If we read our calendar not as liturgy but as a field manual, a pattern emerges. Across three thousand years of attempted annihilation, Jews have survived in roughly five ways: through the courtier, the insider who bends the ear of power; the fighter, who refuses to yield; by fortune, the improbable turn that saves a people who could not save themselves and who some attribute to God; by keeping our heads down, practising in secret; and we have survived by leaving.

The nightmare began as Israelis woke on a Jewish holiday to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Families were murdered in their homes. Young people were hunted through the fields around the Nova festival. Children saw their parents killed. Parents saw their children killed.

Recently, Kim Dotcom — founder of Megaupload and one of New Zealand’s most recognisable controversial public figures — posted the following prompt on X: “Why you dislike Jews – Go.”

And yet, in New Zealand’s mainstream media environment, the reaction was… silence.

The Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand expresses its deep grief over the 14 December attack on the Jewish Community in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. Antisemitism has risen at an alarming rate worldwide since October 7 2023. Australia experienced a fourfold increase in antisemitic acts in the year following. New Zealand has not been immune to the global trend…

Auschwitz. Now. was staged in Birkdale, Auckland, August-October 2025. Next staging will announced in due course.

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‘What the hell Is happening in America?' These are the words of Holocaust survivor Barbara Bendler Steinmetz. She escaped the Nazis as a child and is now 88. Steinmetz became the victim of a firebomb attack in the USA recently. 'People are afraid to wear a Star of David. They’re taking down mezuzahs. They’re afraid to be Jewish,’ she said.

To honour the victims of the Shoah, we must do more than mourn them. We must take seriously what their absence demands of us. As Elie Wiesel warned, “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”