Millions of Israelis stood in silence today, as 10 a.m. marked Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day. In Poland, thousands of Jews commemorated the day by touring Auschwitz. In the U.S., it is Holocaust Days of Remembrance from April 15-22.
About half the world’s 500,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel, and they are dying at a rate of 2,000 a month. In the not so distant future, we will be living in a world without witnesses to one of man’s greatest atrocities.
But we will likely be stuck with those willing to compare themselves to the victims.
Comparing ones own travails to the plight of Holocaust victims has continued to be in vogue, especially amongst some prominent Americans whose lives couldn’t be any more different than those who were brutally enslaved, tortured and murdered for merely existing.
Tom DeLay is adamant that he believes his treatment – for breaking campaign finance laws – equates him with Holocaust victims:
I am so outraged by this whole criminalization of politics. It’s not good enough to defeat somebody politically. It’s not even good enough to vilify somebody publicly. They have to carpet bomb you with lies and made up scandals and false charges and indicting you on laws that don’t exist. … It’s the same thing as I say in my book, that the Nazis used. When you use the big lie in order to gain and maintain power, it is immoral and it is outrageous…
It’s the same process. It’s the same criminalization of politics. it’s the same oppression of people. It’s the same destroy people in order to gain power. It may be six million Jews. it may be indicting somebody on laws that don’t exist. But, it’s the same philosophy and it’s the same world view.
And former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore has no problem equating those against his push for a theocratic United States with Nazis:
As America and other nations try to “set themselves” against the laws of God, we increase the risk of repeating the lessons of history. When our thoughts turn toward the horrors of the Holocaust this weekend, let us not forget that the Nazis at Nuremberg were held accountable because of the higher law of God to which all nations, at all times, are subject.
Those like DeLay and Moore who are quick to accuse others of Nazi-like atrocities and try to paint themselves into the narrative of Holocaust survivor are not only showing a basic ignorance and narcissism for comparing their plight to the slaughter of millions, but also making a firm stand to deny what Holocaust Days of Remembrance is about.
As Manfred Gerstenfeld wrote in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post (Courtesy Yid with Lid):
Yet another category is the trivialization of Holocaust memory in recent years. This manifests itself in applications of language relating the industrialized murder of the Jews to other matters – transgressions of international law, environmental problems, abortion and animal slaughter – which bear no similarity to this genocide.
If a day to remember the Holocaust is anything, it’s a chance to remember the actors in that insidious play. The story has been told many times, including in such books as Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” In such works you can find the true stories of what those in the Holocaust suffered.
To insert oneself into the Holocaust narrative is narcissistic to the point of being inhuman. But while the DeLays, Moores and other footnotes of modern politics will always try and insinuate their insignificant acts into the Holocaust, we are still a world that has actual survivors of those horrifying times.
So while we still can, the best way to remember the Holocaust is by listening to the stories of those who lived through it. And to ignore and disparage those wishing to compare their plight to a genocide.
–WKW
Crossposted at Williamkwolfrum.com
Shakesville 
Thanks for this post, Wolfrum.
true stories of what those in the Holocaust suffered
As I’ve mentioned before, I worked for many years for a Holocaust survivor, who spent part of his childhood in a concentration camp. He indulged my many questions.
When I was 22, I was part of a group of anthropologists who interviewed the elderly residents of a Jewish nursing home just outside Chicago. I spoke to a woman who had survived the Holocaust, who held out her tattooed arm for me to touch. She indulged my many questions.
When I was 18, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by a survivor of Auschwitz, a friend of one of my professors. After his lecture, I stayed behind, and he indulged my many questions.
Nothing in my experience comes close to theirs.
They each warned how easy it was for the horror to happen; I have to think casually allowing others to steal their experience for disproportionate comparison and thusly, inevitably, minimize it, is one of the ways such a horror could happen again. So easily.
I think that better education about what the Holocaust really entailed would go a long way to stopping these false comparisons. It seems to me that the textbook versions that get taught in high schools only cover the basics. Students really ought to be exposed to the writings by survivors like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, and to accounts of just what the soldiers and general populace did to carry it out. The point of the exercise is not to guilt, but to educate, to teach respect, and to make sure this does not happen again.
Thanks for this post.
