The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was marked yesterday with a great deal of ceremony. Vice President Cheney joined the presidents of Poland, Russia, France, Germany, and Israel for an event at the site of the death camp. Earlier this month, the United Nations General Assembly marked the anniversary with a special session.

All the European and United Nations hand wringing about Auschwitz is well and good, but it’s an empty gesture if they fail to help the Jews in the current political climate. The struggle of the Jews today is about the preservation of a Jewish state with sovereignty over a united Jerusalem, about the right of Jews to live anywhere in the land of Israel in safety and security, and about the war against Islamic terrorism on all fronts including Iran and Iraq. The best one can say about many of those so enthusiastically celebrating the liberation of Auschwitz is that, with respect to the current struggles, they are off the field.

The point is not to exploit the Holocaust for political advantage, or to make inappropriate comparisons between the situation now and that of 60 years ago. But there is a war again under way against the Jews. One of its perpetrators, the government of Iran, funds terrorism against Jewish civilians while simultaneously maintaining membership in good standing at the United Nations and warm trade relations with Europe. As if to underscore the point, Iran’s government controlled press has spent the last month publishing interviews with Holocaust deniers and spreading classical anti-Semitism, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. For certain European and U.N. elites to indulge in Auschwitz liberation nostalgia while working against the Jews or maintaining a studied neutrality in the current struggles suggests that for all the commemorative ceremonies, the true lessons of Auschwitz are yet to be learned.