On April 19, 2026, I wrote a Facebook post that sparked considerable controversy. On the day when thousands of Poles—including the most important Polish politicians—solemnly pinned yellow daffodils to honor the 83rd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I decided to sharply criticize all those who chose to participate in this gesture. The post received significant approval and a wide response, but there were also voices of those who felt offended. Therefore, I decided to explain substantively why, in my opinion, wearing a daffodil is equivalent to symbolic—often unconscious—support for the criminal state that is Israel.
Let's start with the absolute basics: by criticizing the "Daffodils" campaign and similar actions, I am not criticizing the commemoration of the ghetto fighters. I am criticizing participation in a campaign that—in the hands of the Israeli authorities' propaganda machine—has ceased to be an act of remembrance and has become a tool of political indoctrination. I am criticizing the wearing of a symbol that the Israeli Embassy in Poland and the Minister of Education Yoav Kisch—representatives of a state accused of war crimes—use to legitimize policies whose victims are Palestinians today. I criticize because a daffodil pinned by an Israeli diplomat is not a tribute to Mordechai Anielewicz; it is a cloak under which lies the systematic, decades-long hijacking of the memory of the Holocaust for nationalist and militaristic purposes.
And that is what this text is about. It is about how Israeli authorities have for years organized youth trips to Auschwitz not to teach about the Holocaust, but to cultivate a sense of eternal victimhood and build hatred on that basis. It is about how authors like Norman Finkelstein and Gábor Maté—Jews by origin, children of Holocaust survivors—expose this procedure. And it is about why wearing a daffodil on a day when shells are falling on Jabalia, and Israeli soldiers take selfies with a Palestinian hostage used as an advertisement for a jewelry store, is not only naive but morally compromising.
The Daffodils Campaign: A Social Gesture in the Service of Propaganda
The Daffodils Campaign, which grew from a grassroots gesture by Marek Edelman, was taken over by the POLIN Museum in 2013 and has since become one of the central elements of historical policy. Today, however—contrary to its roots—it functions as a political instrument in close cooperation with the Israeli authorities and their embassy. The participation of the state's ambassadors in official ceremonies, joint press conferences, and media recordings promoting a common narrative show that we are no longer dealing with an authentic, civic gesture of remembrance, but with a centrally controlled campaign that, under the guise of tribute to the ghetto victims, implements the current goals of Israeli policy.
Just look at the reports from the Israeli Embassy in Poland, which in 2026 actively promoted the campaign, weaving in elements of current politics and contemporary conflicts. The same applies to the participation of Israeli ministers such as Yoav Kisch, who use this opportunity to build a narrative of "common struggle"—a narrative meant to legitimize Israeli actions against Palestinians. When you pin a daffodil in 2026, you pin it next to the ambassador of a state accused by the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity. You pin it on a day when Israeli forces bomb northern Gaza. In a week when an Israeli soldier takes a photo with a Palestinian hostage used as an advertisement for his jewelry store. And that is precisely why I say loudly: in today's circumstances, wearing a daffodil is not a tribute, but—consciously or unconsciously—support for the Israeli narrative.
Pilgrimage to Auschwitz: A State Ritual Shaping the Soldier
Yoav Kisch, who pinned a daffodil in Warsaw, is the same minister responsible for the Israeli education system. This system sends about 40,000 students, mainly aged 16–17, on a mandatory pilgrimage to the extermination camps in Poland every year. This is not an educational trip in the commonly understood sense—it is a state initiation ritual aimed at shaping the identity of a young Israeli as a Jew and as a future soldier. The goal is to produce a citizen who, from the youngest age, internalizes the belief that the world is anti-Semitic, that Jews have no one to rely on but themselves, and that every non-Jew is a potential enemy—and therefore that violence against Palestinians is not only justified but necessary.
The mechanism is simple and terrifyingly effective. A young Israeli goes to Poland to see with their own eyes the "evidence" of what happens without their own state and army. Auschwitz becomes not so much a place of remembrance for the victims of Nazism, but an argument for the necessity of Israel as a fortress—and for the necessity of having an army capable of inflicting violence so that such violence never befalls Jews again. In this narrative, a Palestinian is not a human with their own rights and aspirations—they are a threat that must be controlled, displaced, and ultimately eliminated. Because "never again" in this language means: "we will never again be victims, even if we have to become perpetrators."
During marches through the former camp, Israeli students march demonstratively wrapped in Israeli flags. This is not an expression of mourning or reflection. It is a manifestation of nationalist pride and militaristic readiness. Auschwitz becomes a training ground for the imagination—a place where an identity based on eternal trauma, which justifies eternal war, is shaped.