My parents are holocaust survivors so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about this. I think one of the problems, besides general ignorance, is that the scale and depth of atrocity and dehumanization were so great that most people are unable (or unwilling) to understand the enormity of the holocaust. They can’t see the vast difference in scope when they make these comparisons.
However – DeLay is just an ass. He’s comparing political hardball to the holocaust? His narcisism prevents him from understanding the plight of anyone beside himself.
As for education – two great sources are the U.S. Holocaust Museum (not just for holocaust education, but their activism on current day crises like Darfur) and the national curriculum progrm Facing History and Ourselves.
As opposed to a REAL (modern) holocaust, as in Darfur…
This reminds me of a comment by a white Alabama state senator who said that he and his father were slaves because they were poor cotton farmers in Arkansas. To have the temerity to make such a claim betrays a lack of understanding and compassion that is almost unbelievable.
And Tom DeLay is an egotistical ass.
Thanks for this post, Wolfrum.
It’s been really good, today, to find several posts around which don’t do the too-ubiquitous ‘why should we care about a bunch of old Jews when Darfur is happening’ divisive/dismissive thing, but instead to find honoring/honorable remembrances paired with people referring readers to Holocaust memorial and education organizations doing present-day genocide awareness & prevention activism.
My addition to the work of USHM sari noted above is a small organization I found while teaching at KSC for a semester: The Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies – excellent activism and education, historic information, interviews, speakers, and rare archives, action alerts on Darfur, all around good organization.
For those interested in further thought along the lines of this post, I recommend reading James Young’s “Writing and Re-Writing the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation” and “The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning.”
Both books are profound examinations of the ethics of representation, comparison, and Holocaust-as-metaphor.
Young’s analyses of the ethical issues of representation and language have also helped me articulate feminist analysis in new ways. Very brilliant, ethical, compassionate and fierce stuff.
One more remembrance resource to pass along:
I did an undergraduate thesis years ago in Salonica and had the opportunity to interview some (few, rapidly aging) survivors there. The stories are disappearing fast now, as Wolfrum says –
While in Greece, I found a cookbook which remains, after thousands of pages of reading, hundreds of conversations, years of research in two countries and online, etc., the single most moving tribute to and historic preservation of, a truly vanished culture (Northern Greek Sephardim) –
“Cookbook of the Jews of Greece” by Nicholas Stavroulakis. Published in Greece by Lycabettus Press, in the U.S. by Cadmus Press.
It’s not solely about the Sephardim, and not directly about the Sho’ah. But in it is the daily, monthly, yearly cycle of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in Greece; the spices, the holiday-specific traditions, the music, and the living taste, via the recipes, of daily loves otherwise destroyed.
Thanks for the post, Wolfrum. Really appalling. This year I centered my Holocaust Remembrance post on the poetry of Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo.
I’ll second Sari’s recs about both the U.S. Holocaust Museum in D.C. and Facing History and Ourselves. I mentioned both in my post last year, which mentioned a number of books, films and music related to the Holocaust. More recs are always welcome (thanks, Theriomorph).
Charlotte Delbo’s “Days and Memory” is astonishing in every way, too – I love her work so much.
It’s been really good, today, to find several posts around which don’t do the too-ubiquitous “˜why should we care about a bunch of old Jews when Darfur is happening’ divisive/dismissive thing, but instead to find honoring/honorable remembrances paired with people referring readers to Holocaust memorial and education organizations doing present-day genocide awareness & prevention activism.
Exactly…And I think that if more people today were actually aware of what happened during the Holocaust and how horrible it was, they’d have more sympathy for those dying in Darfur and other present-day genocides. It’s no coincidence that in a world where people trivialize the Holocaust, they’ll also ignore Darfur.
Just wanted to add that one of the professors who died at Virginia Tech was a Holocaust survivor. He was shot to death interposing himself between his students and the shooter.
Which just goes to show that having survived great evil does not render you incapable of performing acts of great good.
Delay isn’t fit to dig this man’s grave.
As someone whose family photo albums are filled with Holocaust victims, thank you for this.
Hearing about the Holocaust survivor who died at VT filled my heart with pain. To survive such a horror only to be murdered senselessly. Days like this, I sometimes feel like giving up.