Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we gather to remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust — and to confront what history demands of us now.
For me, this day is not abstract.
My grandfather grew up in a picture-postcard medieval German town, Kempen, in the Rhineland. His father owned the kosher butcher and the family of nine lived above the shop.
My great-grandfather was known for his generosity, ensuring all his customers, Jewish and non-Jewish, were provided for, even when they couldn’t pay.
The family were respected and active community members. Until they weren’t.
Their loss of rights and their othering grew, in parallel to the Nazi Party’s power.
First, they lost their right to participate in everyday community activities, like going to the cinema. Then they lost their shop. Finally, they lost their home.
Five of those nine who lived above the family butcher shop lost their lives.
At first, the insidious growth of anti-semitism in Germany may have been almost brushed aside.
But the cracks got rapidly bigger and the family began searching for a country that could provide them with a safe haven.
On November 11, 1938, while the town’s children marched in the Martinstag (St Martin’s Day) parade, the adults smashed and looted the homes of their Jewish neighbours and burned down the synagogue. That became known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.
On that very same day my father, Wally Hirsh, a small toddler, arrived in New Zealand with his parents and brother, having found their safe haven.
They rebuilt their lives in Otago. They adjusted and became active and respected community members in Dunedin.
My father moved to Wellington to become an educator. He married my mum and went on to become an active and highly regarded member of the wider New Zealand community.
He became the race relations conciliator and received an OBE.
For me, growing up in Wellington was worlds away from the life of my family in Kempen. I felt nurtured by the Jewish community and the community at large.
Over time it was pretty easy for me to almost put my Judaism to the side and just be part of the community. Until it wasn’t.
I first noticed cracks in my veneer of sameness after the October 7 Hamas terror attack in Israel. While I was deeply affected by such a tragic event happening to Jews on the other side of the world, no-one around seemed very concerned.
No-one contacted me to see how I was.
Finally, a couple of weeks later, a friend contacted me tell me how upset she was.
It turned out it was due to the death of Friends star Matthew Perry.
I asked another friend who worked at United Nations Women if they would be condemning the rape, mutilation and murder of so many women in southern Israel. No. The crack was opening.
Over the next two years those cracks grew and grew. I found myself disconnecting from friends, virtually and actually, as they blended anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic tropes.
I had to stop listening to mainstream media. I started to feel anxious when I walked past someone wearing a keffiyeh.
The cracks widened and my isolation grew, as it did for many in the Jewish community. We reconnected with each other. We shared stories of feeling threatened, of receiving abuse, of being cancelled — from art exhibitions to festivals and book tours.
Our children were often not safe at school or universities.
Many of us felt unsafe to do anything that might identify us as Jewish for fear of the hatred it would provoke.
And then Bondi happened.
Jewish families were gunned down and murdered in public, while they celebrated the festival of light on Bondi Beach at Channukah.
This wasn’t Nazi Germany. It wasn’t 1938. It wasn’t "over there". It was our region. Our neighbours. Our time.
This was 15 minutes’ walk from my auntie’s house in Sydney, Australia.
That is why International Holocaust Remembrance Day matters.
Because it is not only about remembering what was done to six million Jews. It is about recognising the warning signs before the glass shatters.
It is about understanding how quickly "othering" becomes exclusion, how exclusion becomes licence and how licence becomes violence.
Today, we will gather across New Zealand to remember. But I cannot shake the feeling that Kristallnacht has returned — not in one night, in one town, but across many nights, in many places, through many justifications.
Hatred, blame, desecration — drip by drip, until it feels normal.
Leonard Cohen wrote:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the question is will these cracks be where the light gets in — a turning back towards decency and courage — or are they the beginning of something darker?
— Leora Hirsh is a board member of the Holocaust Centre New Zealand.