It is this mechanism that makes me unable to remain silent when I see people pinning daffodils next to Minister Kisch. Because he did not come to Poland to teach about the Holocaust. He came to legitimize a system that sends children to Auschwitz to raise another generation ready to kill and be killed in the name of the Zionist idea.
Finkelstein: "The Holocaust Industry" and the Political Instrumentalization of Suffering
Norman Finkelstein, an American political scientist of Jewish origin whose parents survived the Holocaust and whose mother was a prisoner in Auschwitz, has been analyzing this mechanism for years. In his groundbreaking book "The Holocaust Industry" (2000), Finkelstein argues that the memory of the Holocaust has been hijacked by a narrow group of influential actors—not survivors, but their self-appointed representatives—who have turned it into a political and financial tool for Israel.
Finkelstein does not deny the Holocaust or diminish its tragedy. However, he criticizes the "Holocaust industry"—a mechanism in which the memory of the Shoah has been stripped of its universal dimension and transformed into a weapon of political struggle. As he writes, the "Jewish establishment" around the world uses the collective memory of the Shoah to justify Israeli policy, including the occupation and violence against Palestinians.
Finkelstein was demolished by the mainstream media for this book. The "New York Times" called it "preposterous, arrogant, and stupid," without being able to point out a single substantive error. He lost his academic position, and the Israeli government banned him from entering the country for ten years. Solely because he dared to tell the truth about how the memory of Jewish suffering has been transformed into a tool to legitimize the suffering of Palestinians.
This is precisely the crux of my criticism of wearing the daffodil. Not because I do not respect the ghetto fighters. But because I do not agree with their memory being used to justify contemporary ghettos.
Gábor Maté: Trauma as Fuel for Power Politics
Gábor Maté, a Canadian doctor of Jewish origin, a Holocaust survivor, and a world-renowned expert on trauma, draws similar conclusions. Maté, who as an infant survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary while his grandparents perished in Auschwitz, has come a long way from a zealous Zionist to one of the most insightful critics of Israeli policy.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Maté speaks directly: the collective Jewish trauma has been used by Israel to justify its war in Gaza. His thesis is profound and extremely important: contemporary Zionism grew out of trauma. This trauma is authentic, undeniable, and still alive in the generations of survivors and their descendants. The problem is that Israel—instead of healing this trauma—systematically sustains, exploits, and redirects it outward, against Palestinians.
Maté states this directly: regardless of how much it corresponds to our historical trauma—a great injustice has been done to another nation. This is a key diagnosis: Israeli authorities do not heal the trauma of the Holocaust; it serves them as eternal fuel for a policy of strength, expansion, and domination.
It is this trauma, heated to boiling point, that Minister Kisch brings with him to Poland when he pins a daffodil. Not to learn, but to say: "Look what you did to us. And that is why we can now do the same." And every Pole who stands next to him with a daffodil on that day sends a signal: "We understand you, we are with you."
Buchenwald, Boehm, and the Censorship of Memory
If anyone doubts that Israeli authorities actively combat any attempt to universalize or depoliticize the memory of the Holocaust, let them look at the case of Omri Boehm, an Israeli-German philosopher. In March 2025, Boehm was invited to give a speech during the Holocaust Remembrance Day at the former Buchenwald concentration camp. The Israeli Embassy in Berlin immediately intervened, leading to the cancellation of his speech. Ambassador Ron Prosor stated that inviting Boehm was an "outrageous insult to the memory of the victims."
What was Boehm's crime? He compared the Holocaust to the Nakba—the catastrophe of Palestinians in 1948—and accused Yad Vashem of "whitewashing" racist Israeli politicians. He went further: he stated that the commemoration of the Holocaust in Israel has become a force that undermines democracy, normalizes racism, and makes political compromise impossible. He criticized Israeli school trips to extermination camps, pointing out that they serve not memory, but indoctrination.
Boehm was not canceled because he lied. He was canceled because he spoke the truth—a truth that disrupts the sacred narrative: that the Holocaust is exclusively a Jewish tragedy from which no universal conclusions should be drawn, especially those that undermine the legitimacy of Israeli policy towards Palestinians.
When you pin a daffodil on April 19th, you pin it next to people who silenced Boehm in Buchenwald. Think about whether you want to stand on the same side as those who suppress free thought.
A New Generation Sees the Truth
This mechanism, however, is beginning to crumble. In November 2025, Sarah Hurwitz, a former advisor and speechwriter in the Obama administration, delivered a shocking speech before the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. She lamented that the younger generation, instead of studying the "data, information, facts, and arguments" provided by her, prefers to watch images of the massacre in Gaza on social media—and based on that, draws conclusions catastrophic for Israel's image. Hurwitz admitted with regret that when she tries to convince young Jews of the righteousness of Israel's actions, she realizes that she is speaking "through images of dead children" and that it "sounds obscene."
