Never forget? I bet you will

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist Monday, September 21, 2026

“Never forget.”

You heard that a lot this past September 11th, and all the prior ones as well, since the U.S. terrorist attacks that occurred on that date. The words are meant to remind us that nearly 3,000 innocent people were murdered on September 11, 2001, with the hope that the who/what/why of the event never fades from our collective memory.

Unfortunately, it already is.

The historical facts of what happened aren’t complicated. Islamist terrorists associated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes. Nineteen hijackers carried out the attacks, killing 2,977 people. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the plot, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed identified by U.S. authorities as its principal architect.

But no one will know those facts if some get their way.

For example, a Fairfax County, Virginia, school guide reportedly instructed teachers not to “associate the 9/11 attacks with Islam or Muslims” and not to “center the extremists or the acts of extremists.” The guide also reportedly omitted the names of Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

So, let’s remember the date but rewrite the history; remember the victims but don’t name their murderers; remember the tragedy but remove the ideology that motivated it.

Thankfully, some aren’t having it. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch blasted 9/11 revisionists at the unveiling of the new 9/11 memorial, saying: “Preserving that history also means preserving its moral clarity.”

Bravo Jessica. Kudos also to Bill Maher for ripping media outlets for deliberately refusing to use the word “terrorism” to describe what happened.

If you think I’m making mountains out of molehills here, then please step back for a moment and ask yourself if there are any parallels with the 9/11 “forgetting” and another, larger-scale tragedy.

Following WWII, “Never Forget” and “Never Again” became moral imperatives raised by writers like Nazi survivor Elie Wiesel and global communities at large to keep attention on the Holocaust and ensure its true history stayed alive. And for a while, it worked.

But flash forward to today, and what’s staring us in the face? Antisemitism is flourishing in both its old forms and some new ones.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, 2024 saw 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States, the highest annual total in the organization's history at that time. In 2025, the overall number fell to 6,274, but that was still the third-highest annual total ever recorded, while physical assaults reached a record high. Modern-day Nazis also feel comfortable coming out of the closet and fully displaying their bigotry.  

So much for “never forget.”

Realize that the kind of forgetting behind 9/11 and the Holocaust begins subtly. First, the facts are ignored or deliberately omitted via certain agendas. Then the lessons go out the window. Lastly, the attitudes that produced the tragedy in the first place are normalized or insanely rationalized (“they deserved it!”).

Then, before you know it, similar tragedies are repeated again and again. And it all happens because of an even greater kind of “forgetting.”

Forgetting God

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn identified the cause of our primary, reckless amnesia years ago in a speech discussing 20th century atrocities that many call “The Great Forgetting”: “Today’s world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to preceding centuries, would have called forth the cry: “This is the Apocalypse!” Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it … we have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

Scripture warns countless times about forgetting God and what happens when we do. The biblical pattern is there for all to read: God blesses, people become comfortable, people forget God, turn away, and rebellion follows.

For example, God warned ancient Israel: “Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Deut. 8:11–14).

You probably know the story; it happened just like God said. Hosea tells us: “As they had their pasture, they became satisfied, and being satisfied, their heart became proud; therefore they forgot Me” (Hosea 13:6). Satisfaction, prosperity, comfort, and time can make us forget that “every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

Perhaps the one warning about forgetting that convicts me the most comes in the New Testament from Jesus, who, in Revelation, praises the Ephesian church for several things but then says: “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore, remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first” (Rev. 2:4–5).

Does that sting you just a little bit too?

It should. “Never forget” where God is concerned is ultimately not a slogan — it’s a warning against spiritual rebellion.

Let’s learn from what we’re seeing right now with 9/11 and the rise again of Jewish hatred. We forget historical atrocities, and eventually we forget their lessons. We forget the evil, and eventually we become vulnerable to it again.

Never forget? I bet you will.

Unless you deliberately make yourself remember. And recall, like what Solzhenitsyn said, not only the truth of history but the one who warns us that all the evil we see will happen again and again if we forget Him.