From Distance to Duty: When “Never Again” Stops Being a Slogan

Peloni:  Michel Benchimol provides a deeply moving and stirring analysis in reflecting upon the Holocaust the promise of Never Again on Yom HaShoah.

A Personal Reflection on Yom HaShoah

Michel Benchimol

Recently, I attended an evening of remembrance for the Holocaust—Yom HaShoah. I went out of respect for my partner, Ruth.

Her parents were Holocaust survivors, and for her, the evening carries deep, personal meaning. For me, it did not—at least not in the same way.

The Holocaust, in my mind, had always been history: tragic, undeniable, but distant. Something to acknowledge, not something that lived within me.

Coming from a Sephardic background of French and Spanish descent, my connection to it was always indirect.

During the war, my family lived in Casablanca, removed from the catastrophe that engulfed European Jewry.

Casablanca: Close to War, Far from Its Worst

Life in Casablanca during the war was not untouched—but it was fundamentally different.

Morocco was under the control of the Vichy regime, and with that came restrictions, uncertainty, and a quiet tension.

Anti-Jewish laws existed. Opportunities were limited. There was always the sense that events in Europe could, at any moment, spill over.

My own family was not entirely immune. Two of my uncles, on my mother’s side—supporters of Charles de Gaulle—were imprisoned in France for several years.

But even that must be said with perspective.

There were no deportations from Casablanca to extermination camps. No systematic rounding up of entire families. No disappearance of entire bloodlines.

Life continued—cautiously, imperfectly, but it continued.

And that difference matters.

Because it meant we did not grow up surrounded by absence.

Living Beside Trauma I Did Not Fully See

What makes that contrast even more striking is that, for much of my life, I lived beside someone who carried the full weight of that other reality.

My late wife, Anna, was not simply connected to the Holocaust—she was born out of it.

Her parents were first deported to Siberia, where survival meant enduring brutal cold, hunger, and constant uncertainty.

Life reduced to its most basic function: staying alive one more day.

But even that was not the end of their ordeal. They were eventually transferred to Bergen-Belsen.

It was there, in that camp, that Anna was born.

Even now, writing that feels almost unreal. To be born in a concentration camp—into a world defined not by opportunity, but by survival—is something most of us cannot truly comprehend.

And yet, for years, I treated this as a remarkable fact, without fully absorbing what it meant.

I understood it intellectually.

But I did not feel it.

The Weight That Carries Forward

What I have come to understand—late, but honestly—is that trauma does not end when the event ends.

It changes form.
It moves forward.
It is inherited.

The children of Holocaust survivors did not grow up in ordinary homes. They grew up surrounded by absence. Entire families erased. No grandparents, no extended family, no continuity that most people take for granted.

Some survivors spoke constantly, as if trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. Others said nothing at all, burying their past so deeply that their children felt its presence without ever fully understanding it.

But silence does not eliminate trauma.

It transmits it.

It shows up in ways that are subtle but powerful:
a constant vigilance,
a sense that safety is temporary,
a belief that acceptance can be withdrawn at any moment.

For many, this created remarkable strength—a drive to rebuild, to succeed, to ensure that survival had meaning.

But it also created anxiety. Hyper-awareness. A need to control what can be controlled in a world that once proved uncontrollable.

This is what we now call intergenerational trauma.

For families like Anna’s—and Ruth’s—it is not theoretical.

It is reality.

What Time Finally Teaches

Sitting at that Yom HaShoah evening, listening—not just to history, but to its echoes—I realized something that perhaps only comes with age.

We often say that with age comes wisdom.

Perhaps.

But only if we are willing to revisit what we thought we already understood.

I am finally beginning to understand.

Not just the events—but their continuity.
Not just the history—but the inheritance.

For most of my life, I believed the Holocaust ended in 1945.

For many, it never did.

And from that realization comes a conclusion that is difficult—but unavoidable.

“Never again” is not a sentiment.

It is a responsibility.

And responsibility requires more than memory—it requires strength.

The existence of Israel is not a political luxury. It is a historical necessity. Even for someone like me—who did not inherit this trauma emotionally—I understand this intellectually with complete clarity. Without a homeland, the Jewish people are dependent on others for their safety.

History has shown us exactly what that leads to.

The Old Pattern, Once Again

During the war, it was the Nazis—supported, tolerated, or enabled by large segments of the population—who turned against the Jews.

Today, It’s the Islamists, the language may be different. The target is often framed as Israel.

But we know better. The distinction between “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish” is, more often than not, a convenient illusion.

We are once again seeing rising antisemitism, hostility dressed in new language, and far too many willing to rationalize or ignore it. History does not repeat itself exactly. But it echoes.

The Old Hatred in New Clothing

What makes this moment so unsettling is that antisemitism is not a memory—it is a present, resurgent reality. Across Western countries and beyond, we are witnessing a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents, harassment, and physical attacks.