"Holocaust education has turned against us," she stated, because young people learn about strong, powerful Nazis harming weak, emaciated Jews, and then on TikTok they see strong Israelis harming weak, emaciated Palestinians—and they draw the obvious conclusion that "the lesson of the Holocaust is to fight against Israel." Hurwitz did not see the irony: it is precisely this ability to empathize and universalize the lessons of the Holocaust that is the only morally consistent stance that can be drawn from it.
This observation is accurate. What the Israeli propaganda machine has been building for decades—an identity of the victim justifying any violence—is beginning to crack in the face of reality. Young Jews in the diaspora and increasingly in Israel itself see with their own eyes that what they were taught about the Holocaust—dehumanization, ghettoization, state violence—is today practiced by their own state against Palestinians. As the British philosopher Lorna Finlayson aptly commented: "The true meaning of the Holocaust, as one might infer, is not that it was bad because the strong harmed the weak, but because Jews were victims. When the victims are Black or Palestinian, it is different."
It is this awareness—that the memory of the Holocaust cannot be reserved only for one victim—that guided me when I wrote that controversial post on April 19th. Not to offend the ghetto fighters, but to say: their fight against the Nazis was just, but I will not allow their memory to become a legitimization for contemporary ghettos—and I will say this loudly, no matter how many people feel offended.
Epilogue: The Daffodil That Poisons the Ghetto
Let's return to the daffodil. This small, yellow flower is a symbol that has been stolen and hijacked by those who have no right to wear it. The Israeli ambassador to Poland has no right to wear a daffodil on behalf of a state that builds ghettos today. The Minister of Education has no right to wear it on behalf of a system that sends children to Auschwitz to teach them hatred and raise them as obedient Zionist soldiers. Similarly, all Polish politicians who show a servile attitude towards Israel and support it at every step—Sikorski, Bartoszewski, Nawrocki, Czarzasty, Jachira, and their ilk.
And the symbolism of this flower is brutally eloquent here. It is worth recalling a few facts about this plant, as it is a perfect metaphor for what those who wear it represent today.
First, the daffodil—or more precisely, the narcissus—is a completely poisonous plant. The bulbs contain the most toxin. The poisonous roots make the soil where these flowers grow contaminated—it is absolutely forbidden to plant edible plants near them, as they may absorb the poison. Isn't this a perfect image of what Israeli policy does to Palestinian land? It poisons it so that nothing can grow on it except its own deadly power. Gaza, the West Bank—this is land contaminated by occupation.
Second, if you put a narcissus in a vase with a beautiful rose, the latter will quickly wither. Similarly, Israel cannot tolerate any other independent force beside it—it destroys everything that is different, beautiful, and could stand beside it. Gaza under the Israeli boot is precisely such a rose that withers in contact with the poisonous flower.
Third, in our culture, the narcissus symbolizes vanity, egotism, self-admiration, and the inability to love. Hence the medical term "narcissism." The name of the plant comes directly from the Greek myth of Narcissus—a young man who rejected the love of the nymph Echo and was punished by the gods. He saw his reflection in the water and fell so deeply in love with himself that he could not leave, eventually dying of longing, and a flower grew on his grave. Is there a better symbol for a state so enamored with its own imagined "exceptionalism" and "trauma" that it no longer sees the suffering of others, does not hear their cries, and cannot love anyone but itself? For decades, Israel has been looking at itself in the mirror of its own victimhood, not seeing that it has become the perpetrator.
This yellow, poisonous flower is therefore not a tribute to the ghetto fighters. It is a symbol of what Israeli policy does with memory, with land, with other nations.
Norman Finkelstein, the son of Auschwitz survivors, wrote that the "Holocaust industry" must be exposed and shut down so that the dead of Auschwitz and Treblinka can finally rest in peace. Gábor Maté, a Holocaust survivor, calls for breaking the cycle of trauma that fuels violence—to heal our own wounds instead of inflicting them on others. Omri Boehm, silenced in Buchenwald, said: "Does this mean that Israel must forget to have a future? That is exactly what it means."
I do not call for forgetting. I call for memory not to become a prison. For the victims of one crime not to serve as an alibi for another. For the daffodil—this poisonous, narcissistic flower—not to cover up the ghetto. Neither the one from 1943 nor the one from 2026.
That is why I wrote that post on April 19th—and I will remind everyone of this every year until the same symbol is worn by those who build ghettos instead of commemorating them. Not to divide, but to open the eyes of those who—perhaps unconsciously—are drawn into this mechanism. So that everyone who reaches for the yellow flower asks themselves: do I really know who I am commemorating today?
The heroes of the ghetto, or their gravediggers? Or—worst of all—unconsciously, both at once?