Auschwitz cannot be a photo op for the Liberals.

Anti-Semitism in Canada has risen to record levels under the Liberal government.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has travelled to Poland to take part in the commemoration services for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

He will stand in the place where over 1 million Jews (of the six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust) were brutalized and systematically murdered in an industrial-scale death factory. It was place of horrors that was purpose-built to exterminate the Jewish people.

The scale of atrocities committed against the Jewish people in the Holocaust at murder factories like Auschwitz-Birkenau must pose two fundamental questions: How did humanity allow such evil to exist, and how do we prevent it from ever happening again?

Based on the alarming levels of anti-Jewish sentiment in Canada, these are questions Mr. Trudeau (and even more so, his governing partners in the New Democratic Party) appear to have deliberately ignored during his Liberal government's tenure, to dangerous effect.

Now, some partisans may say that Holocaust Remembrance Day is not a day for political action, but that is precisely what politicians who profit off staying silent on the rampant anti-Semitism want to occur. They don't want to be called out on their morally dismal record. They want to be left unchallenged and allowed to use platitude-laden photo ops as a substitute for courageous action. And so, it must not be.

“Never Again” means truths must be confronted.

Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada have skyrocketed under the Liberals, reaching unseen levels in recent years. Particularly in the wake of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas against Israel, synagogues have been burned, and Jewish schools have been shot at. Canadian Jews live in fear for their lives within their own homes and have seen their businesses vandalized and burned. These are not isolated incidents, either. They are rampant, continue without end and are endemic to every part of Canada.

These incidents can - and should - be directly attributed to federal Liberal leaders who, at best, turned a blind eye to Jew hate and, at worst, have enabled it. They fund an organization which promotes Jew hate, teaches children to kill Jews, and whose employees participated in the October 7 terrorist attack. They have done nothing to stop anti-Semitic mobs from rampaging Canadian streets calling for death to our country and to Jews. The Liberal Heritage Minister refused to condemn a Montreal area newspaper for producing a Nazi-eraesque cartoon. They stay silent about prominent Canadians who used their platforms to celebrate the October 7 massacre.

They honoured a Nazi in the House of Commons. Citing political "demographic" concerns, senior Liberal cabinet Ministers have taken positions against Canada's long-standing ally, Israel, in its right to defend itself against the violent actions of the Iranian regime and its murderous proxy organizations like Hamas, which have killed countless Jews and Muslims alike. They've supported the perversion of international organizations into forums which legitimize the aims of the Jew-murdering Iranian regime. For nearly nine years, they refused to recognize the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

They put up a Holocaust memorial plaque that didn't mention Jews, and yesterday, Trudeau made this omission a pattern by releasing a statement about the Holocaust that did the same thing. Their lack of concrete action to stop anti-Semitism has emboldened Canadian municipal leaders who bailed on commitments to attend Menorah lightings.

The Liberals provided government funding to a known pernicious anti-Semite. They appointed a man to head Canada's human rights commission who had published statements like saying "terror is not an irrational strategy" about hostile actors against Israel. They've stood idly by as prominent Canadian universities - which receive substantial amounts of federal funding - have seen anti-Jew terrorist training camps on their front lawns, and while Canadian Jewish students and academics have been mercilessly harassed on campuses across the country.

I have seen the impact of the Liberal's no-so tacit endorsement of anti-Semitism in my community and across the country. I have consoled Jewish Canadians who feel unsafe in their own homes and wonder what our country is coming to. I have walked in the ruins of kibbutzim in Israel where the atrocities of October 7 were committed by Hamas, and have sat disgusted as the Liberals failed to do anything of substance to end the Iranian regime and their proxy's death-cult march to kill Jews and Muslims.

From there, I return to the two questions that Auschwitz and the Holocaust present humanity with. The Nazi pogroms, ghettos, massacres, and death factories happened because bystanders sat silent while Jew hate was normalized, or worse, knowingly allowed their silence to enable the Holocaust to happen. And so, our charge as humans is to not be bystanders in the face of blatant anti-Semitism.

There are practical ways you can take up this torch. If you haven't had the opportunity to visit a Holocaust memorial or museum, do so. And if that's not feasible, watch (or rewatch) a film like Schindler's List or Zone of Interest. Allow yourself to become rightly panicked and alarmed that humanity - within the lifetimes of many still alive today - allowed these atrocities to happen, and know that those same seeds of evil are taking root in Canada today. Ensure your children and family are confronted with these horrors so that they aren't naïve to humanity's capacity for evil. Reach out to a Jewish friend or colleague, and tell them that you love and support them. Commit to yourself that when the chips are down, you will have their back.

And most importantly, when confronted with an opportunity to be a bystander or to end an anti-Semitic act, have the courage to follow through with public action. The Holocaust's lessons are clear: silence enables hate.

And politicians who are silent - or worse - as the Liberals have been, must be held to account.

For my part, this is why I will not allow Justin Trudeau, his potential successors, and the Liberal caucus as a whole, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, to post more platitudes and well-constructed photos without being held to account for their explicit role in the rise of anti-Semitism in Canada. "Never again" cannot be an empty statement. Political leaders must be prevented from fomenting anti-Semitism for their political expediency, and they must be held to account when they do.

Mr. Trudeau made a sacred choice today. By choosing to attend Auschwitz-Birkenau and walk on grounds so permanently saturated with the ultimate stain of mankind's ultimate capacity for evil, there can be no platitudes or staged photo releases for him. There must only be introspection, admission of promises broken, and recompense made.

People vying to take his job in the federal Liberal leadership race must do the same.

Lest we forget.