Synagogues, schools, Jewish community centres, and individuals visibly identified as Jews have come under threat and assault.

The hostility that many had assumed was fading into history has returned with alarming confidence.

Much of this new wave of hatred hides behind the language of “anti-Zionism” or “anti-Israel activism,” but the mask often slips.

Protests around the world have featured chants and slogans that openly call for the destruction of Israel, glorify acts of terror, or portray Jews as uniquely malevolent.

The targets are not limited to government policies or leaders; they are Jews as a collective, wherever they live.

A significant share of this animus today emanates from, or is amplified by, Islamist ideologies and movements.

For them, hatred of Jews and of Israel is not incidental; it is central. In their worldview, the elimination of the Jewish state is not a geopolitical preference but a religious and ideological imperative.

Violence against Jews—whether in Israel or the diaspora—is glorified as heroic, justified, even sacred.

This rhetoric does not remain contained within closed circles. It spreads outward—through satellite television, social media, mosques, student groups, and activist networks—into Western streets, campuses, and institutions.

There, it often merges seamlessly with the language of radical leftist agitation or with older far-right conspiracies.

The result is an unlikely coalition, in which Islamists, hard-left radicals, and traditional antisemites find common ground in a shared target: the Jew, now often named “the Zionist” or “Israel,” but understood in the broadest and most hostile sense.

What is equally disturbing, perhaps even more so, is not just the hatred itself but the response—or rather, the lack of response—from much of the surrounding society. We are again confronted with the figure of the bystander.

We see mass rallies in which calls for the elimination of the Jewish state are normalized, in which support for terror groups is shouted openly, and yet large portions of the public, media, and political class either look away, make excuses, or insist on hearing it as merely “political criticism.”

Jews are attacked in the streets of Western cities, students are intimidated on university campuses, businesses and cultural spaces are pressured to ostracize anyone who dares express support for Israel, and the dominant reaction from many is silence—or equivocation.

This is the echo that is hardest to ignore. It recalls an earlier time, when Jews were vilified, isolated, boycotted, and eventually targeted for extermination, while most of the population did nothing.

Not all were perpetrators. Most were not. But they were something else: silent, compliant, unwilling to see that what was happening to the Jews would ultimately degrade the moral fabric of their entire society.

Today, we are hearing familiar rationalizations: “It’s complicated,” “It’s just politics,” “It’s only about Israel,” “Both sides are at fault.” Meanwhile, Jews once again are told that their fear is an overreaction, that their danger is exaggerated, that they are imagining what they can see and feel with complete clarity.

This is why the lesson of Yom HaShoah cannot remain confined to memorial candles and solemn speeches. It is not only about remembering the victims or honouring the survivors. It is about recognizing patterns when they reappear in our own time, in our own cities, in our own institutions.

When crowds chant for the erasure of the one Jewish state, when terror against Jews is celebrated, when visibly Jewish people are afraid to walk down the street or speak openly, and when the majority response is silence, rationalization, or indifference—we are no longer speaking about the past. We are speaking about now.

In such a world, the idea that Jews should again be without a homeland, without sovereignty, without the means to defend themselves, is not only naïve. It is dangerous.

From Memory to Moral Clarity

For many years, I occupied what I now recognize as a comfortable middle ground: I was “against antisemitism” in principle, I supported Israel in theory, and yet I allowed myself the luxury of distance.

The Holocaust was something I knew about; antisemitism was something I deplored. But neither demanded anything of me beyond agreement and a nod. That position is no longer tenable.

When hatred is abstract, it is easy to condemn. When it becomes concrete—when it escapes the pages of history books and appears on our streets, campuses, and screens—it forces a choice. Either we confront it directly, or we hide behind ambiguity and nuanced formulations that dull the urgency of what is happening.

Yom HaShoah has pressed that choice upon me. I can no longer say, “This is terrible, but it will pass,” or “Things are different now.” We are living in a time when mobs chant openly for the destruction of the Jewish state, when Jewish identity itself is framed as suspect, when defending Jewish self-determination is treated, in polite circles, as something that requires apology or justification.

The lesson I draw from my own late awakening is this: distance is a form of consent. To say nothing, to soften what is hard, to pretend that “both sides” are always equally at fault, is to participate—however unintentionally—in the erosion of moral clarity.

I am not suggesting that Jews must agree on every policy, leader, or government decision. Disagreement is not betrayal. But there is a line that should be obvious to anyone who understands even a fraction of our history: the line where criticism of Israel becomes a vehicle for hating Jews; where calls for “liberation” become calls for our elimination; where “complexity” becomes a fig leaf for refusing to defend a people under threat.

Crossing that line is not a theoretical risk. We are watching it happen.

If my journey from reluctance to recognition means anything, it is this: I no longer have the right to stand at a safe distance and comment as if I were an observer. I am implicated—by my relationships, by my history, by the very fact that I now understand what I once only knew. And with that implication comes obligation.

Final Thought