Holocaust education was spiritual armor for hostages in Gaza

This Yom HaShoah, the focus isn’t just on the past — it’s about a handwritten Haggadah, the choice to sacrifice for another, and the enduring power of Jewish story and spirit. Not in 1944, but in 2023 and 2024 and 2025.

For Jews, memory is not simply recalling facts; it is a way of understanding our place in an ongoing narrative. Yom HaShoah is a call to action — to live in a way that echoes those who came before. And that is what Holocaust remembrance has truly achieved.

The author, together with Holocaust survivor Leslie Kleinman and a JRoots group in Auschwitz-Birkenau. (JRoots)

In moments of crisis, memory becomes a national muscle. The stories of heroism emerging from those recently released from captivity are breathtaking. These aren’t just examples of Jewish resilience. They are living proof of how Holocaust education shapes lives.

Agam Berger and Liri Elbag, held hostage in Gaza, created a makeshift Haggadah and held an underground Seder. They knew from their Holocaust education and journeys to Poland that their actions were continuing a line of resistance that stretches through every chapter of Jewish history.

When Holocaust educator Alex Dancyg was taken captive on October 7, he taught fellow hostages about Jewish history. Liat Atzili, kidnapped from her home in Nir Oz, gave a descriptive tour of Yad Vashem, using her words to bring it to life for those with her. They followed in the footsteps of Holocaust hero Emmanuel Ringelblum, who preserved Jewish history from within the Warsaw Ghetto.

Irene Kurtz who marked Seder night in the Warsaw Ghetto speaking to a JRoots group on a journey to Poland (credit JRoots)

These powerful acts did not arise in isolation. They are grounded in decades of storytelling by Holocaust survivors. Holocaust education was never meant to be a static monument or a vaccine against antisemitism. It is a thread connecting us to generations past.

The Shoah was unique in scale, but not in kind. Jewish history has long been a story of both suffering and survival. Those who remember know that our ancestors clung to Jewish life even in darkness, and that knowledge inspires us to do the same.

Memory is our Jewish superpower.

It is what allowed girls in Auschwitz to whisper the Shema at night. It is what pushed women in Soviet exile to teach Hebrew in secret. And it is that same force that motivated many hostages today to insist on living Jewishly — an act of spiritual resistance.

Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg once said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Knowing how Holocaust victims and survivors lived becomes spiritual armor for future generations. This Yom HaShoah, we recognize how the courage of the past has shaped the actions of Jewish heroes in 2025.

Holocaust Survivor Josef Lewkowicz teaching students on a JRoots journey at the site of the Plaszow Concentration Camp (JRoots)

The most meaningful lessons of Holocaust memory often emerge not from classrooms, but through informal spaces — family conversations, heritage journeys, and personal moments with survivors. These moments don’t shout; they settle quietly into our consciousness. And when life demands strength, that memory is there, guiding us.

Leading JRoots journeys to Poland, I have witnessed it firsthand. The facts are crucial, but the deepest learning happens in the silences — in the voice of a survivor, in private reflections that resist quantification. The most powerful teachings aren’t always spoken aloud; they are the ones that shape us quietly from within.

So, this Yom HaShoah, I’m reminded that the stories we tell, and the way we listen to them, shape who we become. As the voices of survivors grow fainter, we must lean in closer. The next generation of Jewish heroes will need guidance, and the very best teachers are still speaking, if we choose to hear them.