Rememberence is not only about honouring the victims and survivors, but also about equipping the next generation to fight antisemitism, to defend truth, and to ensure that “never again” is not just a slogan, but a promise
September 11, 2025 11:51
Eighty years ago, the gates of the Nazi concentration camps were thrown open. Emaciated survivors, scarred by years of hunger, brutality and loss, emerged into a world that could finally see the full horror of what had been done to them and to their murdered families. In those first fragile days of freedom, they dreamed of safety – of places where they might be welcomed, where they could rebuild their lives, where new families might grow. And they hoped that with the Holocaust laid bare before the world, with images of barbed wire, mass graves and skeletal bodies seared into human memory, antisemitism itself would at last be left in the past.
But that final dream was the most ambitious of all. Antisemitism resurfaced almost immediately. Survivors returning home often met hostility from neighbours who had seized their houses and possessions – and some were murdered simply for coming back. In July 1946, just 14 months after the end of the war, 42 Jewish survivors were massacred in the Polish city of Kielce after a blood libel took hold. A nine-year-old boy, afraid of being punished for running away from home, claimed he had been kidnapped by Jews.
That lie was enough to incite a mob of thousands to storm a Jewish community building where 180 people – most of them Holocaust survivors – had sought refuge. The Kielce pogrom was part of a wider wave of post-war violence across central and eastern Europe, which, combined with the imposition of communism, drove hundreds of thousands of Jews to flee once again. Instead of liberation ushering in a new world where Jewish people could live freely without fear, the reality has been starkly different. Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years – long before the Holocaust, and ever since. Antisemitism survives because it mutates, adapting to the anxieties and prejudices of each age. Jews have been accused of killing Jesus, of murdering Christian children in the so-called blood libel, of spreading plague, of controlling banks and the media, of masterminding communism, and of plotting world domination. Today, the Holocaust itself has become a weapon used against Jews, with claims that the Jewish state is the reincarnation of the Nazis or that the Star of David is no different from the swastika.
Eighty years on from liberation, we are once again facing unprecedented levels of antisemitism. Some ask why Holocaust education is still necessary, questioning its relevance and its ability to challenge hatred today.
Holocaust education is not a cure for antisemitism – but it is one of the most powerful tools we have in the fight against it. At the Holocaust Educational Trust, we see its impact every day. Most people in Britain live in areas with no Jewish community at all. Without our work, they would learn nothing about antisemitism, its history or its impact today. But we meet young people from all backgrounds who have never before even met, let alone listened to, a Jewish person. And after hearing from a survivor of the Holocaust – what many of them describe as a life-changing experience – they are inspired to lead assemblies in their schools, to tell their families and to inform others what antisemitism looks like. We hear from teachers, trained by our educators, who now recognise when antisemitic tropes are repeated in their classrooms and seek our help to respond.
We work with non-Jewish student ambassadors who stand shoulder to shoulder with their university’s Jewish society when incidents of antisemitism occur on campus.
They know it should not just be up to the Jewish community to fight antisemitism. These are just a few examples. More than 80 per cent of teachers tell us that, as a result of our work, they have seen positive changes in their classrooms – that their students can identify the stereotypes and lies used against Jews, understand how these have been used in the past.
Education alone will not eradicate antisemitism. But it does mean that there is now a generation across the UK who are better equipped to recognise it when they see it, who will not remain silent in the face of it, and who understand that hatred does not begin with mass murder – it begins with words, with stereotypes, with prejudice.
So 80 years on, as we confront rising antisemitism, the answer is clear. Holocaust education matters profoundly. Remembering the Holocaust is not only about honouring the victims and survivors, but also about equipping the next generation to fight antisemitism, to defend truth, and to ensure that “never again” is not just a slogan, but a promise.
Karen Pollock is CEO of the Holocaust Education Trust
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