AUSCHWITZ — The 31st annual March of the Living took place this year in a context that made the lessons of the Holocaust more urgent than ever.

Five days before the procession, in which survivors walked the three kilometers from the gates of Auschwitz to the memorial plaza in Birkenau, a gunman attacked a synagogue in California. And just a week ago, the New York Times ran an antisemitic cartoon whose themes evoked standard Nazi propaganda.

The youth delegation at the March of the Living — hundreds of activists from around the world — prepared and read an ambitious declaration on fighting antisemitism.

I spoke to the young leaders as they drafted the document. They see fighting antisemitism as part of a broader mission to improve the world: “We have thenotoriously difficult to obtain.

The story of the synagogue shooting in Poway, California, is one of extraordinary heroism: the self-sacrifice of Lori Gilbert Kaye, the woman who took a bullet for her rabbi; the bravery of Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who moved the children to safety while suffering from serious wounds; the courage of Almog Peretz, a visiting Israeli who helped save the children; the determination of his niece, eight-year-old Noya Dahan, wounded by shrapnel, who insisted on smiling for photos from her hospital bed; the quick thinking of Iraq War veteran Oscar Stewart, who chased the gunman; the bold actions of off-duty Border Patrol officer Jonathan Morales, who returned fire; and on and on.

But there is another aspect that has largely been neglected: namely, that the gun Morales used,