Mr. Aviv Ezra currently serves as the Consul General of Israel to the Midwest, based in Chicago. He is the official representative of the state of Israel in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. He distributed this message on Monday, April 20, 2020 in honor of Yom HaShoah.

 Just a few weeks ago as my family and I hosted Passover Seder via zoom, we read how “in each generation” there are those who seek to destroy the Jews as a people.

 This was certainly true in ancient times. Later, in the middle Ages, this was also the case. And the most recent attempt to exterminate us—and the most systematic and nearly successful onslaught —occurred not thousands or even hundreds of years ago -- but rather in the generation of our parents and grandparents.

 We must ask ourselves the question, how did this happen? A combination of 3 factors brought this unparalleled and unbelievable disaster to our people. First, the ungraspable hatred of Jews. Second, the apathy of the world in the face of horrors. And third our people’s terrible weakness in exile

 Has the hatred disappeared? No it has not. Even as we fight this horrific coronavirus pandemic, anti-Semitism is still alive and well. And with thousands of years of anti-Semitism, it would be naive to think it will disappear in the foreseeable future.

 And second, as to the world’s apathy, has anything changed in this regard? Here too, we must admit that the answer is no, nothing has changed. While no tragedy on the scale of the holocaust has occurred since World War II, still there are many cases we can look to in which the world stood by and did nothing to prevent the destruction of peoples or mass murder.

 So it is clear that both the hatred of Jews and the apathy of the world remain. This horrible reality leads us to conclude that the we, the Jewish people, must be capable of defending ourselves by ourselves.

 This brings me to the third point- our people’s terrible weakness in exile. This is the factor that has in fact changed. The difference today is that Israel exists as a safe haven for the Jewish people. Israel exists with the capability to defend ourselves, the Jewish people, by ourselves. Israel exists as a strong and resilient state and Israel exists as a nation that will not be apathetic in the face of tragedy.

 The Holocaust Remembrance Day commands us to remember our unspeakable losses, but on this day, we must not forget our innumerable strengths. For us, never again does not mean that we believe Jews might never find themselves in a reoccurrence of hatred and anti-Semitism, rather for us the statement “never again” means never again being defenseless and never again being stateless.