A nation is shaped not only by what it celebrates, but by what it refuses to forget.
For postwar Germany, remembrance of the Holocaust became more than a historical obligation. It became a moral foundation. The country rebuilt its political identity around the conviction that the crimes of the Nazi era must never be minimized, distorted, or repeated. “Never again” was not simply a slogan. It influenced Germany’s laws, schools, public institutions, foreign policy, and understanding of democracy itself.
But that culture of memory is now under strain.
As a recent Wall Street Journal article describes, Holocaust survivors are rapidly disappearing, public fatigue is increasing, and growing numbers of younger Germans possess only a weak understanding of the Holocaust. Some now treat Nazi imagery as metaphor, using symbols of persecution to describe ordinary political disagreements. Others argue that Germany should “close the book” on its past or move beyond what they see as an inherited burden of guilt. At the same time, antisemitism is rising, political extremism is gaining strength, and the historical guardrails that once seemed permanent are beginning to weaken.
Germany’s challenge should serve as a warning to the United States.
America is not forgetting the Holocaust in the same way, nor should the Holocaust and September 11 ever be treated as equivalent events. The Holocaust was a systematic campaign of industrialized extermination carried out by a state against the Jewish people and other targeted groups. September 11 was a terrorist attack that murdered nearly 3,000 people in a single morning and launched America into a new era of war, insecurity, and sacrifice.
The events are distinct in history, scale, and meaning. Yet the danger of forgetting follows a similar pattern.
In both cases, living memory is fading.
The children entering classrooms today were born long after September 11, 2001. Many of their teachers were children themselves when the attacks occurred. The generation that watched the Twin Towers fall in real time is aging. Survivors, first responders, military veterans, and family members still carry the stories, but fewer young Americans have direct access to them.
As that personal connection disappears, September 11 risks becoming flattened into a date, a chapter heading, or a brief classroom video. Students may learn what happened without understanding what it meant.
That distinction matters.
To remember 9/11 is not only to remember collapsing buildings, burning wreckage, and lives stolen by terrorism. It is also to remember the America that emerged in the hours and days afterward: firefighters climbing upward while others fled downward; strangers helping strangers; Americans lining up to donate blood; volunteers pouring into communities; flags appearing on homes, storefronts, bridges, and firehouses; and a grieving nation briefly remembering that citizenship carried obligations to one another.
September 11 tested America. September 12 revealed America.
Yet as the 25th observance approaches, the national memory is becoming increasingly ceremonial. We pause. We read names. We post images. We say “Never Forget.” Then we return to a political and cultural environment that often reflects the opposite of what that phrase should require.
The danger is not that Americans will forget the date. The danger is that we will forget the lessons.
Germany’s experience shows how quickly remembrance can lose its moral force when it becomes detached from human connection. Historical symbols are trivialized. Unique events are carelessly compared with everyday grievances. Political actors reshape memory for ideological purposes. Younger generations begin to see the past as someone else’s burden.
The same process is visible in the United States.
September 11 is increasingly invoked as a political weapon rather than a shared national wound. The unity that followed the attacks is often dismissed as nostalgia. The sacrifices of the post-9/11 generation are separated from the event that called them to service. The wars that followed are debated, as they should be, but the original stories of courage, loss, duty, and national solidarity are too often lost inside those debates.
A nation cannot preserve memory through monuments alone.
Memorials matter. Museums matter. Anniversaries matter. But remembrance survives only when stories are carried from one generation to the next. Germany’s fading connection to Holocaust survivors demonstrates the urgency of building educational systems that do more than teach facts. Students must understand why the past still makes claims upon them.
America faces the same responsibility with 9/11.
Every student should learn not only how the attacks happened, but who responded. They should hear the voices of survivors, first responders, family members, military personnel, volunteers, and ordinary citizens. They should understand how communities from New York and Washington to Shanksville and Gander answered horror with courage and compassion.
They should also be taught that remembrance is not a demand for permanent grief. It is a call to permanent responsibility.
We remember so that hatred is recognized before it grows. We remember so that service remains honored. We remember so that the dead are not reduced to statistics. We remember so that national unity does not require another national catastrophe.
Germany’s battle over Holocaust memory is ultimately a battle over its identity. Will it remain a nation defined in part by the moral responsibility to confront its past, or will it allow fatigue, extremism, and historical distance to erode that commitment?
America is approaching its own version of that question.
What does September 11 mean once most Americans have no memory of it?
The answer will depend on what we choose to teach.
“Never Forget” cannot remain a phrase spoken once a year. It must become a civic commitment: to remember the lives lost, to preserve the stories of courage, and to teach future generations that history is not merely something that happened.
It is something entrusted to us.
