Memory of the Holocaust does not die. Memory of the hostages will not die.
We know that the Holocaust did not end in 1945.
We are beginning to learn that the hostage story is just beginning.
The Holocaust continues to shape civilization. It has transcended the survivors, even as the survivors carried the story forward.
The stories from the freed hostages — and what is known of the murdered hostages — carry forward the eternal message and mourning of the Jewish people.
Hostages released. Rejoicing. Finally. Time to move on. This is what is not happening, because it cannot happen. There is no “moving on” from a radical tear in the Jewish people and the Jewish psyche.
Holocaust survivors have bequeathed memoirs and testimonies in tens of languages. Most of them rebuilt their lives and sustained generation-to-generation.
These hostages generate an awakening of a tale that is as old as the Bible itself.
A tale not only of their lives, so cruelly truncated, but of their souls. From the infinitely moving reawakening of their souls, the Jewish people glimpses the eternity of the Jewish spirit.
Not only the Jewish people. Just as the Holocaust reshaped political, ethical and historical discourse, so too will the hostage tale.
And just as the Holocaust generated Holocaust denial, so too the hostages. No, the hostages weren’t sexually abused. It’s all made up. No, Hamas did not kill babies. Where is the evidence? Yes, the hostage story is just beginning.
Their testimony is coming to forums around the world, from the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva to synagogues in Colorado, in other states and around the world.
Their suffering is unfolding in bits and pieces, but at a much faster clip than it unfolded for Holocaust survivors, most of whom were silent for decades after WW II. The hostages face a world very different from the post-WW II world.
• The Holocaust was unbelievable, literally. It took years for the evidence to roll out strongly and viscerally enough for people to acknowledge that such evil could actually happen. The hostage reality was immediately believable, due both to awareness of the Holocaust — the widespread knowledge that absolute evil is possible — and to the videos by and from Hamas itself.
• Hamas faced an immeasurably stronger Jewish community than the Nazis faced, with a vast discrepancy in scale between the Holocaust and Hamas’ hostage-taking, due to the existence of a Jewish state capable of defending itself, even as Israel failed on Oct. 7.
For all the differences in scale between the hostage-taking and the Holocaust, there is this overriding similarity: The facts and the personal testimonies will be with us for decades to come, if not longer. We shall:
• learn of individual hostage heroism, alongside the suffering, in the tunnels;
• learn of the difficulties the hostages face in returning to normal life, and of their amazing successes;
• learn the details of the twisted and cruel minds of Hamas and their fellow travelers;
• learn of Israel’s efforts to track down and deliver justice to the evildoers;
• learn of the embrace of the Jewish people and of Jewish observances by what now seems to be a significant percentage of the hostages;
• continue to learn of the anguish that has irreparably torn hundreds of Israeli families whose sons and fathers made the ultimate sacrifice to protect Israel generally and to free the hostages specifically.
Some readers may wish to see the brutal testimony of the freed hostages Keith and Aviva Segal reported in this week’s IJN, and some may wish not to see it. Either way, it is this type of hostage testimony that will penetrate Jewish consciousness, perhaps only in general terms, for decades to come. We are awakening to the eternal story of the hostages.
© IJN 2025
