Israel and the Jews.

Yet, the spectrum is even broader. In 2012, in Toulouse, France, a man killed seven Jewish people total, including a rabbi and two young children at a day school. In my opinion, this attack marks when Jewish people started getting killed again for being Jewish. In 2015, during the “I am Charlie” days, a man entered a kosher supermarket on the east side of Paris, took Jewish people hostages, and ended up killing four of them. Keep in mind that killing four or more people in one event constitutes a “mass killing.” The carnage continues to this day all over the world. This is what I have called End-Times Antisemitism. It is part of the new antisemitism but is a hybrid of classical antisemitism (biblical days to Holocaust) and the new antisemitism (1948 to today).

I believe that there is one more brand of antisemitism coming, and I call it Tribulation Antisemitism. It will be a time of great turmoil and destruction for the Jewish people left behind. According to Zechariah 13:8-9, two-thirds of the Jewish people living at that time will perish, and one-third will survive and become followers of Yeshua the Messiah. As difficult as it is to say and comprehend, it will be a time far worse than the Holocaust for the Jews.

While, again, this is not within the scope of this work, I believe in a pre-tribulation, pre-millennial Rapture of the Church. Believers will be taken up in the air by Yeshua before the start of the Tribulation, also known as the Time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7).

The reason why I need to clarify my eschatological position is to avoid being accused of escapism. Some who do not adhere to a pre-Tribulation Rapture feel that those who do are simply buying into a doctrine of escapism to avoid the terrible days ahead. Believing in a pre-Tribulation Rapture should encourage believers to share with the lost before we are all gone. That includes sharing with our Jewish friends who will suffer the most during the Tribulation. I truly cannot wait for Yeshua to call us home, and yet, I can wait for Him to do so, as long as I can be used to lead more people to Him. Time is of the essence as the stage is being finalized for the antichrist and the Tribulation a little more each day.

This is where the normalization of antisemitism comes on the spectrum. While antisemitism has existed since biblical days, there always were people to defend the Jews against the libels and the diatribes. Israel’s advocates continue to be as vocal as they can today, but they are a dying breed.

What will happen when antisemitism becomes normalized and goes mainstream? This shift must occur for the Tribulation events to occur with such intensity. When normalization occurs, it will be open season for the Jews and those who defend them. We are not quite there, but we are very close. In other words, the stage is set for the final iteration of antisemitism… The incentive to share Yeshua with our Jewish friends has never been so palpable!

May 1, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Do Biblical Zionists Love Palestinians?

Whenever one puts “Biblical,” “Zionist,” and “Palestinian” in the same sentence, definitions are in order. Unity might never be fully achieved, but it should never be because of a lack of clarity. First, what I mean by Biblical is “in accordance with the Biblical record,” which, as far as I understand, includes the sixty-six books of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. As far as a fair definition of Zionism, lest I be accused of any bias as a Jew, I prefer to give a plain dictionary definition of the word as, “a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.”

Now, for the definition of who is a Palestinian, it gets a little tricky. Again, for the sake of clarity, I will say, “any physical descendant of the various Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel known as Palestine before 1948.” While I do not believe that tracing the Palestinian people historically is possible, we must recognize that Arabs born in the Land of Israel when it was still known as Palestine are real people, not responsible for the conflict they or their children were catapulted into. We must not forget that Palestine as a word was introduced by the Roman emperor Hadrian at the time of the Bar Kochba Revolt in AD 132-135 (A failed Jewish revolt against Rome). To humiliate the Jewish people, Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina and Israel became known as Palaestina.

Unfortunately, the word stuck and until 1948, “Palestine” was the word used to describe the geographical area that had always been known as Israel before. Eventually, under the leadership of Yassir Arafat and subsequent “Palestinian” leaders, the word’s etymology was expanded to mean both a land AND a people, a political claim that cannot be proven historically, archeologically, culturally or biblically. Today’s “Palestinians” have an Arab culture, eat Arab foods, speak Arabic and have Arab ancestors. “Palestinians” as a people group do not exist, but “Palestinians” as Arabs do. This is in no way meant to belittle their right to self-determination and their right to exist, but not at the expense of or to replace native Jews. Here is a question: Why do pre-1948 ‘Palestinian’ coins, bills, postage stamps and other items with a country of origin written on it all include the two initials in Hebrew for ‘Eretz Yisrael’ meaning ‘Land of Israel’?

