Holocaust ceremonies can actually foster extremism

Judging by the urgent warnings of centenarian Auschwitz survivor Leon Weintraub about the direction in which the world is heading, the “Never Again” practices and Holocaust remembrance rituals of the last 80 years appear to have failed.

In a new German book on the future of democracy, Weintraub and six other Holocaust survivors tell us that not since 1945 have they been as worried about the survival of democracy and civilization as they are now. At the same time, the worst antisemitic tsunami since the Shoah is wreaking havoc everywhere.

The world’s Holocaust remembrance practices and rituals are predicated on the idea that, by exposing people to what happened in the darkest human-made night of the early 1940s, we would inoculate new generation after new generation against the temptations of extremism. The uncomfortable possibility we must now confront is that this assumption no longer holds. Under conditions of widespread fear and existential anxiety, Holocaust remembrance as it is currently practiced does not appear to prevent extremism and, in some cases, may reinforce the very dynamics it was meant to forestall.

What we collectively failed to see is that in times of existential anxiety, exposure to a flood of dramatic images and descriptions of death, suffering, and horrors does not necessarily expand people’s moral sensitivity to suffering and evil. Quite the contrary, such exposure often appears to help turn people into knights of darkness.

This is not an argument against Holocaust remembrance as such, nor a call to remember less

There is a social psychological response in which people are reminded of their own mortality. Flooded with depictions and descriptions of human-made horrors, and fed by fear and anxiety, tribalism, polarization, and aggression flourish. People then turn on migrants and other outsiders, who are now seen as existential threats.

Only the freedom of one’s own in-group is still defended, even at the price of destroying everyone else’s freedom. Democracy is hollowed out. The relevance to our current condition is unmistakable. Leon Weintraub says in his book that the dehumanization of outsiders in today’s world reminds him of the first steps on the path that led to the gas chambers.

In the wake of October 7, what once seemed unthinkable has again proven possible. First, the dehumanization of Jews, which forced them to live in a state of constant self-defense and self-justification. In a grim and deeply paradoxical way, this has forged a powerful and visceral bond between third- and fourth-generation descendants and Holocaust survivors, not through transmitted knowledge or commemorative pedagogy, but through shared vulnerability and existential anxiety. Precisely because this bond is formed through terror and exposure rather than reflection, it underscores the limits of remembrance practices, and it raises urgent questions about how the Holocaust is remembered and mobilized today.

October 7 and the escalating conflict that ensued triggered existential anxieties inside and outside of the Jewish community. As a result, antisemitism is now stronger around the world than it has been since 1945. But there is also a cautionary tale here for Jewish communities about where their existential anxieties may lead if they are not channeled in the right direction.

Worryingly, Holocaust remembrance practices and rituals, as they are currently being performed, appear to be inadvertently part of the problem of, rather than part of the solution to, the rise of tribalism, extremism, and antisemitism. This is not an argument against Holocaust remembrance as such, nor a call to remember less. It is an argument against the unexamined belief that repeated exposure to atrocity automatically produces moral clarity, empathy, or democratic commitment, especially in moments of collective fear.

As recent research by social scientists Ana Ruipérez Núñez and Melanie Sauter indicates, exposure to Stolpersteine – small brass stones meant to commemorate Holocaust victims, embedded directly underfoot, in the cobblestones of the street on which victims once lived – can have unintended consequences for people already receptive to far-right ideas. For this group, such exposure appears to harden existing negative attitudes towards refugees, especially their association of refugees with terrorism.

Holocaust remembrance as practiced today thus runs the risk of unwittingly aiding the descent of the world into another human-made night. This, of course, does not suggest that Holocaust memorials produce extremism in general, but it does raise troubling questions about remembrance practices that rely primarily on confrontation with atrocity rather than on democratic contextualization, especially in times of widespread fear.

It is thus high time that we listen to the last survivors, not just about the misery of the darkest night that they experienced during the Shoah. Listening to them today means rethinking Holocaust remembrance not as repeated confrontation with horror, but as a civic practice aimed at resisting dehumanization, strengthening democratic solidarity, and defending universal freedom. Just as importantly, we had better listen to the vision of the last survivors for how we can keep the light on.

Prof. Thomas Weber is Professor of History and International Affairs at the University of Aberdeen as well as Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His latest book is, together with Joachim A. Lang, ‘Nach der Nacht: Holocaustüberlebende über die Zukunft der Demokratie’

Dr. Yael Ben Moshe is a lecturer at the Jerusalem Multidisciplinary Colleges and a researcher at the European Forum at Hebrew University, supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), in a project involving the appropriation and archaeological research of historical footage and photographs from the Nazi era. Her latest article, “Contested Memory. Bromberg 1939,” was published in Issue 7 of Research in Film and History: Iconic Film Footage from the Nazi Era (April 2025).