On Holocaust Memorial Day, we must remember that education is how memory survives

Every generation inherits more than opportunity. It also inherits responsibility.

As the world marks International Holocaust Memorial Day, we pause to remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, alongside millions of others persecuted and killed by the Nazi regime. But remembrance, if it is to mean anything beyond ritual, must be tied to action. Memory that is not transmitted deliberately, thoughtfully, and consistently does not endure.

For those of us born decades after the Holocaust, the obligation to remember does not come from lived experience. It comes from education, from intentional transmission, and from the understanding that memory does not preserve itself. It must be taught, carried, and renewed by each generation in turn.

That responsibility feels especially urgent today. Across universities, public institutions, and social spaces that once prided themselves on moral clarity, antisemitism is no longer whispered. Jewish students are being harassed and intimidated on campus. Holocaust distortion and denial circulate freely online. Violence against Jewish communities has risen sharply, and hateful rhetoric is increasingly justified as political expression.

These developments are not historical echoes. They are contemporary warnings.

Holocaust survivors have spent their lives doing something extraordinary: turning personal trauma into public education. They have stood before classrooms, communities, and global audiences to say, “This is what happens when hatred is normalized, when truth is distorted, and when silence becomes policy.” Their testimony was never meant to be archival. It was meant to be preventive.

But survivors cannot carry this work alone forever.

The question facing our generation is not theoretical. It is immediate: what happens when the last eyewitness is gone? If memory depends solely on those who lived it, then memory will eventually fail. If it depends on those who learned from it, then it has a future.

This is why education is the cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance. Education does more than convey dates and historical facts. It transmits moral responsibility. It teaches young people how dehumanization begins, how propaganda gains legitimacy, and how quickly societies can slide from tolerance into complicity, when governments fail to confront hatred, uphold truth, and protect vulnerable communities.

Intergenerational responsibility means refusing to treat Holocaust remembrance as symbolic or ceremonial. Lighting candles once a year matters, but it is not enough. Memory must live where values are formed: in classrooms, in leadership cultures, in institutions, and in the decisions societies make about what they excuse and what they confront.

The rise in antisemitism today underscores this point. Hatred does not reappear all at once. It begins with language, with the erosion of empathy, with the framing of Jews as uniquely illegitimate or expendable. Education equips people to recognize these patterns early, before they harden into violence or policy.

This is also why encounters between generations are so powerful. When young people meet Holocaust survivors, walk alongside them, and hear their stories directly, history ceases to be abstract. It becomes personal. That connection creates guardianship. The responsibility to remember is no longer inherited passively; it is accepted consciously.

As survivors continue to bear witness, our role is to ensure that their testimony does not end with them. That means investing in education that is rigorous and honest, supporting initiatives that connect generations, and embedding Holocaust memory into the moral framework of our institutions.

International Holocaust Memorial Day is not only a moment to look back. It is a moment to look forward and ask what kind of custodians of memory we intend to be. One day, Holocaust education will exist without Holocaust survivors. Whether it remains powerful or becomes diluted depends on the choices we make now.

Memory will either be preserved through intentional education, or it will fade through neglect.

Education is how we choose the first path.

Intergenerational responsibility is not inherited automatically. It is claimed. And once claimed, it must be lived.

Scott Saunders is CEO of International March of the Living