Together for Never Again and against Antisemitism

The commemorative year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp and its more than 40 satellite camps.

Eighty years have passed since the victory over the National Socialists, the victory over the anti-Semitic ideology of extermination, and over "master race thinking". This anniversary is a cause for celebration for all friends of life and freedom. However, is liberation really complete?

The Nazi regime was defeated, the gas chambers were shut down. But was society really liberated from the spirit of Jew-hatred, "master race thinking" and racism?

Unfortunately, we are confronted with a sharp rise in anti-Semitism.

Jews around the world are facing a massive threat, and far too little attention is paid to the fact that the Nazis' anti-Semitism of extermination lives on today.

In many a cellar in Austria, people are singing about the gassing of a seventh million. This ideology is perpetuated even more openly by extremist regimes such as that of Iran, which wants to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, or by Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Here we need to be aware of the continuities of Jew hatred, because the then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, was an ally of Hitler; he was involved in the persecution of the Jews and was enthusiastic about the idea of their annihilation.

These regimes and organizations pursue the same goal as the Nazis and their helpers once did: they strive to kill as many Jews as possible because they are Jews. This is exactly what happened on October 7, 2023 in Israel in the most horrific anti-Semitic massacre since the Shoah. As I write these lines, 59 innocent hostages are still being held by the Nazi-glorifying terrorists in Gaza.

So 80 years after the liberation of the extermination camps, we must realize that the ideology that led to Mauthausen, Auschwitz and all the other sites of the Shoah has still not been defeated.

We must never grow accustomed to this hatred. We really must stand up together for "Never Again", in deeds and not just in Sunday speeches, and long before a catastrophe like the Shoah can even occur.

But what do we see when we look out into the world?

One million Muslims are being held in camps in China for "re-education".

Kurds are persecuted and oppressed in their countries in the Middle East.

In addition to the genocidal massacre by Hamas, think of the genocides in Sudan or Srebrenica. These, too, were based on an ideology that regards one's own group as superior.

And think of the terrorism here in Austria, such as the tragedy in Villach, where a 14-year-old boy was killed in an attack. Why? Because he was not what the Islamist perpetrator had imagined, because he was seen as "inferior". So the evil spirit lives on.

Thus it is up to each and every one of us to stand up for a world in which every person, regardless of origin or religion, gender or sexual orientation, can live in peace and dignity. This is our mission for a Never Again.