Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC)
The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education Expresses Disappointment over White House Comments on the United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The date selected for the UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day was January 27, which marks the liberation of the Auschwitz Death Camp. That discovery set into motion the outcry and horror of the systematic genocide of the Jews in Nazi Europe. Nearly a million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz alone, and there are no graves or memorial sites for the victims. This was the ultimate insult by the Nazis who wanted to deprive their victims of any identity or uniqueness.
Therefore, we were extremely disappointed that the White House’s statement recognizing the UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day intentionally lacked any mention of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Instead, it was a generic statement acknowledging the suffering of many during a dark time in modern history.
In defense, the administration claimed that they didn’t want to mention any specific group as they wanted to be “inclusionary” in their remarks. But this defense falls short of reality, as the Nazi regime was not inclusionary in their agenda. The so called “final solution,” the intent to annihilate the Jews from Germany, Europe and for all intents and purposes, the world, was not inclusionary! It was very specific; it was most definitely about the Jews. To universalize it to “all those who suffered” is to void the Holocaust of its intended consequences and its meaning.
Elie Wiesel said “not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.” There is no question that the Nazis targeted, persecuted and murdered Poles, Slavs, Homosexuals, Roma, Sinti, Jehovah Witnesses, the disabled, Soviet POW’s, political prisoners and others. However, only the Jews were targeted for extinction. While we must include the tapestry of victims in the Holocaust narrative, we cannot allow the particular Jewish experience to simply be remembered as part of a universal narrative. Removing specificity removes responsibility from the majority and begins to rewrite the historical narrative.
