This International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Remember Gaza Too

Growing up, I was consumed by the scale of the Holocaust’s destruction. Most everything I was taught — algebra, Mandarin, the structure of an essay — came easily to me. The Holocaust was one of the few things I couldn’t wrap my mind around. The more I tried to understand its evil, the more opaque it grew.

So, on birthdays and holidays, I asked for hints in the form of stories and eventually received enough to fill a row in my childhood bookshelf. “Number the Stars,” “The Girl in the Blue Coat,” “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” Still, I remained baffled as to how my world — in which I existed freely as a Jew — was once a world where Jews were killed for being Jewish.

I have spent my whole life wondering what exactly that means — to be Jewish. Contained within the question is another which has haunted me for nearly as long. How could people have hated Jews so much that they murdered them by the millions?

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Last week, in its settlement of two antisemitism lawsuits, Harvard adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, established a new partnership with an unnamed Israeli university, and effectively declared “Zionist” a protected identity.

Others have aptly critiqued the timing of the settlement: Coming on Trump’s second day in office, its terms scream spinelessness and an alarming acquiescence to a right-wing, anti-intellectual agenda. Peers have rightly denounced the IHRA definition of antisemitism for its vagueness and potential to stifle speech.

Yet the most concerning aspect of the settlement is neither the IHRA definition’s threats nor flaws. Rather, it is what the settlement, taken as a whole, reveals. Fifteen months into Israel’s annihilation of Gaza, Harvard has chosen to tie itself to Israel, shield certain criticisms of the state, and align itself more closely with Zionism, its founding ideology.

The University’s full-throated embrace of the Zionist project is not surprising. It was foreshadowed by an institutional Palestine exception, repeatedly demonstrated in the administration’s disproportionate discipline. In 2019, $86,625 of Harvard’s endowment was linked to the Israeli military; last winter, a Harvard Management Company executive took part in a trip designed to express solidarity with Israel. Harvard’s longstanding allegiance to Israel is no secret.

Harvard’s redoubled commitment to Israel and Zionism comes at a time when Israel has been internationally accused of genocide. The decision is not lost on anyone who understands the weight of genocide — and of the Holocaust.

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The capital “H” Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored extermination of six million Jews. It is, without a doubt, one of the single worst events history has witnessed. It severed countless family trees and entrenched deep, existential fear in Jews worldwide. For many, it serves as the reference point for all we have endured since.

Yet when we close our eyes and picture the Holocaust as a singular, exceptional evil, we become willfully blind to the world around us, in which present-day holocausts are unfolding. We ignore the genocide in Gaza, even as it is broadcast live on our Instagram pages and television screens. “Never again,” a promise for a world free of genocide, devolves into denial — even justification — of a genocidal reality.

The irony is piercing. Israel, most of all, should know the weight and meaning of “holocaust.” Which makes it all the more insidious that it is Israel who executes the holocaust of our time.

I compare the holocaust in Gaza to the Holocaust in Europe just as others have compared the Israeli occupation of Palestine to South African Apartheid. We do not draw these parallels because they are perfect; we do so precisely because they are blunt. When all other options have been exhausted, it is blunt force alone that will awaken us from the dream that history does not repeat itself.

For parallels — shocking and painful as they may be — are not meant to diminish one tragedy, but to instill the urgency necessary to prevent another.

I no longer need to open a book to understand the depths of the hate that fueled the Holocaust. Echoes of it ring loudly throughout Israel’s persecution of Palestinian people and occupation of Palestinian land. Israeli settlers treat the West Bank as Lebensraum; under Israel’s blockade, Gaza has long been likened to a ghetto. Today, each of us now bears witness to the holocaust Israel commits in Gaza.

Yesterday, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world paid tribute to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. It’s high time for us to remember the victims and survivors of the holocaust in Gaza too — even if Harvard wants us to forget them.

Violet T.M. Barron ’26, a Crimson Editorial Comp Director and Associate Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Adams House and an organizer with Harvard Jews for Palestine, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, and the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.