I am writing this from Poland, where the weight of history feels heavier than ever. This week, I joined a delegation with Shir-El, a partner that has spent over forty years bringing volunteers to Israel, for my first time participating in the March of the Living. Walking alongside 7,000 people from across the globe, including a hundred Holocaust survivors, reminded me why I first came here in the 10th grade: to find the perspective that only these places can provide.
We’ve all seen the images of the brick barracks and the infamous iron gate. But nothing replaces the physical experience of being here. History is immovable, the facts and dates cannot be undone. Our responsibility is to preserve the physical evidence, the monuments and the names, to ensure the truth remains grounded in stone.
Where it all began
My journey to this moment started long before this trip, rooted in a silence I grew up with. My grandmother fled Poland at the start of the war, survived the Russian side, and made it to Israel. She didn’t talk about it much, and when I asked, she moved quickly to happier things. I didn’t want to push her, so the silence stayed for years.
Maybe it was that silence that set me searching. That search led me through high school literature exams, a course at Yad Vashem during my military service, and eventually to the front lines of fighting antisemitism and Holocaust denial online. Somewhere along that path, I founded the organization I lead today.
Who Tells the Story
Being here in Poland, the battle for the story feels very real. For years, Israel and Poland have contested the Holocaust’s historical narrative. After a long dispute over Israeli youth delegations visiting Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau, an agreement was reached in 2023 that tours would be led by both Polish and Israeli guides, with itineraries now including sites commemorating Polish suffering alongside the camps. Some historians warned that this compromise risked softening the record of Polish complicity. Because whoever guides the visitors shapes the story, what gets emphasized, what gets quietly left out.
While the guides we walked with were professional, my grandmother’s warnings still echo in my mind. She lived through what happens when a society stops protecting its Jews. She knew that hundreds of years of living side by side hadn’t produced real neighborly relations, and when the test came, too many neighbors looked away.
The Digital Frontier
The balance is still holding here on the ground, but it isn’t online. In the digital world, those shaping the Holocaust story for the next generation, whether out of ignorance or deep-seated antisemitism, are working almost without anyone in their way. They reach billions of people who will never visit Poland or learn the history of the Shoah.
We saw how quickly the narrative can be hijacked after October 7, when the word “genocide” was turned against us and the infamous #271 hashtag went viral. It didn’t take an army, only one person with a keyboard.
Our work online is as vital as preserving the physical sites I am standing on today. We track down hate content, remove Holocaust denial, and ensure the digital narrative doesn’t distort the truth. The people spreading hate won’t stop, and neither will we. The future of memory depends on it.