How to honour the victims of the Holocaust while Gaza burns
JVL Introduction
This is a moving personal account of a Jewish family divided by different views on Israel that has resonance for many of us. This is a family, like so many others, with members who experienced the camps, ghettoes and deaths of the horrors of the Nazi genocide. At this time of the Jewish New Year and the coming Day of Atonement, this will be an issue for many Jewish families and we may be expected to keep quiet about Gaza and the West Bank but for most of us who have campaigned for the rights – and lives – of Palestinians, these last two years have made “putting aside our differences” difficult if not impossible.
It does not mean we do not honour the Jewish victims of the Nazis, or the centuries of oppression that we have experienced, but we honour past Jewish victims by doing all we can to prevent other victims. In so doing, many have lost connection to those in our families and former friends whose support for Israel includes support for the genocide and ethnic cleansing. This loss however, is as nothing to what our ancestors lost and it is as nothing to what Palestinians are losing and will continue to lose which makes it imperative, as this writer emphasises, is that we keep campaigning until there is a free Palestine.
LL
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Sun 21 Sep 2025. Read the original here.
Why I can’t join my family in honoring our ancestors killed in the Holocaust while Israel commits genocide in Gaza
I couldn’t join my family in honoring our ancestors murdered in the Nazi genocide while Israel uses our history to justify its oppression of the Palestinians. Instead, I honor my family’s lives by doing all I can to stop the Gaza genocide today.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for your hugely compassionate, thoughtful and well-written article, which I have read as a fellow-descendent of victims and a survivor of the Nazi holocaust of (Czech) Jews.
You define humanity. Thank you!
The word is Stolpersteine not Stolperstine. Perhaps this could be corrected.
Thank you – however we do not feel it is appropriate to change the original, although we thought the same. However, I have added the word, Stolpersteine to the picture caption. Thank you for being vigilant.