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Our Responsibility as Third Generation Holocaust Survivors
(Huffington Post) Jennie Shulkin - Israel remains the most prominent symbol of hope after the Holocaust. It represents the failure to destroy an entire people and the resilience of the Jews to continue to flourish after unthinkable atrocities. As long as Israel continues to exist, Jews will never again have nowhere to turn when the countries they call home turn against them. Israel is a haven and a home for any and all Jews around the world facing anti-Semitism. In the past few years, for example, French Jews have immigrated to Israel in large numbers as a result of rampant anti-Semitism in France, and they have been welcomed with open arms. International Holocaust Remembrance Day takes place on the anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau's liberation by the Soviets, while Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) is set on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The former presents Jews as weak - as passive prisoners only able to gain freedom because of outside intervention - while the latter underscores the strength and active resistance of a people who refused to let the Nazis decide their fate for them. The writer is a student at Harvard Law School.