A memorial to Jewish children murdered by the Nazis, at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, April 11, 2011. Photo: Avishai Teicher via Wikimedia Commons.

Israel’s national memorial to the Nazi Holocaust has emphasized the importance of educational initiatives to combat antisemitism, in a statement mourning Tuesday’s gun attack on a kosher supermarket in Jersey City in which three people and a police officer were murdered.

The Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial — which commemorates the six million Jews slain by the Nazis, along with the thousands of non-Jews who protected their Jewish neighbors — said it had been “saddened by the shooting attack in Jersey City, New Jersey on Tuesday, which claimed innocent lives of Jews and non-Jews alike.”

Yad Vashem pledged that it would “continue to urge local, national and international authorities to make concerted efforts to uproot antisemitism and protect Jewish communities worldwide.”

These efforts would take added significance in the context of the “forthcoming 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and the UN-sanctioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is dedicated to commemorating the memory of the six million men, women and children murdered for being Jewish,” the statement continued.

Avner Shalev — Yad Vashem’s chairman — said that the attack in Jersey City exposed the violent nature of antisemitism.

“Blaming this attack on the presence of Jews in the city is yet another sign that age-old antisemitic tropes still plague our society, and the violence that invariably ensues from antisemitic rhetoric affects everybody,” Shalev said. “This underscores the urgent need for expanding educational initiatives that combat antisemitism and other forms of racism.”