'Zachor' means 'never again'

We have just emerged from Pesach, from the story that defines us as a people. It is a story we are commanded not merely to tell, but to live: “Bekal dor vedur hayev adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mimitzrayim (in every generation, a person must see himself as if he had come out of Egypt).”

But there is another command that runs throughout the Torah, repeated again and again: “zachor (remember).”

In Judaism, remembering is never passive. It is not simply recalling the past, it is allowing the past to shape the present and obligate the future. That is why the Torah commands not only what to remember but how — to see ourselves as if we were there, to feel, to internalize, and to carry that memory forward into the way we live our lives.

And that is why, alongside zachor, there is another command — sharper and more demanding: “Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa (Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor).” Because true remembrance cannot remain in the realm of thought or emotion alone; it must lead to responsibility and action.

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The Shoah was not only a tragedy of hatred, it was a tragedy of indifference.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. Evil flourishes not only through those who perpetrate it, but through those who fail to resist it.

There is a striking contrast to this idea in this past week’s parsha, Shemini. After the tragic death of Nadav and Avihu, the Torah tells us: “vayiddom Aharon (and Aaron was silent).”

But not all silence is the same.

There is a silence of grief, of standing humbly before Hashem in a moment beyond words. And then there is another kind of silence — the silence of indifference, the silence of those who see suffering and choose not to respond. The tragedy of the Shoah was not only the hatred of those who acted, but the silence of those who did not.

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This past May, I had the privilege of traveling with my father to Mauthausen concentration camp, the very camp from which my paternal grandfather, Leo Kotowitz, was freed after years of unimaginable suffering.

My father and I arrived exactly 80 years to the day after his liberation. We stood together in the arrivals bunker, preserved in its original form, knowing that this was the very room in which my grandfather once stood — where he was processed, stripped of identity and, after transport from Auschwitz, thrust into a reality of unimaginable cruelty.

It is difficult to describe what it feels like to stand in a place where time collapses, where past and present converge so completely that history no longer feels distant.

Mauthausen was built adjacent to a neighborhood and the area for the sickest people left to die was closest to the road, where local farmers and citizens could not possibly have been unaware of the horrors taking place in their backyard.

The camp was built around brutality, constructed beside a quarry, designed for backbreaking labor, where human beings were forced to carry impossibly heavy stones up steep, unforgiving steps under conditions that defy comprehension. We walked into that quarry. We stood where he stood.

My grandfather stood there as a prisoner, and my father and I stood there as free Jews.

My grandfather did not survive so that we would simply remember. He survived so that we would live — as Jews, with faith, with dignity, and with responsibility.

We are the heirs of that memory. But memory alone is not enough.

On this Yom Hashoah, let’s ask ourselves: what does our remembering require of us?

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We are living in a moment when truth is often obscured and moral clarity blurred — when the Jewish people, and the State of Israel, are judged in ways that defy logic and fairness. We see a world in which violence can be justified, terror can be excused, and those who defend life are accused in the language of those who desecrate it.

“Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa” demands that we refuse to be silent, that we speak with clarity (even when it is uncomfortable), that we stand with our people (not only in grief, but in dignity and in truth).

But the Torah’s vision of responsibility goes even deeper. Because to not stand idly by is not only about what we oppose, it is about what we uphold. It is about recognizing that our strength as a people has never been only in our ability to survive, but in our commitment to live with purpose, with faith, and with responsibility.

So that when we say “Never Again,” it is not only a reflection on the past, but a commitment in the present.

And that commitment is expressed in how we live. In our commitment to Torah and mitzvot, in the lives we build as ovdei Hashem, and in the choices we make each day to remain connected to Hashem, to our people, and to the values that have sustained us across every generation.

Because that is what our enemies have always sought to destroy — not only our bodies, but our spirit, our identity, and our relationship with the Ribono Shel Olam.

The most powerful response, the truest act of defiance, is to deepen that very connection: to learn more Torah, to perform more mitzvot, and to live with greater emunah, pride, and clarity about who we are and what we stand for.

Dana Frenkel delivered this address at the Greater Five Towns Community Yom Hashoah Commemoration on Monday night at Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence. Frenkel, of Woodmere, co-chairs the event with Nathaniel Rogoff.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com