4 | JUNE 9 • 2022
PURELY COMMENTARY
essay
‘Never Again’ For Jews
O
ne Sunday morning
when I was about 9
years old, my Hebrew
school class was ushered into
a large room to watch a film
about the Holocaust. While I
don’t remem-
ber much of it,
one sequence
was irrevocably
burned onto
my brain. At
the liberation of
Bergen-Belsen,
with the camp
littered with emaciated bod-
ies and a few walking dead, a
British soldier sat on a bulldozer
shoving naked dead Jews into a
mass grave.
I thought about this for a
considerable time. But rather
than rage at the Nazis, my anger
was at the Jews. Why hadn’t the
Jews fought back? Why had so
many just gone like sheep to the
slaughter? Why didn’t anyone
do anything to stop this?
As time went on, I learned
more about these events and
that some Jews did fight back —
at Treblinka, at Sobibor and in
the Warsaw Ghetto. From rela-
tives and others, I heard stories
of survival.
But most of all, I heard end-
less platitudes. “Never again!”
was the popular slogan. But
what did it mean? Never again
would there be genocides in
general, or just of Jews? Did
the world really learn anything,
or was it just appropriate to
denounce the Holocaust in the
way that people perfunctorily
reply “fine” to “how are you
doing?” Over time, I became
numb to all of this. I found that
I was no longer even surprised
that the Holocaust occurred. I
was just amazed at the mecha-
nization of its implementation.
Teaching the Holocaust
became de rigeur in public
schools in the United States and
the West, ignored in the Muslim
world, and irrelevant in Africa
and Asia. The world began to
refer to just about any mass
killing or population transfer as
genocide. Were ethnically based
mass killings even preventable?
Each coming decade since
the end of World War II
brought with it more wars, mass
killings and the like. While
some eventually were stopped
by international interventions,
at the end of the day, they hap-
pened. Rodney King asked,
“Can’t we all just get along?”
And I understood that the
answer, in the long run, was no.
I realized this was a pessimis-
tic view of humanity, but it was
historically realistic. When the
going gets tough, when chaos
ensues, people fall back to their
respective corners. Individuality
succumbs to group dynamics.
Each group looks out for its
own. Woe to those who have no
group to depend on.
Even though some Jews
fought back against the
Germans, they were disorga-
nized and unprepared. I knew
that the wartime Allies were
aware of Auschwitz but decid-
ed against bombing the camp
or the associated rail lines. To
those countries fighting the
Nazis, winning the war was
their main priority and saving
Jews was very low on the list.
What about the locals? How
many were willing to risk their
lives or those of their children
to save strangers? Would I have?
Doubtful.
That the Jews had no one to
come to their rescue was due to
the fact that they were scattered
willy-nilly in various countries,
often among people who con-
sidered them interlopers and
were glad to see them go. No
matter how long Jews had lived
in certain lands, no matter how
much they tried to assimilate
or ignore their background,
they were never considered to
be native citizens. The Nazis
taught me that being a Jew was
based on blood, not on reli-
gious observance. There was
no escape from it. To be a Jew
means to belong to a club from
which one can never resign.
To me, the slogan “never
again” only means never again
to the Jews. To pretend that the
Holocaust will teach the world
to eschew violence against
“them” in favor of “us” is naïve
and contrary to historical evi-
dence. The Jews must make
sure it will never happen to
them again. Depending on the
good will of other countries or
the vague concept of altruism is
a recipe for disaster.
Jews are more than just a reli-
gious group, they are a people,
and a people need a country of
their own. Not just as a home-
land or cultural mecca, but a
nation which will protect them
no matter where they reside.
What the Jews needed in 1939,
and did not have, was Israel.
Too many diaspora Jews
think they sit comfortably in
their Western lives and have
nothing to fear. But antisem-
itism continues to be present,
now even more insidiously
disguised under the veil of
anti-Zionism. Progressives
denounce Israel as racist. To
many Muslims, Jew and Israeli
are one and the same. Even
some Jews validate “legitimate”
criticism of Israel. The U.N. has
been anti-Israel for as long as I
personally can remember, going
so far as to pass a resolution in
1972 equating Zionism with
racism. How can criticism of
Israel be any less than antisem-
itism?
My lesson from the
Holocaust is this: No one is
going to save the Jews except
the Jews. Israel is the guaran-
tor of “never again.
” Israel is
the only country in the world
that is tasked with not only
protecting its own citizens but
also those of its diaspora. Israel
had to go after Adolf Eichmann
and other fugitive Nazis when
European democracies moved
on. Israel had to rescue foreign
Jews when an Air France jet
was hijacked to Uganda by
Palestinian terrorists and France
dithered. Israel rescued the
Sephardi Jews of Arab lands, the
Falasha of Ethiopia, and Jews in
Bosnia and Ukraine when they
came under fire. Israel’s Law
of Return offers any Jew a new
home at any time.
Those Jews who do not
support Israel or are indiffer-
ent to it, those, including Jews
among them, who think that
championing the plight of the
Palestinians or labeling Israel
as apartheid are doomed to
ignorance. Those who fail to
recognize that only Israel will
ever truly protect the Jewish
people have learned nothing
from the Holocaust. I have. I
am a Zionist.
Mark Hotz is a history teacher at
Yeshivat Mekor Chaim High School in
Baltimore. Recently, he assigned his 11th
grade students an essay on lessons they
learned from the Holocaust. As an incen-
tive, since they had to write it, he offered
to write his own. This is it.
Mark Hotz
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