May 2026
He described police standing by as Jews were beaten and killed, and later actively participating in deportations. The uniformed state had shifted from indifference to instrument of terror.
But Hall also offered a counterexample: a trolley conductor who disguised him as his son and walked him out of the Warsaw Ghetto. Authority, Hall’ s story suggested, can enable cruelty— or courage.
When the police become the system
That contrast echoed in the reflections of Jochen Kopelke, chair of the Gewerkschaft der Polizei( German Police Union), representing more than 200,000 German police officers.“ Nobody could call the police, because the police were the system,” he said.
Kopelke pointed to Police Battalion 101 as a case study in how ordinary officers become agents of extraordinary violence. The issue, he argued, is not only ideology but culture: how brutality becomes imaginable, then routine, then procedural.
The program forced participants to see Auschwitz not as distant history, but as a lens for contemporary threats in Washington, D. C., Manchester, Bondi Beach, and beyond.
“ We have to be more than police,” Kopelke said.“ We have to be human beings with values.”
Rebuilding trust between police and community That ethos carried through the delegation.
At several points during the march, the connection between police and citizenry became tangible. Young participants, marchers from the officers’ jurisdictions, and descendants of survivors approached officers along the route. They warmly greeted, thanked, and posed for pictures with them. In those moments, the distance between uniform and community melted, replaced by recognition, trust, and a shared understanding of responsibility.
Moved by the spontaneous attention from the crowd, David Rausch, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, affirmed that“ Police are not an arm of any government. We are the keepers of safety in society.”
Similarly touched by the support and what she witnessed in the Auschwitz exhibits, Tasha Bryant, assistant chief in Washington, D. C., put it more directly:“ We must always practice just and constitutional policing.”
For Bryant, the experience reinforced a forward-looking responsibility:“ We are now the gatekeepers for those voices.”
Sheriff Jim Skinner of Collin County, Texas, who commanded his share of attention from photo seekers, connected the lessons of the Holocaust to the modern threat environment.
For his part, National Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Justin Smith emphasized culture: building organizations where such abuses are unthinkable.
A threat environment that starts before violence That culture-before-crisis framing was central to the program’ s design. Its impact was not just educational. It was operational.
Today’ s threat environment made that clear.
Yoni Finlay, who survived a synagogue shooting in Manchester on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews, warned that antisemitism does not begin with violence.“ It isn’ t confined to words,” he said.
The attack that nearly killed him emerged from a broader ecosystem of rhetoric, online amplification, and normalization. That’ s where grievance, identity, and hate can scale long before violence occurs.
“ This is not only about antisemitism,” Goldenberg noted.“ It is about the broader protection of fundamental freedoms. It’ s the ability of communities to assemble, to pray, and to safely attend houses of worship without fear.” Marc Spigel, of the Wellfleet( Cape Cod) Police Department, distilled the fragility of civil order:“ Everything was normal. And then it wasn’ t.”
Across countries and contexts, the lesson was consistent: democratic order is more fragile than it appears, and policing plays a central role in sustaining it.
What prevention looks like in practice
If the earlier phases of the program confronted history, its final effect was more practical: forcing leaders to define what“ Never Again” requires in their own agencies.
For Prefect Valko Vaher of Estonia, the answer begins with training and community-based policing, anchored in prevention. Officers, he argued, must understand the communities they serve— and that responsibility cannot be siloed. It must extend from patrol to leadership.
He also pointed to a gap in digital engagement. Many agencies communicate online, but few truly interact where communities are active.
Continued on page 18
New Jersey Police Chief Magazine / 10