A new year typically invites optimism. But as International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches on January 27, this moment demands something more sober: an honest reckoning with the past and a clear-eyed look at the future.
If the past two-plus years of war have taught us anything, it is that the ancient hatred of Jews that culminated in the atrocities of World War II has not truly disappeared but has merely adapted. Less than a month ago, we watched in horror as a brutal terror attack unfolded in Sydney, Australia, during a Hanukkah celebration. Fifteen innocent people – including a 10-year-old girl – were murdered.
Antisemitism is no longer simmering on the margins: It is visible, violent, and emboldened. Verbal abuse, physical attacks, and open incitement against Jews are rising across continents, leaving Jewish communities increasingly anxious about what lies ahead.
This first edition of The Jerusalem Report of 2026 is therefore devoted to Holocaust remembrance – not as ritual but as a warning. The lessons of the Shoah are not relics of history; they are urgently relevant to the world we inhabit today.
For the cover story, I visited the remarkable archive of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, where archivists and conservationists work against the clock to preserve fragments of lives destroyed so memory does not become abstraction.
In this issue, Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan writes about the moral obligation to remember the names of those who perished, not only the numbers. Feature writer Rachel Fink explores the impact of losing some of the last living witnesses to that era’s crimes.
Veteran Jerusalem Post reporter Greer Fay Cashman writes about growing up among Holocaust survivors in Australia and about her historic visits to Poland, while The Jerusalem Report’s Chani Kaplan talks to two survivors, one of whom is her grandmother, about their fears for the future.
In the Arab world, Dana Ben Shimon tells the stories of Jews forced from their homes across the Middle East, many of whom are still waiting for acknowledgment of their suffering. Najwa Al-Saeed examines Holocaust education in Arab countries, while Dalia Ziada traces the roots of Holocaust denial and antisemitism among the Arab public.
Israeli author and advocate Hen Mazzig explores how Holocaust terminology has been weaponized against the world’s only Jewish state; Jeffrey Veidlinger, director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at the University of Michigan, writes about how the Holocaust is being politicized; and Marina Rosenberg, senior vice president of international affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, offers insights into Holocaust distortions worldwide and how it is fueling antisemitism.
On the international front, I spoke to an Indian businessman who is making it his business to promote Holocaust awareness in his country of almost a billion and a half people; and Neville Teller looks at the struggles involved to build a Holocaust memorial in the United Kingdom.
Former Knesset member and Arab affairs expert Ruth Wasserman Lande writes an open letter to US President Donald Trump, warning of the dangers posed by fundamental Islam. Closing the issue, Gila Oren of Israel’s College of Management considers how artificial intelligence may shape the future of Holocaust remembrance – for better or for worse.
The Holocaust is not an easy subject. But at a time when its memory is denied, distorted, politicized and weaponized, confronting it honestly is not optional – it is essential.
Only by doing so can we hope to move toward a future that is, finally, brighter than the past.