Logically, we now need to look at what defines a “Biblical Zionist.” We often hear the words “Christian” and “Zionist” put together to describe someone who would consider himself a follower of Yeshua (Jesus) and a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people’s right to the land. I prefer the term “Biblical” to “Christian” as it pertains to those who love and support Israel. Unfortunately, in the last few years, many people who call themselves Christians have displayed quite a bit of antisemitism and have supported faulty views like Replacement Theology or Christian Palestinianism. We must also mention the recent upsurge in support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement from several mainline Christian denominations.

The Biblical Zionist position is usually taken because of one’s eschatological (End-Times) perspective and/or theological approach. Many evangelical Christians have supported Israel over the years, seeing that God is not finished with the Jewish people and has never completely fulfilled His promise given to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 12:1-3. That same promise was ratified as a covenant known as the Abrahamic Covenant with a promise of a seed, a land and a blessing. At the ratification of the covenant made between God and Abram (Genesis 15:7-19), no conditions were made. However, specific land boundaries were given which, incidentally, are much larger than current Eretz Yisrael. When God specifically gave Abram the boundaries of the land He was giving him, He simply stated, “To your descendants, I have given this land.” When Abraham’s son Isaac settles in Gerar instead of moving to Egypt God repeats the promises of the Covenant He made with Abraham (Gen 26:1-4), “Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

Furthermore, in Genesis 28:13-15, the Abrahamic Covenant is reconfirmed through Isaac’s son Jacob where the same land (vv. 13, 15) spoken of prior, is promised to Jacob and his descendants as it was promised to Isaac before. It continues to be unconditionally given as we know through the Biblical record that Jacob lied to his father about his birthright. It was in God’s plan to have Jacob and not Esau inherit the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant from Isaac. So biblically speaking, the descendants of Abraham, through Isaac and through Jacob are the Jewish people.

The Biblical Zionist’s love for Israel and the Jewish people is a result of his understanding of the eternal, unconditional and unilateral Abrahamic Covenant and its three promises made that were later amplified in three other unconditional covenants known as the Land Covenant (Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20; Ezekiel 16:53-63), the Davidic Covenant (II Samuel 7:11-16), and the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

But the great love that Biblical Zionists display for Israel and the Jewish people should not be exclusive, and it should extend to all, even those who have been indoctrinated to hate and destroy Israel. In the words of Yeshua in Matthew 5:44, we read, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” This doesn’t imply that all Palestinians today hate the Jews, as we should never paint with broad strokes. Yet, as difficult as it might be to fulfill that command, for those who take the Bible seriously, it is a command, nonetheless.

At the end of the day, Jews and Arabs have the same need of a redeemer to pay the price for their sins, just like anybody else in the world. There is only one way to God, and that is through the atoning death of Yeshua the Messiah for our sins. God doesn’t view people as Jews, Palestinians or Gentiles, but as sinners needing redemption. Once saved, we retain our ethnic identities, so a Jew remains a Jew and an Arab remains an Arab. It is only in Messiah that Jews and Arabs can truly get along and love and respect each other.

A Biblical Zionist not only can – but should – love the Palestinians. Over the years, I have found that to love Israel and the Jewish people and to love the “Palestinians” is not mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, when we reverse this equation, love, too often, disappears, and those who support a Palestinian cause almost always show animosity toward the Jews and Israel.

April 1, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

A Blue Square to Show Support To Our Jewish Friends…Then What?

It has now become common knowledge that antisemitism is on the rise like never before. Just this past week, the ADL released the numbers for antisemitic incidents in 2022, and it is not good at all. In fact, these numbers are the highest they’ve been in the past 45 years since records started being kept in the USA. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The ADL counted 3,697 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault targeting Jews last year — a 36% increase from the 2,717 recorded in 2021 and by far the highest total since the organization began tallying the data in 1979. The incidents include one fatality — the killing of a professor at the University of Arizona who was shot allegedly by a student, in part because the student believed Meixner was Jewish. The tally also includes the hostage situation at a Texas synagogue early in 2022.

It is important to note that these incidents are not just verbal or printed abuse. Since 2012, at the time of the France “Toulouse Massacre”, Jewish lives have been lost again. Jews are being killed again, just for being Jewish. Looking back at the year 2000 when I started to compile data about worldwide antisemitism, things have gotten worse. A lot worse. I used to get looks from people when I said that if things keep getting worse, the Jewish communities of the world will experience the 1930s and 1940s again soon. I fear that we are now on the cusp of a renewed 1930s and 1940s era for Jews.

