April 2025
Nicki Franek

Auschwitz, 1944. The war was nearing the end, but the Nazis had not yet been defeated. My grandfather, in relatively decent health, was shipped from Auschwitz to the forced labour camp in Schwarzheide. When Schwarzheide was liberated in 1945 and became a displaced persons camp, my grandfather, a young and bright 23-year-old, made a plan for his future. He applied to Charles University, moved to Prague in 1946, and met my grandmother. Three months later they were married, and by 1947, my father was born. My grandfather, not even two years since staring death in the face, had reclaimed what the Nazis had tried to steal; his family, his life, and his dignity. 

My grandfather wasn’t alone in his rush to move on and build a new life following the Shoah. Between 1946 and 1948, birth rates in displaced persons camps were among the highest in the world. 

One could argue that centuries of persecution have helped the Jewish people hone their ability to overcome adversity through self-agency. But that would ignore the countless Jewish scriptures that preach it. In Exodus, the seminal Jewish story, freedom was a fate chosen by only 20 per cent of the enslaved Jews, who would then go on to receive and accept the Torah. 

The birth of Israel in 1948 is a story of personal agency over victimhood, a country created by persecuted Jews who willed it to be, who didn’t beg and wait for saviours, but instead, organized, acted, and earned their sovereignty.
History is rife with examples of prosperity following the empowerment at the root of self-agency —even in societies that start as nihilistic aggressors (i.e. post-war Germany and Japan). There are also many historical examples of civilizational decline and destruction, brought on by the social and political embrace of victimhood narratives and “virtuous” but unrealistic aspirations.  

At the heart of Marxism—the philosophy born of Germanic romanticism that spawned socialism, communism and pan-Arabism— is the story of a victim (the proletariat) who can only be redeemed with the complete eradication of the villain (the bourgeoisie), whose demise will shepherd in utopia. When you boil down the ideology to this core theme, the path to destruction is evident. This is a philosophy built on resentment, revenge and fantasy. With its zero-sum framing and detachment from nuanced reality, it is no wonder that Marxism is at the heart of some of the worlds’ worst atrocities and failed societies. 

Today’s progressive ideology increasingly draws from Marxist framing, whose utopian vision makes victimhood a currency. Under popular social theories like “intersectionality,” the more victimized identities you can claim (except Jewish of course), the more sanctified and valued your feelings, opinions and actions are —and the more protected from scrutiny and responsibility. Lacking self-agency, victimhood becomes a justification for expanding state power to correct the perceived injustices of a fundamentally flawed society—one that must be purified and rebalanced. This is a dangerous path to head down, especially in a country with real and complex economic issues that ideology cannot solve, and, especially in our messy, human existence, that will never be wholly free from inequality. History has proven that the more we foster victimhood, the more victimhood we create.

The Jews who emerged from the Holocaust embraced a lesson their ancestors had demonstrated centuries earlier when they chose to wander the desert for 40 years after crossing the Red Sea: “I can’t control the cards I’m dealt, but I can decide how to play them.”  In a world on the cusp of seismic cultural shifts that impact not only Jews, it is more important than ever to realize that whining about a villain will never be as effective as seizing opportunities within our control to shape our own future.