In Israel on Thursday, with sirens wailing as the entire country paused for two minutes of silence for its yearly commemoration of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, who could not have been moved by the sight of pedestrians and motorists standing stock-still on roadsides and in the middle of streets, heads bowed in remembrance?
Jews around the world, including in Thailand, marked this sombre anniversary. They know full well the history of the terrible events that unfolded as Hitler's Germany embarked on its campaign of genocide.
But fast forward nearly 75 years since the end of World War II when the true horrors of Hitler's savagery against the Jews became clear, and anti-Semitism is on the march again, not only in Europe but around the world as memories fade and political fashions change.
Back in January this year, a member of a Thai girl pop band hit the headlines for wearing a sweater emblazoned with a Nazi swastika at a performance. The teen claimed she had no idea of the significance of the hateful symbol. She is not alone, not by a long shot.
There is a breathtaking lack of knowledge, not just in Thailand but worldwide, about history and the terrible fate of the Jews in World War II, though it's common to hear the word Nazi or fascist flung about in political debates on complex subjects such as immigration. Social media is awash with people, often millennials, accusing one another of being Nazis, when most are nothing of the sort. Using this loaded word so indiscriminately only trivialises the Holocaust.
A recent case was that of American actress Roseanna Arquette. Though hardly a millennial at age 59, she took to Twitter to say she wished she could wake up without feeling "terrorised" by a "fascist regime", referring to Donald Trump's administration. Previously, she tweeted that the US "is like Nazi Germany". No, Roseanna, it isn't.
But when given the chance to criticise an actual person with Nazi-like beliefs after last Saturday's deadly shooting at a California synagogue, many global media giants were opaque in describing the "manifesto" of the suspected shooter. The Bangkok Post searched in vain on the major wire services for the manifesto's key points, in which the gunman wrote that he was inspired by Hitler, but also hated Mr Trump, labelling him a "Zionist, Jew-loving, anti-White, traitorous c***sucker".
Days earlier, The New York Times published an anti-Semitic cartoon depicting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog wearing a Star of David collar, leading an apparently blind yarmulke-clad Mr Trump. It was hauntingly similar to one from 1940 in Germany of Winston Churchill being led by an ultra-Orthodox Jew.
A report on Wednesday found that attacks on Jews soared last year. The number killed in anti-Semitic acts was the highest for decades. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said in the report: "It is now clear that anti-Semitism is no longer limited to the far-left, far-right and radical Islamists triangle." Mr Ne- tanyahu echoed those comments on Wednesday night.
While both Dr Kantor and Mr Netanyahu are correct in pointing to the dangers of this "triangle of hate", another more insidious problem fanning the flames of anti-Semitism -- that radicals of all stripes are experts at exploiting -- is the grim state of education systems around the world not teaching Holocaust history properly, if at all -- or in the case of many Middle Eastern countries, denying outright that it even happened.
There's an old saying: "To know your future you must know your past", and that needs to happen to put the brakes on this ugly new cycle of anti-Semitism. Perhaps those sirens should blare not just in Israel, but across the world every Holocaust memorial day.
