What does any of that have to do with International Holocaust Remembrance Day?

There is a time and place to hurl criticism of Israel and its policies, but it’s not on a solemn day that honors those slaughtered by the Nazis and those who survived.

At Monday’s main ceremony marking the 80 anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, where roughly 1.1 million Jews were murdered,
1. only 50 survivors were expected to be present –
2. down from 300 a decade ago
3. and 1,000 a decade before that.

The focus should be entirely on them – now more than ever.

Incidents of global antisemitism have spiked to unprecedented post-World War II levels, and public figures like Elon Musk are quoted telling supporters of the rising far-Right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) that
“there is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.”

Clearly, the lessons the world needed to learn from the Holocaust are getting muddied and faded the further, we move from the actual events that took place.

As the survivors die, and along with them their first-hand accounts of the horrors perpetrated against the Jews, the easier it will be for people like Higgins to diminish their magnitude and use them for cheap political gain.