January 27, 2026, marks 81 years since the liberation of Auschwitz — the day Otto Frank was freed from the infirmary at Birkenau. At the time, he believed his two daughters, Anne and Margot, were still alive. It would take him months to make his way back to Amsterdam, only to learn that his entire family had been murdered.
Each year on this day, now recognized as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we pause to remember the Holocaust as a global human tragedy and to honor all of its victims.
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. The Nazi regime also targeted the Roma population for genocide and persecuted and murdered millions of others it deemed “undesirable,” including Black people in Germany, people with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponents, and German civilians accused of opposing the regime.
At the core of Nazi ideology was a deeply antisemitic worldview that placed Jews at the bottom of a fabricated racial hierarchy while simultaneously portraying them as powerful conspirators controlling governments and global financial systems. These contradictory and dangerous myths did not end with the Holocaust; they continue to animate antisemitism today.
The Nazis drew ordinary Germans into their movement by exploiting longstanding prejudices against Jews and other marginalized communities. Through propaganda, rhetoric, intimidation, and violence, the regime dehumanized those cast as “other,” while promoting a false sense of national and racial pride.