Additionally, many antisemitic incidents worldwide are under-reported or not reported as a result of the lack of consequences for the culprit over the years. In other words, when in the best-case scenario, a person or group is found guilty of antisemitism, very little if anything is being done to punish them. There seems to be no accountability at all, which emboldens perpetrators to do more harm. I document this and much more in my latest book The Normalization of Antisemitism: When the Oldest Hatred Becomes the New Normal.

As I write this, we are approaching April 18, 2023, the day of the very solemn commemoration of Yom HaShoah (the Day of the Catastrophe) in Israel when all Israelis stop everything wherever they are in Eretz Yisrael and observe a two-minute moment of silence remembering the Holocaust victims. This time of year, the topic of antisemitism is always a little more tender than usual.

As we live in the age of Internet communication with a plethora of social network platforms, people can get very creative in expressing support for a particular cause. We often see people’s profiles dressed up with a hashtag or a flag in support of a country in turmoil. It is no different for those who desire to express their support for Israel and the Jewish people worldwide. A few years ago, we saw a deluge of #WeRemember on all the networks, posted by people who were declaring their support for the Jewish people and remembering the horrors of the Holocaust. While I agree that any show of solidarity is positive, I still think that many people posted the hashtag on their platforms and then felt that their conscience was cleared of any guilt. In reality, soon after Yom Ha Shoah, the hashtag dwindled down and eventually disappeared. It was back to business as usual, and people are not really paying attention to antisemitism anymore.

It seems that we are again bringing attention to the Jewish people and their plea with a new image in 2023. Again, I applaud the attempt at exposing the hatred against the Jews, but will it change anything? The new hashtag #StandUpToJewishHate was created along with a blue square. The blue square campaign was launched by the Jewish owner of the New England Patriots football team. He invested $25 million in this honorable endeavor. Many people are starting to display the little royal blue square in their photos online. The website connected to the square has several links offered to viewers for reporting antisemitic acts. This attempt at documenting and reporting acts of antisemitism is exemplary, but will it change anything? I have my doubts.

Over the years, I have seen many attempts at ending antisemitism, and while they were all commendable, they never have gone far enough to move into legal actions and prosecutions. A lot happens on paper and in committee meetings, but very little gets implemented. I have become convinced that antisemitism has now become the bully in the Jewish community’s courtyard. Even when we know that the bully will return multiple times, it is our duty to fight that bully the best we can every single time all the while knowing that we will not win the battle, or not yet at least.

So, can we fight against antisemitism and oppose it? Absolutely yes! Can we completely eradicate it? I don’t think so! The reason why I don’t think we can fully eradicate it is spiritual. Fighting antisemitism is a spiritual battle. Any attempt at fighting antisemitism without understanding that it is a creation of Satan who hates the Jews because God loves them is bound to fail. I believe that the Bible clearly explains why Satan hates the Jews, namely because they will one day say Baruch Haba Bashem Adonai and usher in the return of Yeshua the Jewish Messiah which will also put an end to Satan’s career of hate.

While people of goodwill and Bible-believing followers of Yeshua should continue to denounce, expose and oppose antisemitism, now is the time to start thinking about what we can do for our Jewish co-workers, family members, schoolmates and neighbors. A blue square might identify us as friends of Israel and the Jewish people–in our day and age, that is enough of a target on our backs–but the real test comes when we must move into action to physically help Jewish people. The time has come to prepare to help the Jewish people around you.

Go ahead and publish the hashtag and wear the blue square pin…Good for you, but please, also make yourself ready to become Genesis 12:3 in action and actually come to the rescue of Jewish people. Who knows? It might be as easy as telling your next-door neighbor that you’ve got his back!

March 7, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 9 Comments

Is the Antisemitic “Goyim Defense League” the New Normal?

In 1968, Rabbi Meir Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) whose motto was, “To protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary.” The organization might have started as a noble cause, necessary for the safety of Jewish people; but it quickly became a violent group responsible for attacks, bombings and even a few deaths. The founder himself was assassinated in 1990. The JDL still exists today and has been classified as a right-wing terrorist group by the FBI since 2001. Originally, the JDL claimed that they were there to do the job that the ADL wasn’t doing.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is an international Jewish NGO based in the United States that was founded in 1913. While the JDL is inactive for the most part, the ADL has become a voice for civil rights and against antisemitism.

