Two years ago on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we held the first-ever at-home memorial service in Arab society. Thirty young men and women came to Kisra-Sumei to meet with a Holocaust survivor who shared his personal story. Afterward, we discussed among us, in Arabic, the issue of Holocaust commemoration. At the end of the evening, one of the female participants came up to me and started crying. She told me she lives in Haifa and has a neighbor who is a Holocaust survivor. She said she never truly understood the significance of the Holocaust, and only now understands what her neighbor went through.
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This is a small example of the knowledge gap between Jews and Arabs when it comes to the Holocaust.
In my high school in Nazareth, we were taught about the Holocaust as a chapter of World War II in history class. Only in the army did I visit Yad Vashem, and only at age 30 did I meet a Holocaust survivor for the first time. I learned just how problematic the situation is when we organized the event and searched online for information about the Holocaust in Arabic. To my surprise, we discovered it was easier to find Holocaust denial than correct information on the subject.
Essentially, there are more than a few Arab Israelis for whom the Holocaust is the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic), which refers to the displacement of Palestinian refugees during Israel's War of Independence.
We must not accept a situation where one-fifth of the country's population isn't deeply familiar with the Holocaust. We, Arab Israelis, need to learn and teach this subject, not only because it is the history of our Jewish neighbors, but first and foremost because we are human beings.
The Holocaust is an appalling event in human history, and there is no other way to see it. Although it is the Holocaust of the Jewish people, the responsibility falls on all of us, regardless of religion or ethnicity, to honor and preserve its memory for the next generations, because the moral lessons it teaches are humane and relevant to all.
The state must act toward preserving the memory of the Holocaust in Arab society by, among other avenues, cooperating with local Arab authorities to introduce educational content in school curriculums. In the meantime, though, it's good that there are social initiatives tackling this issue.
At the memorial event two years ago, one of the participants said we as Arabs can understand the Holocaust better than anyone because we ourselves are a minority that must sometimes contend with instances of racism or discrimination. There are those who will view this as an outrageous comparison that cheapens the Holocaust, but another way of looking at these things is that this was his own personal way of connecting to the subject, which is ultimately the purpose of Holocaust Remembrance Day. To remember and connect, everyone in their own way.
We began two years ago with one trailblazing event, and this year we will hold 20 household memorials in Arabic with hundreds of participants from across the country. In Nazareth, Yafa an-Naseriyye, Kfar Qassem, Shfaram and elsewhere.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are all obligated to remember and swear: لن تتكر ابداً (Never Again).
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