Celia M 💙 🦖 ⭐⭐

Here stood a synagogue. Built in 1845, it was the heart of the Jewish community of Rohrbach, now part of Heidelberg. On the morning of November 10, 1938, an SA squad that had spent the night destroying Heidelberg's main synagogue marched on to Rohrbach. They broke down the door, smashed the benches, piled up the holy books and set them on fire. The fire brigade came only to protect the neighboring houses. Today a granite Star of David marks the spot, engraved with a single Hebrew word: חי, Chai. Alive. In 1938, there was no "occupation," no disputed territory, no Palestinian cause for masses to rally behind. Jew hatred was simply sanctified. Jews were targeted openly and unapologetically, then murdered on an industrial scale. They were minding their own business. Their mere existence was reason enough to exterminate them. Survivors who returned home often found their houses taken by their neighbors. In Poland, Jews were murdered even after the war had ended, most infamously in the Kielce pogrom of 1946. Many left Europe for good, and many of them built a home in Israel. All of this happened less than a century ago. Yet human memory is astonishingly short. Today we hear calls to dismantle Israel, sometimes from Jews. What is Chai worth if Am Israel has nowhere to live? Jew hatred did not die with Nazi Germany. It went underground. It also migrated to the Arab world, where it is encouraged and weaponized against Jews everywhere. In June 2025, this memorial was vandalized and covered in paint. In 1938, the perpetrators were Nazis. In 2025, they could be neo-Nazis or "pro-Palestinian" activists. Their label matters less than what drives them: hatred of Jews. An obsession that outlives every excuse. Israel exists so that Jewish life is never again left at the mercy of others. There, protecting it is not an afterthought. It is the reason the state exists.