Eighty-seven years ago, my grandfather stood in Germany and watched the night fill with the sound of breaking glass. Shop windows, synagogues, homes shattered simply because they were Jewish. He was a boy then. He survived. The world watched and did nothing.
Eighty-seven years later, I stood on the burnt floors of Kibbutz Be’eri with my camera. There was no glass left to break, only ash, silence and the smell of death. And I understood that “Never Again” is not a promise already kept. It is a responsibility handed down.
My grandfather lived through the night the world first looked away.
I lived through the day it happened again.
He fled because he was Jewish; I knelt among homes destroyed for the same reason.
The Holocaust did not begin in gas chambers. It began with words, with graffiti, with leaders who stayed silent and nations that chose not to see. Today those same words return, on university walls, in city squares, in posts that turn lies into slogans. Once again, Jews are forced to explain themselves, to justify their right to exist.
But this time we have a voice. We have a state. We have truth in our hands.
Since October 7th, I have carried my camera through the ruins of Be’eri, the fields of the South, the faces of families whose lives were torn apart. I have seen courage rise from horror, light breaking through smoke. My first book, October 7 | Bearing Witness, was born from that journey, not to aestheticize tragedy but to make denial impossible.
Each of us has a role in this. Every photograph, every word, every act of decency is a form of resistance. Silence is not neutral; it is permission.
Eighty-seven years after Kristallnacht, the glass that shattered in Germany has become the fire that burns in our memory. The question is not whether we remember, but whether we act.
“Never Again” is not a phrase for memorial days. It is a demand we make of ourselves to stand, to speak, to bear witness, even when the world chooses not to look.
To learn more or purchase the book October 7 | Bearing Witness, click here. All proceeds go to the SUMMIT Institute to support soldiers living with PTSD.