Quo Vadis after October 8th: A Pledge for a New Direction in Memory Politics to End Political Homelessness

When news broke on Jan. 26, 2026 that Ran Gvili’s body had been recovered, it felt like a rare moment of collective exhale. Occurring just one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day and 843 days after Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest pogrom against Jews since the Shoah, the recovery of the last hostage prompted a wave of symbolic closure. Many took to social media to share photos of themselves removing the yellow ribbons, signaling the homecoming of the last hostage. However, I found that my relief was tempered by a sobering realization: Despite the good news, a permanent shift in Holocaust memory culture remains omnipresent in Europe, alongside a surge in marginalizing those who refuse to accept easy, binary answers.

The Need for a Semantic European Shift after Oct. 8th

The events of Oct. 7, 2023 proved once again that antisemitic acts do not occur in hiding; they happen in plain sight, streamed and shared on social media. However, on Oct. 8 of the same year—the day Eva Illouz so pointedly described as the day “collective empathy died”—it was not only empathy that perished. We also saw the precarious lack of a collective European language for discussing the Holocaust, the “rumor about the Jew” (Theodor Adorno), and the urgent need to safeguard Jewish life.

After Oct. 8, I personally witnessed a storm of antisemitic, violent behavior in Scottish academia and public life. This threatening atmosphere led me to promise never to set foot in Scotland again—a country so infested with medieval antisemitism and politically harmful anti-Zionism that life became unbearable for Jewish students on campus and in the cities. People in Scotland, Spain, Germany and France, who would normally insist they would have personally hidden Anne Frank, seemed unable to recognize what was happening before their eyes: the rise of both new and old forms of antisemitism, and with it, a crisis of pan-European multilateral democracy.

Upon returning to Germany in 2025, I realized that “harsh abandonment” might not be the best way to weather this storm. Rather, to remain a functional, multilateral European continent—one that once promised to remember the Shoah and safeguard Jewish life—we must refrain from “void” memory politics that merely ritualize Jan. 27 and Oct. 7. We need to understand each other’s semantics and political imagination when discussing antisemitism and Jewish identity, both imagined and lived, and reflect upon national memory cultures without forming hierarchies. The key is to listen without judging while simultaneously informing one another about the various forms of antisemitism. The time has come to view our shared past through the lens of lived Jewish life to create a memory culture that truly guards against anti-democratic speech.

Combating Political Homelessness: A Call for Reflective Action

Recent data from KOAS demonstrates that a rising number of Jewish Germans and Israelis in Germany feel they have lost their collective political home after Oct. 7, citing a surge in left-wing and centrist antisemitism. They are not alone in this. From German-Iranians taking up the streets demanding a shift in foreign policy to Kurdish and Druze minorities seeking acknowledgment of mass murders in Syria, many groups are advocating for upholding democratic standard while facing rising Islamism and right-wing extremism, as well as the appropriation of their identity. Thus, by ignoring the voices of those upholding the badge of democracy within Europe, Jewish Germans and Israelis will not be the last to lose their political home. This trend threatens the very core of democracy: the principle that every member of society should feel safe and represented.

Over the last two and a half years, the ability to listen has declined within political rhetoric.

Over the last two and a half years, the ability to listen has declined within political rhetoric. Those who refuse to choose sides—recognizing that social and political life is defined by contradictions—continue to highlight the dangers of political Islamism and anti-Western rhetoric from both the far-right and the far-left. These “unholy alliances” have left many feeling detached from their former party affiliations. Those who resist binary pro- or anti- labels in favor of a language of decency and complexity are growing weary.

How can these people be brought back into the political arena?

This remains a challenge without a simple answer. We cannot choose one evil to fight another. Does the answer lie in strengthening alliances within the center? How can those of us who withstand the temptation to spread hate move forward?

It is time to accept that to fight this recent “plague where the madmen lead the blind,” to quote Shakespeare, we must start listening to those who point toward the difficult middle ground. We must champion empathy, lived tolerance, and democratic values—not as signs of weakness, but as courageous defiance against a world drowning in rage. In such times, remaining homeless is not a defeat; it is a commitment to a truth that refuses to be simplified.

Julia Pohlmann, PhD, is a historian from the University of Aberdeen, specializing in Jewish and Intellectual History. Her forthcoming book, “A Multitude of Western Traditions: The Imagined Jew in Europe and the North American Sphere from 1700 to the Present,” will be published later this year.