We Shouldn’t Forget Auschwitz – יום השואה

I was born into a world where Auschwitz was not a lesson—it was a silence.
My first language is Arabic, and yet I never heard the word Auschwitz on the lips of my fellow Arabs.
Not in school. Not in the mosque. Not in public discourse.
It wasn’t spoken of—not even whispered.
Many had never heard of it at all,
except for those who chose to think for themselves,
to question the narrative,
and to refuse to follow the crowd simply because it was louder.

When I finally learned what Auschwitz was, I was stunned—not just by the horror of what happened,
but by the even greater tragedy: how little I knew.

Auschwitz is not just history. It is a mirror.

We speak of it as if it were a place long buried in the past—
a chapter closed, a horror overcome.

But Auschwitz is more than a location. It’s a warning.
A mirror to what humanity is capable of when it loses its soul.

It reminds us of what happens when propaganda becomes truth,
when people are dehumanized one headline at a time,
when neighbors go silent,
when hate is normalized, and
when the world watches—and does nothing.

We shouldn’t forget Auschwitz—because forgetting is how it begins again.

Whole families were slaughtered.
Children watched as their helpless mothers and fathers stood powerless to defend them.
The trauma, the terror—the sheer evil—melts my heart and brands my soul.
It is a scar on humanity that must never be hidden.

Six million Jews were not just murdered.
They were stripped of names, dignity, and memory.

If we let their story fade,
we allow history to repeat itself—under a new name, in a new place,
with new justifications, but the same old evil.

Auschwitz doesn’t ask us for pity.
It demands responsibility.

It demands that we teach our children truth,
that we call out antisemitism wherever it hides—on the streets, on screens, and yes, even in sacred spaces.

We shouldn’t forget Auschwitz—because it wasn’t just about Jews. But it started with them.

And when we minimize their story, we unravel the very fabric of human dignity.

If we can forget Auschwitz, we can forget anything.
And if we can forget anything, we are capable of anything.

As a Saudi-American, I wasn’t raised to mourn the Jews. But now I do.

Not out of guilt,
but out of truth.
Because to love God is to love His people.
And to follow Jesus is to reject every ideology of hate,
every lie that dehumanizes,
every silence that excuses.

We shouldn’t forget Auschwitz—because remembering is resistance.

To remember is to say: Never again.
To remember is to honor every name, every child, every prayer that went unanswered.
To remember is to fight—to speak—to love in the face of darkness.

So no, I will not move on.
I will not stay silent.
I will not pretend it’s too far away or too long ago.

Because Auschwitz still speaks.
And we must be the ones who choose to listen.