The world is rapidly approaching a time without any living witness of the horrors of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan warned.
“We are approaching a watershed moment in Holocaust remembrance,” Dayan said in an interview during The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York on Monday. “We are approaching the post-survivor era.”
“It is inevitable and I’m very afraid that when that happens, it will mark a happy moment for deniers and distortions,” he added. “For this reason, it is important that we strengthen our work.”
Before his current position, among others Dayan serves as Israel’s Consul General in New York.
“When I arrived in 2016, I thought that fighting antisemitism was pretty low on the agenda of priorities, but then reality slapped me in the face” he said, recalling how 15 Jews were murdered in multiple attacks over the next few years.
To combat antisemitism, the US must also combat anti-Zionism
According to Dayan, if America has an antisemitism problem, in order to fight it it is very important to focus on anti-Zionism.
“I am very afraid of definitions of antisemitism that exclude one of its most important manifestations,” he said.
Asked about the tensions between Israel and Poland regarding Holocaust Remembrance, Dayan criticized “Holocaust distortion” at the hands of governments.
“Overall in the world, Holocaust denial is a marginal problem,” he said. “At the same time, we see a very serious problem of Holocaust distortion promoted by governments, saying that the Holocaust happened but their countrymen did not do anything wrong.”
According to Dayan, in Poland, the situation in this perspective is worrisome, with the Polish government ready to cut funds and sanction academics and institutions who do not conform to its narrative.
“We are not going to change our way,” he said. “We will continue to honor the Polish Righteous Among the Nations and we will continue to demand from Poland to remember the heinous actions committed by other Poles.”
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