Yom HaShoah: Where Are Those People Today?

Tomorrow is Yom HaShoah.

I wasn’t expecting to feel this way.

As I was scrolling through a post by Johnny Daniels, I stopped.

Slide after slide — Holocaust survivors, Righteous Among the Nations — each with a story, each with a life that demanded courage most of us cannot even begin to comprehend.

And something shifted in me.

Not just sadness. Not just remembrance.
A kind of confrontation.

Because as I read, one question kept coming back to me:
Where are those people today?

People like Adolfo Kaminsky —
18 years old, realizing he could save lives by removing ink from documents without leaving a trace.
He didn’t just help. He acted.

Fourteen thousand lives.

At one point, 900 people depended on him — each needing multiple forged documents.
Three days of nonstop work.
And he knew: if he stopped for even one hour, 30 people would die.

So he didn’t stop.

He chose exhaustion over sleep — because for him, rest meant death for someone else.

And then there was Nicholas Winton — not Jewish — who saved hundreds of children simply because his conscience wouldn’t allow him to do otherwise.

And the farmers. The families — many of them not Jewish — who had almost nothing, and still chose to hide, to feed, to protect.

These were the Righteous Among the Nations — people like Nicholas Winton, Oskar Schindler, and so many others, known and unknown — who chose courage over comfort, and conscience over silence.

No debate. No mercy.

So I ask again:
Where are those people today?

And I want to be clear —
I know where they are.

They are here in Israel.

They are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, our husbands and wives —
the soldiers of the IDF —
who stand between life and death so that we can live as Jews in our own land.

They carry something ancient within them —
a responsibility written long before they were born.

They don’t just understand what “Never Again” means —
they live it. They act on it.

They got the memo.

But my question is about the rest of the world.

Because today, something else feels louder.

We say “Never Again.”
Yet antisemitism is rising — openly, unapologetically, even casually.

After October 7, something became clearer to me in a way it never had before.
I used to wonder: How was it possible? How did people hate Jews so openly — how did the world allow it when Hitler came to power?

Now I see how.

Through people becoming so comfortable with hatred that they don’t even question it.

I see people speaking about Jews with a kind of ease that is chilling —
as if the hatred doesn’t even need a reason.

And when they’re confronted, there’s nothing behind it.
No logic. No substance.
Just… hate.

I recently saw a video from Spain — people speaking, even laughing, about killing Jews.
As if it were normal.
As if it were acceptable.
As if history had taught us nothing.

And I felt something I can’t fully put into words.

Disgust.
Grief.
Disbelief.

And also — clarity.

And maybe that’s what’s been bothering me the most.

Because it’s not just about hate.

It’s about indifference.

As Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

And that’s what I see in so many places today — not just people who hate, but people who don’t care enough to stand up, to speak, to act.

And maybe moral clarity is exactly what’s missing.

Because this isn’t complicated.

Hating Jews is wrong.
Celebrating violence against Jews is wrong.
And standing by silently while it happens is also wrong.

This isn’t politics.
It’s basic humanity.

And the more we blur that line, the more dangerous the world becomes for everyone.

We learn history so that we don’t repeat it.
But somehow, we keep repeating it.

It’s like we’re stuck in a loop —
where things get quiet, and then they get bad again.
Quiet… and then bad again.

And I keep asking myself — when do we finally learn?
When does something shift deeply enough that this cycle of hatred actually breaks?

Because when I think about the young people during the Holocaust — what they endured, how they rebuilt, how they chose life after everything — I don’t just see victims.

I see heroes.

Not because they wanted to be,
but because they chose to live when the world gave them every reason not to.

In 2019, I went to Poland.

I didn’t have family who survived the Holocaust. I come from Morocco.
But I felt a responsibility to go — to stand there, to witness, to remember.

Even though it was physically difficult for me, it didn’t matter. Being there mattered more.

Because those weren’t just places.
They were echoes — of lives, of voices, of everything that was lost, and everything that somehow still remains.

Today, I live in Israel.

And being here reinforces something deep in my soul —
that it is only among my people that I truly feel that someone has my back.

There is a quiet strength in that.
A sense of belonging that steadies the heart.

Because I know that if I were anywhere else in this climate of hatred, I’m not sure I would feel as free inside as I do here.

And yet — it still hurts.

It hurts to know that Jews around the world are being treated with such malice, such hatred, simply because they are Jews.

This is our history.

Again and again, we have been targeted.
Again and again, we have been forced to rise.

So I find myself asking — why?

Is it jealousy?
Is it that we continue to survive, to rebuild, to contribute, to rise above?
Is it our moral conscience? Our refusal to disappear?

Or is it something deeper — something we may never fully understand?

And maybe this is where emunah comes in.

Because even when the world doesn’t make sense,
we hold onto the belief that there is meaning — and justice — even if we cannot yet see it.

We remember.
We carry.
We continue.

So again I ask — not out of judgment, but out of longing:

Where are those people today?

Outside of Israel.
Across the world.
In the places where voices should be louder, where courage should be clearer.

The ones who act.
The ones who risk.
The ones who refuse to look away.

Maybe they exist.

Maybe they’re quieter.
Maybe they’re harder to find.

Or maybe…

maybe the break in that loop doesn’t start with the world.

Maybe it starts with individuals —
with the ones who refuse to be indifferent.

Maybe that’s the point of remembering.

Not just to honor who they were —
but to ask ourselves who we are willing to be.

Because “Never Again” is not a sentence.

It’s a responsibility.

And it is also a test of our emunah —to keep believing, to keep standing, and to keep choosing life, no matter what.