By Kathryn Jean Lopez
Monday, March 16, 2026
‘Men, women, and children cry out to us from the depths
of the horror that they knew. How can we fail to heed their cry? No one can
forget or ignore what happened. No one can diminish its scale.”
These were some of the words spoken by Pope John Paul II
in March 2000 at Yad Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem dedicated to the memory of
the victims of the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler had a particular genocidal hatred
for Jews. I wish I could say that the recent increase in violence against Jews
in the United States has to do exclusively with Islamists who want to send a
message about U.S.–Israeli military action in Iran. But antisemites don’t need
an excuse to prowl about the world seeking the ruin of the Jewish population.
When Pope Benedict XVI visited Yad Vashem in 2009, he
said of those murdered during the Shoah: “They lost their lives, but they will
never lose their names: these are indelibly etched in the hearts of their loved
ones, their surviving fellow prisoners, and all those determined never to allow
such an atrocity to disgrace mankind again. Most of all, their names are
forever fixed in the memory of Almighty God.”
Without remembering their names and their faces — the Auschwitz memorial in Poland, for example, has an active
and informative social media presence to ensure that we do — the Jewish men,
women, and children who lost their lives in the Holocaust will fade into
history. Online echo chambers and conspiracy theories will chip away at the
event’s moral import. It is critical that we remember and not let lies have
victory over truth.
“Grant us the grace to be ashamed of what we men have
done, to be ashamed of this massive idolatry, of having despised and destroyed
our own flesh which you formed from the earth, to which you gave life with your
own breath of life,” Pope Francis said at Yad Vashem in May 2014. “Never again,
Lord, never again!”
Pope Leo will have to address the dramatic resurgence of
the evil of antisemitism in the coming months and years. It’s unrelenting. As
Abe Greenwald recently wrote
about the state of antisemitism in the West: “It’s miserable—and shows no sign
of getting better. The Jew-hunts go on.” You could get whiplash today by trying
to keep up with the antisemitic incidents that are taking place even in our own
country. We could wonder if the latest attack on a synagogue or other Jewish target was inspired
by what’s happening in Iran, but such incidents have been occurring well before
the war started.
Eleven people were murdered in the shooting at the Tree
of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh in 2018. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim,
both of whom worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., were killed
last May. An act of arson at Beth Israel Congregation — Mississippi’s largest
Jewish congregation and the only one in Jackson — left part of the synagogue in
ruins earlier this year. And just last week a truck rammed into the Temple
Israel synagogue outside Detroit. A shove or a foul word on the streets of
Brooklyn is a routine occurrence for Hasidic Jews. Most instances of
antisemitism go unreported and largely unnoticed. Before she became a
Democratic member of the U.S. House, Ilhan Omar once tweeted: “Israel has
hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil
doings of Israel.” Meanwhile, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson lends his
platform to an antisemitic podcaster who is alarmingly influential with young
men.
“Violent anti-Semitism is now coming from so many
directions, and has been stoked in so many different ways, that Jews rightly
feel surrounded by those who want to do them harm,” Greenwald writes. Moreover:
Anti-Semitism isn’t just the
world’s oldest hatred. It’s also the most impervious to reason. Jew-hatred can
take hold in the most technologically advanced and enlightened societies
because it functions as a superstition, and modernity cannot eradicate the
superstitious impulse. At best it can redirect it toward more benign fixations.
At worst, the massive scope and breakneck pace of modern advances can leave
people grasping for false gods, soothing delusions, and scapegoats. What all
the anti-Semites share, no matter their particular camp, is an affinity for the
primitive. Times are miserable because the savages are on the march.
Christians need to make their position clear. As I put it
while moderating a panel last fall at a shrine in D.C. owned by the Knights of
Columbus: “Antisemitism is evil. Period. Antisemitism is evil. Hating Jews is
evil. Hating Jews is a sin. It is not Christian to hate Jews.” It is certainly
not Catholic to hate Jews: More than 50 years ago, the church issued a document
to make this clear. Also, since a disturbing number of young right-leaning men,
some of whom are Christians and oppose abortion, seem to find antisemitism
attractive, it bears repeating that it is not pro-life, either, to hate Jews.
It is inconsistent and incoherent — and, yes, evil.
Benedict quoted from Lamentations 3:26 while he was in
Jerusalem: “It is good to hope in silence for the saving help of the Lord.” The
pope encouraged silence so that we may hear the cry that “still echoes in our
hearts.” The cry “is a perpetual reproach against the spilling of innocent
blood.”
Steadfastly rejecting and combating antisemitism is not
foreign policy. It’s not another passing news story. It’s about our common
humanity, about decency and contrition. It’s one of those things on which we
will be judged. Lead with love. And have hope, for as John Paul emphasized,
“Not even in the darkest hour is every light extinguished.”
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