The Israeli ambassador to Thailand wrote an article as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, pointing out that distorting the term genocide undermines morality and emphasizing that remembrance is a shield preventing the tragedy from happening again.
Her Excellency Alona Fisher-Kamm, Ambassador of Israel to Thailand, wrote an open article for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed annually on 27 January, titled "Why Remembering the Holocaust Remains Important to Everyone," with the following content.
The United Nations General Assembly resolution in 2005 designated 27 January each year as International Holocaust Remembrance Day to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in 1945, the largest and most brutal Nazi death camp. The clear and urgent purpose of this resolution is to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust and its lessons do not fade over time.
The United Nations established this day not only to remember the suffering of the Jewish people but also to warn humanity about what can happen when hatred becomes normalized, when dehumanization goes unchallenged, and when the international community turns a blind eye. This day serves as a safeguard against repeating history.
For many worldwide, the Holocaust may seem distant or abstract, yet it is one of the most thoroughly documented crimes in human history. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews—men, women, and children—solely because they were Jewish. Entire communities were destroyed across Europe, including in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, France, Greece, and many other countries. Jews were massacred, starved in ghettos, transported in cattle cars, and killed in death camps designed for mass extermination.
The Holocaust is unique both in intent and scale. It was the first time in modern history that a state mobilized all its resources—legal, bureaucratic, military, and technological—to completely annihilate an entire people, regardless of where they were located.
Jews were targeted not because of their actions, beliefs, or possessions, but simply because they were Jewish. The goal was not conquest, conversion, or expulsion, but total destruction—of people, culture, memory, and future. It was aimed at the complete eradication of the Jewish race.
It is no coincidence that the term "genocide" was coined after the Holocaust. As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an Israeli, I feel deeply pained to see the term genocide used today carelessly and irresponsibly, especially when it is employed to attack Israel. Such accusations overlook the term's historical origins, undermine its clear legal and moral meaning, and reduce it to a mere political slogan.
Criticism of policy is legitimate in a democracy, but denying Israel’s right to exist or to protect its citizens—whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or others—and distorting Israel as a criminal state is an entirely different matter.
When Israel is the only country singled out, demonized, and accused of crimes echoing the ideology that once sought to annihilate the Jewish people, we must call this by its true name: antisemitism concealed in political language.
Therefore, Holocaust Remembrance Day is not only about the past but painfully relevant today. More than eighty years after the Holocaust, Jews continue to be murdered simply for being Jewish. Jewish synagogues are burned, homes are defaced with swastikas, and antisemitism is openly and violently rising across all continents.
These developments affect more than just Jews. History teaches us that hatred never stops at one target. The Holocaust did not begin with death camps but with words, lies, and indifference. It started with normalizing hatred, failed education, open rhetoric, and interference.
That is why Holocaust education is essential everywhere, including in countries far from Europe geographically and historically. The lessons of the Holocaust are universal. In today’s era of uncertainty, division, and chaos, the global society is vulnerable to fear-driven and scapegoating narratives.
Remembering the Holocaust is not endless blame but awareness of warning signs and a reaffirmation of shared responsibility to protect human dignity. In a world full of turmoil, hatred always seeks victims. Today it may be Jews; tomorrow... it could be others.
Source: Embassy of Israel in Thailand