81 Years That Challenge Us

The Holocaust was the result of disgraceful racial prejudices that dehumanized
targeted groups. In societies in which moral and spiritual values had collapsed, civil and
religious leaders advanced their political goals by characterizing selected groups as
pests or as dangerous. Those who were thus singled out included the neuro-divergent,
foreigners, non-heterosexuals, and, of course, Jews, all of whom, and others, became
the victims of mass murder.

The Second World War was initiated by Nazi Germany, whose leaders initially thrived
on the passivity of the democratic nations regarding Austria and Czechoslovakia. Nazi
aggression was further enabled by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, agreed to by Hitler
and Stalin, which facilitated the invasion of Poland. Millions died in the resulting
conflict in which cities were razed, and vast populations were killed and displaced. To
me, the systematic and industrial murder of millions of Jews was the ultimate
expression of the evil that manifested itself in that global war. In the words of the Pope
Francis: “The Shoah is genocide, like the others from the twentieth century, but it has
a distinctive feature. I would not like to say that this is of primary relevance and the
others secondary, but there is a distinctive feature, an idolatrous construction against
the Jewish people. The pure race, the superior beings, they are idols for the foundation
upon which Nazism was built. … Each Jew that they killed was a slap in the face to the
living God in the name of idols” (On Heaven and Earth, 2013, p.178)

Francis highlights two aspects of the Shoah here. First, there is the horrific murder of
the Jewish people, where elders, women, and children faced unparalleled cruelty.
These were not isolated incidents; instead, they were systematic acts carried out over
many years. Second, the death of each Jew aimed to erase the faith, worldview, and
culture that the Hebrew people had developed over thousands of years. These two
aspects are inextricably connected.

In the Bible, Amalek attacked the people of Israel as they left Egypt on their journey to
meet God and receive the holy commandments (mitzvot) at Mount Sinai. This account
is found in two passages of the Torah: Exodus 17:8-16 and Deuteronomy 25:17-19. In
the first passage, God refers to Amalek’s assault as a war against Himself, while in the
second passage, God speaks of it as a war against the people of Israel with whom God
had entered into covenant.

Nazism, similar to the ancient Amalek, sought to replace the biblical view of
existence—based on justice, righteousness, mercy, and compassion—with a worldview focused on a supposed racial superiority that aims to dominate the world and shape its
future. The ideas of inherent or genetic superiority, developed in the latter half of the
19th century, had corrupted the minds of the Nazis and those they enthralled.

Eighty-one years after the conclusion of that horrific conflict, a wave of intense
antisemitism is once again sweeping across the world. This resurgence is often marked
by a denial of the State of Israel’s right to exist and by a desire for its disappearance. As
in the past, most attacks in the Diaspora are directed at synagogues and Jews simply
for being Jewish. This hatred is a troubling aspect of a broader global crisis of values.

The memory of the Shoah is dishonored when people deny or question the suffering of
the victims and the nature of the perpetrators’ evil. Their memory is often trivialized in
various political and so-called academic circles around the world.
In light of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, we should consider what ideologies
are being foisted on the masses today. What are the reasons and motivations behind
the numerous conflicts occurring now? What new idols are being created within
humanity?

Hannah Arendt, in her essay on antisemitism, the first part of The Origins of
Totalitarianism, sees the antisemitism that developed in 19th- and 20th-century
Europe as a result of the political and social changes that occurred there. While Arendt
separates religious and historical antisemitism from the socio-political antisemitism
she examines, it is impossible to understand the latter without recognizing that it was
rooted in the antipathy fostered in Europe by the former. It seems to be an endemic
evil that emerges wherever totalitarian and despotic ideas took hold. This pattern
began with the Pharaoh in Egypt, continued with Amalek in the desert, Haman in Susa,
Hitler in Nazi Germany, and so on.

Antisemitism represents a harsh reality filled with violence, bloodshed, and suffering
that every generation of Jews has had to face throughout history. Many of my relatives
were killed in Nazi extermination camps, and the children of those who survived
fought and died on the battlefields for the existence of Israel. I witnessed the bombing
of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the attack on the headquarters of
the Jewish Community in Buenos Aires in 1994, where friends and acquaintances lost
their lives.

As a child, I first encountered the monument dedicated to the memory of the Jewish
martyrs of the Shoah at the Jewish cemetery in La Tablada, Buenos Aires Province.
Inscribed on this monument is a verse from Ezekiel (16:6): “I passed by you and saw
you wallowing in your blood, and I said to you, ‘You shall live by your blood.’” From the
moment I read this verse, it became permanently etched in my memory.

On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, may we all live with the hope, and
work to build with God’s help, a different reality.

Written by Rabbi Avraham Skorka, January 2026