Leadership Quote by Eliot Engel

“Nearly 6 decades after” is doing quiet but forceful work here: it turns time itself into an accusation. Engel isn’t merely noting that anti-Semitism persists; he’s framing its survival as a moral failure of the postwar order that promised “never again” and then, in practice, kept rediscovering the same hatred under new disguises.

Calling anti-Semitism “the scourge of the world” is classic political amplification, but it also signals intent. Engel is broadening the stakes beyond Jewish safety alone, positioning anti-Semitism as a diagnostic for a society’s overall democratic health. The subtext: if a culture tolerates this old, well-documented prejudice even after the most extensively recorded atrocity in modern history, then no minority’s security is guaranteed. It’s a warning dressed as remembrance.

The line also carries an American legislative cadence. Engel, a long-serving member of Congress known for strong pro-Israel advocacy and human-rights rhetoric, is speaking into a late-20th/early-21st-century context where Holocaust memory has become institutionalized (museums, curricula, commemorations) even as hate crimes and conspiracy thinking periodically spike. The choice of “Holocaust concluded” emphasizes historical closure while underscoring contemporary continuity: the machinery stopped; the idea didn’t.

There’s a strategic universality here, too. By presenting anti-Semitism as a global affliction, Engel invites coalition politics and justifies policy attention, implying that combating it isn’t parochial interest but civic duty with international consequences.