Reflections on the 80th Anniversary of VE Day

This week is the 80th anniversary of the surrender of German forces to the Allies during World War II. May 1945 was a time of great celebration in the Western world, symbolized by the iconic picture of a soldier in uniform embracing a woman in Times Square. Alongside the images of victory were the heartbreaking pictures of emancipated Jews in concentration camps and the piles of dead bodies located in the Nazi death camps. 

There is no doubt that the allied military victory saved the world from the worst tyranny ever visited on mankind. Just try to imagine what the world would have been like had the United States not been propelled into the war on December 7, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The combination of the Americans from the west and the Soviets from the east ended up overwhelming the Nazi regime and freeing Europe, at least for a time, from totalitarian rule.

From a Jewish perspective, the defeat of Germany was a necessary objective, but it was not simply about celebration. Thank G-d America entered the war soon enough to prevent a Nazi victory. America, however, did not enter World War II soon enough to save the Jews of Europe. America truly did not go on the offensive in the war until D-Day, June 4, 1944. By that time, some 4 million Jews had already been murdered by the Nazis. 

The Jews of Europe encountered the worst possible combination of factors that came together during the war which doomed them. They were facing a murderous hateful foe committed to their destruction. They were met by populations throughout Europe that had been inculcated with antisemitism for generations which led to their assistance (or the indifference of too many) in the genocide against the Jews. 

And on the American side, two factors came together that sealed the demise of European Jewry. 

First was American isolationism in reaction to the country’s experience in WWI, beginning with U.S. rejection of entry into the League of Nations, which meant at the very time that Hitler was threatening war with Europe, Americans were determined not to be involved. This gave space for Nazi aggression and assault against the Jewish people. 

Second was the anti-immigration policy that also emerged after WWI. Most American Jews had immigrated to the U.S. between 1881 and 1914 when the country was open to immigration. During the 1920s, two pieces of legislation, in 1921 and 1924, severely restricted immigration. By 1933, when Hitler took power in Germany, as many as 2 million Jews who might have entered America in the 1920’s never got here because of the new restrictions. These were lives lost in the Holocaust. 

In sum, everything was working against the Jewish people during World War II and the result was the destruction of European Jewry. 

Having said that, the story of the Jews since the war, the survivors’ amazing will to live, the reestablishment of the Jewish state in the land of Israel, the freeing of Soviet Jewry, the remarkable emergence of American Jewry to the most positive life in the history of the Diaspora, all testify to the truly celebratory side of this eightieth anniversary. 

Saving the world from Hitler did not arrive in time to save the vast majority of European Jews, but it enabled the world to move forward and made it possible for that powerful Jewish will to live as a people to emerge once again. 

The victory 80 years ago also provided the opportunity for the world to see what should have been known already — what the Nazis did in those camps. The images of Auschwitz provided the backdrop for the theme of Never Again, which motivated the movement against antisemitism for decades.

As antisemitism has swept the world since the October 7th attack, in a fashion unseen since World War II, we need to recommit ourselves on this 80th anniversary of the end of the war to understand what the fight was about and what is needed to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. The new J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism in 2025 highlights dramatic rises in both the total number of antisemitic incidents in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States—driven in part by the aftermath of 10/7.

Standing with countries like Ukraine attacked by Russia, and standing with the Jewish people in the face of the resurgence of the poison of antisemitism that led to the murder of six million Jews, would be a good place to start.