Dear Friends,

I will never forget my first trip to Poland, a pilgrimage to visit the darkest places of my people’s history, of human history. I saw the remnants of the horrors of the Holocaust with my own eyes and stood on the hallowed ground of death camps.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Yesterday, at a gathering organized by the World Jewish Congress in Krakow, Poland — just an hour from Auschwitz — Jewish leaders focused on two painful realities: the shocking rise of antisemitism around the world, especially post October 7, 2023, and the fact that the last survivors of the Holocaust will not be alive for that much longer.

This year’s commemorations come less than two weeks after an ADL study affirmed frighteningly low levels of awareness and knowledge about the Holocaust. We are staring at the risks of societies that do not know their own history and therefore are doomed to repeat it, or worse.

For all these reasons, it is important to mark days like today and Yom HaShoah — Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day which we commemorate later in the spring — and to double down on our efforts to promote and expand education about the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism.

We remember because we have an obligation to the past, to remember those who perished in the Shoah and those who somehow survived it. Especially as there are fewer and fewer survivors here to tell their own stories, it is a sacred responsibility to bear witness both to the horrors they experienced and to the courage and resilience with which they rebuilt their lives. We have the privilege and great responsibility to tell their stories. It is our job to ensure that no one is forgotten.

And, we remember because we have an obligation to the future, to our children and grandchildren. To raise a strong, proud, resilient next generation and to fight to ensure that they will live with safety and dignity in a more compassionate, less hateful world. In doing so, and as we keep teaching the lessons of the Holocaust, we can and must push back against all forms of extremism, hatred, and dehumanization, of anyone or any group.

Especially this year, especially right now, I find the words from Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech powerful, poignant, and compelling: “Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.” Let us remember, let us recognize the very real challenges we face and, tempting as it can feel, let us reject despair.