When a Holocaust Survivor Is Silenced Online

Before October 7th, a Holocaust Survivor Found a Home Online

At ninety, Gidon’s days revolve around small domestic rituals, the kinds of adjustments age quietly demands. Mine do too, now that TikTok is behind us.

When Gidon tells his Holocaust story publicly, he often begins with the same line: he didn’t speak about it for forty years. That was the atmosphere of the time—you worked, you moved forward, you didn’t dwell on trauma. Survivors didn’t yet have the language for it, and Gidon was no exception.

He first spoke about Theresienstadt to visiting German students in the mid-1970s, surprised by the depth of their curiosity. After that, he mostly put the story away again until we wrote The True Adventures of Gidon Lev. Even then, he resisted centering the Holocaust. His life, as he insists, is what he built afterward.

We’ve been together almost nine years, something that surprised everyone, including us. I never imagined I would become the person helping a Holocaust survivor tell his story. To me, Gidon is simply Gidon—mischievous, stubborn, funny—the love of my life, not a symbol. And yet, while we were living our lives, I found myself helping ensure people understood what he had lived through.

How the TikTok Platform Elevated Gidon’s Voice

TikTok wasn’t planned. It just happened. One day we posted a video; soon there were thousands of comments. People weren’t responding to tragedy—they were responding to Gidon’s humor, warmth, and the lightness with which he could speak about something unimaginably dark. Between his storytelling and my editing, we found a rhythm.

I was learning in real time how TikTok handled sensitive history, how hate groups coordinated in comments, how reporting systems sometimes failed. I shared what I observed with people studying online antisemitism. None of it was abstract.

For Gidon, the platform was deeply validating. We made videos about his childhood and about everyday life. That mix—gravity and playfulness—helped the account grow. Soon he was one of the most visible Holocaust survivors online. Articles in multiple languages. Messages from teachers and teenagers. Gratitude from strangers.

For a man whose early life was defined by erasure, being seen so intensely was powerful.

The Harassment Wave After October 7th

Then came October 7th. Within hours, Jewish creators were hit by a coordinated wave of harassment calling itself “Operation Watermelon.” The pattern was unmistakable: mass-posted comments, synchronized attacks, unceasing hostility. Our videos—whether about Theresienstadt or mashed potatoes—filled with accusations of genocide and slogans pasted by accounts that had never interacted with us before.

Under normal circumstances it would have been rattling. But we were living under rocket fire near Tel Aviv, navigating sirens, uncertainty, shock. I tried to contextualize, explain, reply. It didn’t matter. The harassment was engineered to overwhelm. And it did.

Eventually, I stopped posting—not because I wanted to, but because the emotional cost became unsustainable. I shielded Gidon from the worst of it. I didn’t want his life’s story drowned out by people screaming at him for being Jewish.

But the outcome is what it is: a Holocaust survivor was silenced by people convinced they were acting in the name of justice.

Health Scares and a Shift in Visibility

The months that followed brought their own emergencies. Gidon had two serious health scares. An end-of-life doula even came to sit with him in the garden, talking as fighter jets passed overhead, before saying gently that Gidon was “not ready to go.”

He was right. But Gidon tired more easily. His focus drifted. Putting him back in front of a camera felt wrong. I didn’t want him to feel obligated to perform.

Before October 7th, a Holocaust survivor was someone to be respected. After October 7th, Gidon’s experience was weaponized against him. In the fevered online conversation, soaked in antizionism, Holocaust education became recast as offensive. Gidon wasn’t treated as a victim of genocide; he was recategorized as a perpetrator.

He was effectively canceled.And now there is one fewer Holocaust survivor telling their story.

What This Moment Means — and Why I’m Writing It Down

Later, as Gidon settles in to watch a show of old Israeli songs, I stand in the kitchen and think: How do I document this moment, when a Holocaust survivor—eighty years after the horror—is fair game for people who truly believed they were doing something righteous?

I suppose I’ll start right here, right now.