The Fifth World Holocaust Forum held last Thursday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem under the banner of "Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism," honored the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp and International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Many world leaders participated in the event, taking the stage to deliver their country's message of "Never Forget."
Addressing world leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "When the Jewish people faced annihilation, the world turned its back on us."
I say: Never ever deny this practice. All one has to do is look at how the world's ambassadors behave at the United Nations – an organization that was founded as the result of World War II – to realize that the world continues on the same path, constantly and perversely turning its back on Israel, the only Jewish state, the nation-state of the Jewish people.
In Britain's Prince Charles words, "The Holocaust must never be allowed to become simply a fact of history."
But in the United States, they do not as much as teach the Holocaust in school – it is not part of mandatory history studies.
According to a study released on Holocaust Remembrance Day, two-thirds of American millennials cannot explain the nature of Auschwitz.
The survey further found that It was found American adults were also lacking knowledge about the genocide in which 6 million Jews were murdered, and that 4 in 10 American millennials don't know how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a deeply thoughtful speech for which he received long applause.
"Remember what happens when the powerless cry for help and the powerful refuse to answer," he said. Does anyone remember the Polish Jews' pre-Holocaust plea to then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: "Let us into Palestine"?
Yet, the British held tight to their 'White Paper' decree and Polish Jews, instead of finding refuge in British Palestine, found their death in Nazi death camps.
In Russian President Vladimir Putin's words, "The crimes committed by the Nazis, their deliberate, planned, and as they said, 'final solution to the Jewish issue,' is one of the darkest and most shameful pages of modern world history."
Indeed, it was the ghastliest crime against humans – Jews – perpetrated by other humans – German Nazis. Yet, in July 2015, the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, and Germany as an observer, signed a nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), allowing the Islamic republic, a state sponsor of terrorism, to – under certain circumstances – develop a nuclear arsenal in a short period of time.
The Iranian regime constantly calls for another Holocaust and urges wiping Israel off the world's map.
The Nazis' "Final Solution" did not come to pass. The Jewish people are alive and thriving. However, if Iran will achieve its nefarious ambition of annihilating the State of Israel, then it could become the "Final Solution," since Israel houses the world's largest Jewish population.
President Putin further said, "The Nazis' European accomplices were often crueler than their masters." My later mother, a Holocaust survivor, was a witness to such events. When she spoke about her time under the yoke of the Nazis, languishing between one Nazi forced labor camp to one other concentration camp, she said that the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis were crueler to her fellow women prisoners than the German Nazis themselves.
Based on what we know the Nazis did, one must ask, how crueler can one be?
At Yad Vashem, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier addressed the forum and said, "Germans haven't learned the lesson of Holocaust, as Jew-hatred is still growing in Germany."
His country assumes full responsibility for the genocide they perpetrated on the Jewish people and Germany is still dealing with the "same evil" that led to the Holocaust. "The industrial mass murder by Germans and their cohorts of six million Jews, the worst crime in humanity, was committed by my country," the German leader said, contrite. "The terrible war, which cost over 60 million lives, originated in my country. I wish I could say the Germans learned from history, but I cannot. I wish I could say, we Germans have learnt from history once and for all, but I cannot," he acknowledged with what appeared to be a sincere gloom.
So Germans attempting to downplay or even doubt the events of the Holocaust would be wise to remember what their own president asserted: Germany's responsibility for the murder of 6 million Jews has not and will never expire.
By President Steinmeier saying, "As evil of past spreads once more, we must say 'Never Again'," referring to the growing anti-Semitism blowing form the Muslin community in Europe, one can ask, do the European countries have a way to put the anti-Semitic Muslim Genie back in its bottle?
The ink has not yet dried on the reports covering the moving forum in Jerusalem and French President Emmanuel Macron took off to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a known Holocaust denier, in Ramallah. Likewise, Prince Charles met with Abbas in Bethlehem. Galling, Abbas has been aiding and abetting the murder of Jews for several decades and the many counties that attended the forum fund his so-called "pay-for-slay."
These two leaders have already shown the vapid meaning of their own words at the forum.
It is very sad for humanity, as a whole, to have to hold an "International Holocaust Remembrance Day." As Yisrael Meir Lau, the former chief rabbi of Israel and a Holocaust survivor, told world leaders, "We have to forgive like brothers, we have to behave like friends that is our duty. Leaders of the world, the world is in your arms, in your hands; one signature and you can decide upon millions of people, so, let us decide for love, and friendship and peace forever."
And until there is peace forever, as for Jews, just remember and never forget: You and only you can defend yourselves against evil.
Nurit Greenger is a writer and journalist who focuses on humanitarian issues.
