Never Again, Again

In April 1999, I visited the haunting remnants of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps. I saw the piles of shoes and personal artifacts left behind by people whose lives were violently cut short by a septic form of hatred. I walked along rows of wooden barracks deliberately designed to strip prisoners of their humanity, reducing them to numbers in a factory of death.

Standing before a mountain of human ashes, I bore witness to the unimaginable atrocities committed against six million Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and countless others. In that solemn moment, I pledged “Never again.”

In January 2025, I visited the Nova Exhibition in Miami, a traveling exposition commemorating the lives lost on October 7th, when Hamas militants unleashed terror on Israeli civilians. At the exhibit, I stood before piles of shoes left behind at the Nova Music Festival—abandoned in terror at 6:29 a.m. as the massacre began. I listened to chilling recordings of Hamas fighters laughing with euphoria as they carried out their murderous rampage. I heard the harrowing testimony of a Zaka first responder, who recounted scenes of unspeakable horror—gruesome acts of violence and murder beyond anything he had encountered in his career.

October 7th marked the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. In Israel, as in Poland 80 years earlier—and as throughout history—Jews were systematically targeted and murdered simply for being Jewish. No one asked how religious they were or how they voted. If their tormentors could categorize them as Jewish, they were marked for death.

In the nearly 30 years between my visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Nova Exhibit, the world has observed “International Holocaust Remembrance Day” every January. Year after year, the United Nations, along with cities across the globe, pledges “Never again.” Yet here we are in 2025, mourning the murder of six million Jews 80 years ago while still grappling with the fresh wounds of another massacre—this time in southern Israel. Modern-day pogroms, anti-Semitic riots, and protests denying the very humanity of Jews have erupted across the globe in recent months making the words “never again” ring hollow.

How did we get here? Or rather, how did we stay there—in a world where Jews can still be persecuted and murdered as they were 80 years ago, despite the global community’s recognition of the dangers of silence?

Neither atrocity occurred in isolation. Both were meticulously planned, executed with precision, and enabled by a political climate that allowed hatred to fester. Humanity did not prevent these horrors; it failed—perhaps even facilitated—their occurrence.

As we reflect on these tragedies, we must confront uncomfortable truths about how society responds to hatred and dehumanization. Over the past three decades since we began to formally pledge “never again”, anti-Semitic rhetoric and racist bigotry have seeped into the mainstream so often that they’ve become almost banal. Nazi graffiti has been replaced with anti-Zionist slogans, and the world has largely shrugged it off as an acceptable alternative. Professors spouting hateful ideologies are met with little more than symbolic reprimands, returning to their platforms with even greater followings. In the name of protecting freedom and progressive values, society has too often turned a blind eye—not to free speech as naively believed, but to the free reign of hatred.

These bigoted microaggressions have paved the way for mass atrocities like the October 7th massacre. When the Nova Exhibit first opened in New York in June 2024, protesters outside forced visitors—some of them survivors of the massacre—to be barricaded inside while terrorist sympathizers waved their flags freely outside. That image, to me, symbolized humanity hitting rock bottom once again.

The words “Never again” must be more than a refrain. They must be a call to action—a commitment to vigilance, education, and compassion in the face of rising extremism and bigotry. It means challenging hate, even when it is veiled in euphemisms or disguised as political discourse. History teaches us that hatred thrives when it is met with silence. Small acts of intolerance, left unchallenged, grow into systems of oppression and, ultimately, unthinkable violence.

The fight against antisemitism—or any form of hatred—is not the fight of Jews alone. It is the fight of all humanity, for what begins as prejudice against one group inevitably spirals into the persecution of others.

If we fail to act, we risk reliving the horrors of the past. And if we remain silent, we will not only betray the victims of Auschwitz and October 7th, but also imperil the future we pledge to protect.The question is no longer how did we get here, but what will we do now? Silence is complicity. Action is the antidote. Together, we must ensure that hatred has no sanctuary, and that “Never again” becomes the enduring reality for generations to come.

Margaux Chetrit is a writer, speaker and entrepreneur.  She is a former parliamentary intern in Israel’s Knesset.  She served at the Consulate General of Israel in Montreal from 2008-2015.