The Goyim Defense League (GDL), using its name as the counterpart to the JDL, is a completely different animal. The word goyim is plural for goy, which in Hebrew means “nation” or “nations”, another name for the Gentiles. Their logo is some sort of parody of the ADL logo, using the colors red, black and white–subliminally or not–similar to the Nazi logo. The GDL was founded in California in 2018 by Jon Minadeo II. They are a very antisemitic/conspiracy theory group that targets Jews in whatever way they can. They used to be a fringe group that no one really took too seriously, but lately, they have been present and vocal in 17 states.

Their recent activity includes antisemitic flyers about age-old Jewish world domination. The flyers are printed, stuffed in plastic bags with pebbles or beans and thrown in neighborhoods on people’s driveways or placed on car windshields.

Additionally, some of their members have been spotted in California, Texas and Florida, displaying banners on highway overpasses with messages such as “Kanye is right about the Jews” referring to Kanye West’s recent rant against Jewish people.
Jon Minadeo was also spotted recently in Florida where he was insulting Jewish people on the street with a bullhorn, accompanied by a few other of his GDL cronies. He yelled “should we put you in an oven” to a passerby and insulted a Jewish man in his car, calling him “Jew Horse” and telling him to go back to his country, Israel where “they kill Palestinian kids”. The whole episode took place while he was laughing and insulting people as the police watched silently, and no passersby said a word.

Groups like GDL/GoyimTV used to be on the fringe of the antisemitic circle, and not taken very seriously. Why are they suddenly becoming more vocal? It is part of what I have identified as the normalization of antisemitism. Normal is the opposite of abnormal, so normalization is a process that takes an abnormal belief or behavior and manages to change it or its perception so that it will be perceived as normal. It can refer to data, diplomatic relations, economics, biology or sociology. The sociological aspect of normalization is the one that affects antisemitism.

Satan has worked for a long time to make the irrational look rational. This is also a component of the normalization of antisemitism, but only to the extent that the words and deeds committed against the Jews move from being done by identifiable antisemites to being done by all people without reprimand. We must clearly understand the two factors at stake here: legal and societal. Legally, normalization exonerates one from ramifications for committing an act that previously was punishable by law. No arrest, indictment, lawsuit, trial, verdict or imprisonment is to be feared. Societally, these acts go from being judged, ostracized or demonized to normal behavior. This takes these acts from being disturbing to acceptable.

One should quickly understand that if antisemitism were to undergo the process of complete normalization, it would trigger an “open season” against Jews globally and bring us back full force into the 1930s and 1940s. It would be an irreversible tipping point. Unfortunately, I fear that we might have reached that tipping point. While those of us who value Israel and appreciate the Jewish people are becoming a very slim minority, now is not the time to cave into the majority. We have some tough choices to make.

I am not necessarily interested in the source of the various stages of the normalization of antisemitism–already knowing that one way or another, they all come from Satan–but more in their status as of the start of 2023. I see ten stages: Apathy, lack of education, low or incorrect reporting, desensitization, lack of accountability, empowerment, demonization of the defenders, persecution of Jews and defenders, encouragement to kill and the mass murder of Jews. While I believe they feed off each other, these stages do not have to happen exactly in the order just listed; they can occur simultaneously and overlap.

For a group like the Goyim Defense League to gain momentum, we must be within the boundaries of normalization. Eight of the ten stages can be found in the actions of the GDL in Florida: Apathy, lack of education, low or incorrect reporting, desensitization, lack of accountability, empowerment, demonization of the defenders, persecution of Jews and defenders. Short of encouragement to kill and the mass murder of Jews, the GDL is promoting the normalization of antisemitism.

For those of us who despise this kind of xenophobic behavior, the time is NOW to expose these people. We might feel like our voice will never be heard, but if we report these actions to Jewish advocacy groups, we can make a difference. This is a spiritual battle and all of us are soldiers on the frontlines. Let us fight together for the vindication and salvation of Israel. Remember that silence is complicity, so if you see, hear or read something, report it to any of these organizations:

STANDWITHUS.COM
CANARYMISSION.ORG
MOMENTMAG.COM/ANTISEMITISM-MONITOR
CAMERA.ORG
MACCABEETASKFORCE.ORG
ADL.ORG/ADL-TRACKER
MEMRI.ORG

January 25, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 5 Comments

The Silenced Six Million Are Crying Out!

