In this otherwise excellent and important article, which argues that the real lesson of the Holocaust is not just to remember but to act, defend, deter, and strengthen, the author comes right up to the line but never crosses it. He talks about vigilance, about self-protection, even about physical training like Krav Maga, but he avoids naming the one form of self-defense the partisans desperately needed, the one tool every tyrannical regime first strips from its citizens, and the one deterrent our enemies still fear most: guns.
You cannot talk seriously about defense, deterrence, or strength while tiptoeing around the very tool that makes those things possible. Martial arts may help you survive a scuffle, but firearms stop pogroms. Until Jews are willing to say out loud that the ultimate FAFO is the right and the capability to be armed, we will be stuck writing passionate articles instead of taking the one practical step that changes outcomes.
Memory matters. Moral clarity matters. Strength matters.
But none of it means anything without the means to defend ourselves, effectively, immediately, and decisively.
Some 80 years after the worst chapter in modern history, the Holocaust remains an integral memory.
Memory alone, though, is not enough. Neither is education. For either to mean anything, memory and education must be transformed into durable, practical actions that prevent recurrence and resurgence. The ultimate lesson of the Holocaust is therefore not merely to remember, not just to say “Never Again,” but to act: to defend, to deter, to strengthen.
When history is taught only as facts without the texture of action, the same mechanisms of hatred can reawaken in new guises. See: “Anti-Zionism.”
The responsibility that memory imposes is practical. As the great Israeli statesman Abba Eban put it, “Every generation must earn its own freedom.” That means defending our institutions, defending our communities, and defending ourselves. An informed, vigilant public is society’s best immune system against the normalization of hatred.
By Joshua Hoffman
