This past year, horrifying data has indicated a dramatic rise in antisemitic attacks in the US, Europe, and everywhere else. The COVID crisis, which left no place untouched, was fertile ground for antisemitism at levels and prevalence we hadn't known. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, as well as some Islamists and other groups exploited the global shutdown to exponentially increase their dissemination of primitive hatred.
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A study by Oxford University a few months after the outbreak of the pandemic showed that approximately one-fifth of the public in England believed that Jews had caused it. Israel itself was called "COVID-48" and the most dangerous plague to humanity. Social media and fake news were a major reproduction factor for these dark views, which are an updated version of theories we knew from the Middle Ages and though the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Despite the difficulties posed by the year of COVID, we continue to hold the March of the Living, like we do every year. Even in a virtual format, the importance of the march is in its continued existence. Those who entered the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau did so because they were Jews, and the people who enter them today do so because they are Jews, too. Their heads might be bowed, but they are standing tall. The pain never abates, and the scars never heal, but memories are already fading. We share the fate that supersedes all of our disputes. We are courageous and proud of our resurrection.
The March of the Living connects death to eternity; the 6 million killed in the Holocaust of the Jewish people to the 73 years the Jewish state has existed. It also connects those who heard about the Holocaust from someone who survived it – a mother or father, a grandmother or grandfather – to those who did not have that chance. The generation of Holocaust survivors is dwindling, and the young generation all over the world has grown up not personally knowing the story of the Holocaust of the Jewish people and the predatory power of racism and antisemitism. This is also part of our heritage, the core of our people's mission. We will be forced to take part in this battle every year and every day, as a family war that continues from generation to generation.
As chairman of the Jewish Agency, which represents the Jewish people all over the world, I will take part in the March of the Living this year, as well. I will do it so no one will ever be able to forget the cursed darkness that humanity reached.
The Jewish Agency and its emissaries will continue to fight antisemitism and racism everywhere they appear, and continue to help keep Jewish communities abroad safe. With one hand, we will carry the torch of memory, and with the other, we will continue to shape our future – the future of the Jewish people, the Jewish state, and the Jewish Diaspora.
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