If YU Isn’t Teaching the Holocaust, Who Is?

By: Yakir Reiss | Opinions | November 2, 2026

One can’t start a Commentator article without first mentioning that the world is advancing unprecedentedly. With AI rapidly growing and technology reaching new levels, virtually every area of society is advancing. We truly live in exciting times of opportunity, yet there is one aspect of the world that doesn’t seem to be advancing quite as fast: morality. With the normalization of woke values, inappropriate content and behavior that once would have been considered unacceptable have become heroic. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize lecture in Oslo, “We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.” Advancement is only meaningful when paired with purpose, and comfort is only valuable when paired with connection.

This is why I am writing about the Holocaust. Studying the Holocaust is not only about learning what happened; it is about understanding what human beings are capable of when hatred, cruelty and indifference are allowed to take over, and asking which of our own tendencies, left unchecked, could lead us astray. The right response to the Holocaust isn’t hatred. It is love. More love for our fellow Jew, more love for humanity at large and a greater appreciation for the value of every human life.

Without studying what happened, how can we fully understand where hatred, indifference and the loss of our humanity can lead? And if we don’t learn from the past, how can we make sure we don’t repeat it? YU should make Holocaust education part of its core curriculum. When I looked at this semester’s course offerings, I couldn’t find a Holocaust course offered on either Wilf or the Beren Campus. If YU isn’t teaching the Holocaust to its undergraduates, who is?

YU’s mission statement promises “a transformative, world-class and interdisciplinary education that is deep and broad and that cultivates in our students a sense of meaning, purpose and drive to make the world a better place.” YU stands at the hallmark and center for the Jewish future and moral advancement. Therefore, it seems incumbent upon them to properly educate their students on the Holocaust. YU’s own Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies recognizes the urgency, stating that “as survivors pass away and awareness of the subject in public memory fades, it is the responsibility of the next generations to teach the history of the Holocaust, confront Holocaust deniers and distorters and combat antisemitism.” A core requirement would reach over two thousand undergraduates, far more than a graduate program can.

One might argue that most YU students already learned about the Holocaust in high school. But even if every student were an expert, YU should still have the responsibility to teach it and spread Holocaust awareness. The point isn’t simply to know what happened; it’s to internalize its message. Without studying the Holocaust and truly confronting the profane, hideous and horrible acts human beings are capable of, how can we fully appreciate the importance of morality and the value of human life? We need to transfer the Holocaust from history to memory. As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks taught, history is something that happened to someone else, at another time, while memory becomes part of who we are and how we live. It is not just about the importance of students learning about the Holocaust, but also YU’s responsibility to ensure that the memory of the six million remains an integral part of its institutional mission.

The urgency is growing. According to the Claims Conference, in January 2026, only approximately 5.6% of Jewish Holocaust survivors remained alive worldwide. As their numbers decline, we lose the people who can tell their stories firsthand, and the responsibility passes on to us. We cannot assume the memory will sustain itself. A 2025 survey found that 48% of American adults surveyed could not name a single Nazi concentration camp or ghetto.

Antisemitism, Holocaust denial and distortion remain serious concerns. The lessons of antisemitism and hatred aren’t relevant only to some hypothetical future when we might need to remind the world what happened. They are relevant right now; “never again” is right now. We cannot expect the rest of the world to remember the six million if we aren’t doing everything we can ourselves.

My grandfather, Harry Reiss, believed wholeheartedly in the importance of Holocaust education and dedicated much of his life to it. He created what was described as the first Holocaust curriculum for a college, at Rockland Community College, and founded the Holocaust Museum and Study Center in Rockland County, one of the early institutions of its kind. My grandmother, Marion Reiss, may she live and be well, otherwise known as Savta, wrote a book about his work called “Not to Forget.” In it, she quotes him describing the problem he saw: “Most people have an appalling ignorance of history; for many young people, studying the Holocaust is like studying ancient history. Even in the Orthodox community where many are Holocaust survivors or children of survivors, there are factual inaccuracies of what really happened … You can react to the Holocaust in one of three ways: You can deny it ever happened, you can say forget about it or you can bear witness because it did happen and you must see that it doesn’t happen again.”

My grandfather understood that even people closely connected to the Holocaust can lose sight of what actually happened. We can’t just assume people will remember. We have to teach it, and we have to make it mean something.

That is why YU should require Holocaust education for every student. It doesn’t have to be an extra three-credit course, since YU already has a formidable number of core requirements. Rather, it could replace part of an existing Jewish studies or history/humanities requirement. We shouldn’t leave it up to chance whether a student has learned enough about the Holocaust or had the opportunity to internalize its message. A required course would ensure that Holocaust education is not simply something we hope students encountered before arriving at YU, but something the university itself considers essential to their education.

We live in a world that is advancing at an incredible pace. But what good is progress if we aren’t becoming better people? Elie Wiesel, my grandfather and so many others dedicated their lives to making sure the world would not forget. YU has an obligation to continue that mission.