Today, January 27th, we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Eighty-one years to the day since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi death camps.

The Holocaust was the most horrific genocide Europe ever known in modern history; a systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, along with other innocent victims. Families were erased, entire communities perished, and human dignity annihilated. In that darkest time in Europe, Albania was a ray of light, of kindness, led by its code of honor, Besa, and acted courageously different.

But why is it important to commemorate this day?

Are we merely observing a date in history an event neatly confined to the past? Or is this day meant to challenge us in the present and shape the values we pass on to the next generations? What did we truly learn from the Holocaust and, more disturbingly, did we learn anything at all?

These are not abstract questions. They are painfully relevant today.

Antisemitism is rising again, and with unprecedented intensity since October 7, 2023. What is particularly alarming is how socially acceptable it has become, provided it is wrapped in the language of “political criticism” of the Israeli government. But the rhetoric heard in violent protests across cities and campuses tells a different story. So do the actions that accompany it.

If we believed that Holocaust commemoration would teach the world to genuinely care about human rights, recent events have exposed a harsh truth: even human rights, in many cases, have become selective invoked or ignored depending on political convenience, ideology, or outright prejudice.

On October 7, thousands of people in Israel were massacred in their homes and in their beds - Jews and non-Jews alike. They were slaughtered by Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist movement, whose charter openly calls for the murder of every Jew. In carrying out that mission, its terrorists murdered Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists without distinction.

And yet, the very next day before Israel had even begun its military response protests erupted across streets and university campuses around the world. Protests not against the perpetrators, but against the victims. The so-called “knights of human rights” immediately questioned Israel’s right to defend itself. These demonstrations quickly spilled over into something far more dangerous: a wave of attacks on Jewish communities worldwide.

Since October 7, synagogues across the globe have been vandalized, set on fire, or targeted with arson. From Tunisia to Germany, from Canada to France, from Australia to the United States, Jewish houses of worship symbols of faith, community, and memory have been attacked simply for being Jewish spaces.

The most recent horrific attack that took the lives of 15 people, was at Bondi beach in Sydney Australia while Jews were celebrating Hanukah.

This is not political protest. This is not criticism of a government. This is collective punishment of a people.

In recent weeks, even New York, long considered a safe haven for Jewish life, has witnessed protesters chanting “We support Hamas” outside synagogues. Not outside Israeli embassies. Not outside consulates. Outside synagogues. As if being Jewish itself has become illegitimate.

History should make us shudder at this normalization.

At the same time, millions of Iranians are risking their lives for the most basic human rights. Tens of thousands have been killed, imprisoned, or tortured by their own radical regime. And yet, the streets of the world remain largely silent.

Even more disturbingly, there are those who openly admit they will not support the Iranian people not because they doubt the injustice they face, but because Iranians are not actively attacking Israel.

This moral inversion should haunt us.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day was not established merely to mourn Jewish victims. It was meant to serve as a universal warning: what happens when hatred is normalized, when violence is justified, and when the world looks away.

As the late Elie Wiesel said it so accurately:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with words. With indifference. With the decision to excuse hatred when it was politically convenient.

If this day is to mean anything if it is to be more than a hollow ritual, we must make a choice. A clear moral choice. We must reject selective empathy. We must refuse to excuse antisemitism, no matter the language used to disguise it. And we must stand consistently for human dignity, not only when it aligns with fashionable causes.

On a personal note, six weeks ago I lost my father. He was a Holocaust survivor.

He carried his memories not as history lessons, but as lived experience memories of fear, loss, survival, and resilience. Like so many survivors, he did not speak often, but when he did, his testimony carried the weight of truth that no archive or museum can ever fully replicate.

Holocaust survivors are leaving this world. Soon, there will be no one left who can say, “I was there. I saw it. I lived it.”

In their memory, and for the sake of future generations, we must continue to tell their stories. We must protect their legacy not only by remembering how Jews died, but by defending how Jews live. Their flame must remain lit, not as a symbol of victimhood, but as a beacon guiding humanity toward moral clarity.

Holocaust remembrance is not about the past.

It is about who we choose to be now.

*Ms. Galit Peleg is the Ambassador of Israel to Albania