When someone cannot defend themselves, they count on others to come to the rescue, and when it comes to the Holocaust, the others are you and me. As it turns out, the silenced six million are counting on us never to be forgotten. International Holocaust Remembrance Day It is different from Yom HaShoah (Day of the Catastrophe), which falls annually, a week after Passover in Israel (started in 1953). Since 2005, each year, on January 27, the international community remembers the Holocaust in various ways, from synagogue services to vigils to educational events that include Holocaust survivors or scholars. Yet, survivors are dwindling to a few thousand globally. Considering that anybody born at the onset of the war in 1939 would be eighty-four years old today, most survivors of the Holocaust are in their nineties. Soon, they will all be in our memories. Or will they?

Some clueless teenagers were recently spotted on TikTok pretending to be in the Holocaust. These teenagers put makeup on their faces to look emaciated and write pretend captions such as”I died in the Holocaust” and receive comments such as “I myself have been gassed over 6,000,000 times!!!” These young people are belittling the worst carnage against the Jewish people in the history of mankind; they think it is funny and their followers do too. That is not even considering all the other social networks getting away with posts about the Holocaust, going from ridiculing it to denying it.

The danger is threefold. First, we have a disappearing group of first-hand witnesses of the horrors of the Holocaust. In another five years, they might all be gone since the survivors are almost all in their nineties. Second, an uneducated and offensive younger generation is mocking the Holocaust and its victims online or in person. Finally, we have a growing number of people who minimize, alter or deny the catastrophe. As the survivors disappear and the new generation mocks the tragedy, it will only encourage those who choose to deny the Holocaust ever happened, and this breaks my heart.

As the international community commemorates the Holocaust on January 27, I am glad to see that some efforts are still being made, never to forget. Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem is inaugurating its book of names at an exhibit at the UN headquarters in NY. The Book of Names contains 4,800,000 of the 6,00o,000 names of the Holocaust victims. One of them is my grandfather Maurice Weinzveig. What else can we do?

Listen to a Holocaust survivor: This is a very effective way to learn about the event from a first-hand witness. The challenge is that in 2023, their number is exponentially reducing by virtue of their age. If you know one or are invited to hear one, I think you should take advantage of the opportunity. Additionally, the staff at Shadows of Shoah brings many testimonies from survivors on video and, by that medium, renders their unique stories eternal. The Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation also has over 50,000 video testimonies of survivors, including my dad Georges Melnick.

Visit a Death Camp: In November of 2010, I traveled to Krakow, Poland, to visit the remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where my maternal Grandfather Maurice Weinzveig was taken by the Gestapo from Paris in the Summer of 1942. I am set to visit again in the summer of 2023. The Death Camps are some eerie monuments left over from one of the darkest periods of mankind’s history. If possible, everybody, and most definitely every Christian, should walk through one of them once in their lifetime.

Visit a Holocaust Memorial Museum: The most extensive and most elaborate of them–Yad Vashem–is located in Jerusalem. I make a point of taking the people there each time I lead a tour to Israel. It is a must! It is a difficult visit punctuated by visual and audio markers that will undoubtedly leave an impression on you for many years. There are other Holocaust Memorials, several in the United States. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles are just two of them. The list is much longer and warrants several different visits if possible.

Read an account of the Holocaust: There is a tremendous collection of Holocaust literature in many languages. From survivors’ accounts to biographies, historical accounts, and even poems. Every human being should read the short but life-altering account of Elie Wiesel’s time at Auschwitz-Birkenau with his father when he was only 15. As told in his autobiography Night, his story of resilience and survival against all odds is very dark. A detailed and accurate account of the Holocaust can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz The War Against the Jews or in The destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg.

The silent six million are indeed crying out. It is heart-wrenching even to think their memory could disappear from history. To bring a little perspective to the 6,000.000 and to understand that they are much more than just a number–even though the tattooed forearm was an attempt at dehumanizing the victims–if we were to recite all the names of the 6,000,000 innocent victims of the Holocaust, it would take us 11.5 years nonstop day and night.

Please, tell your loved ones, especially the younger generation about the Holocaust. Don’t wait for schools or museums to do our jobs. We owe it to the silenced six million, so let us not be indifferent!

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
(Elie Wiesel)

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