Living among anti-Semites

I am the son of a Holocaust survivor.

My father, who lost his entire family at the hands of the Nazis and their local collaborators, lived in Spain since 1950.. The Nazis killed his parents, his 16-year-old little sister, his cousins, his uncles and the rest of his family.. Also to all the inhabitants of his town and to all those who were part of his life in Belarus. Only he and his brother survived..

My father felt comfortable in Spain, among other reasons because, since it had not been invaded by Germany, he could go out knowing that he was not going to deal with anyone who was directly involved in the murder of Jews.. Collaborators who, in the rest of Europe, dedicated themselves to snitching on Jews so that they would be arrested and sent to extermination camps, or to directly participate in their annihilation..

Last October 7, we experienced another episode of historical anti-Semitism to which the Jewish people have been exposed throughout the centuries, from the Spanish Inquisition and the numerous pogroms in medieval Europe and in the Russia of the Tsars to the Nazi Holocaust. , with its six million Jews murdered. All of these episodes had in common that the victims—children, the elderly, women, entire families—were deserving of their fate for the mere fact of being Jewish.. Their condition of belonging to the Jewish people was enough to justify the greatest atrocities.

That day, a well-trained pack of murderers entered Israel and dedicated themselves to murdering children, the elderly, women, entire families and even people with disabilities.. Once again, their status as Jews made them deserving of the worst possible atrocities.. They killed more than 1,400 people and only stopped when Israeli security forces were able to intercept them..

The news of this massacre caused me and all the Jews enormous consternation: we went into a state of shock..

Thank goodness, I told myself, that I live in Europe, a continent where human rights and the protection of the individual prevail and discrimination is persecuted.. After the Holocaust, we thought that something like this could never be repeated.

However, in reaction to the massacre of October 7, demonstrations have been called in which calls have been made to exterminate the Jews, to gas them or to cleanse Israel of Jews.. Numerous articles have been published in the press justifying the massacre, blaming the Jews and encouraging the murderers.. We have also observed politicians, including ministers of the Government of Spain, shamelessly placing themselves on the side of the executioners, completely ignoring what happened..

Without going any further, last Saturday, in Barcelona, a mob attacked an establishment, a hotel owned by a Jew, remembering the Kristallnacht of 1938, the pogrom carried out by the Nazis throughout Germany and Austria when the crowd dedicated itself to raid and destroy Jewish businesses. A few days ago, the Melilla synagogue was attacked.

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans and my Spanish compatriots have participated in these demonstrations, hundreds of journalists have misinformed and distorted the facts and dozens of politicians have justified the savage violence of October 7.

All this has a name: antisemitism. The same anti-Semitism that poisoned Europe for centuries and culminated in the Holocaust.

But we must be aware that anti-Semitism is a warning about the danger that lies ahead for everyone.. If some believe that this begins and ends with the Jews, they are going to get the most unpleasant of surprises.. The ultimate objective is to end the regime of freedom, tolerance and equality under which we live in Europe.. Anti-Semites will end up imposing their ideas and practices in our societies.

However, it would not be fair to write these lines without mentioning all those good people who have contacted us horrified by what happened, expressing solidarity with the Jewish people, providing their moral support and offering their help in whatever way possible..

When I was young, my father, Max Mazin, told me on several occasions not to fool myself, that ancient anti-Semitism was still very present in society and that one day it would re-emerge in full force.. I looked at him in disbelief and told him that after the Holocaust that was no longer possible in Europe. That evil had been eradicated, the tremendous monstrosities had changed Europeans forever. The world had been vaccinated against this evil.

How wrong I was and how right my father was.

*Daniel Mazin is a businessman.