Yom HaShoah: This is why we remember

 

I would like to welcome you all to our annual Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Memorial service.  For 25 years, our synagogue has conducted our own Yom HaShoah commemoration to remember the victims of the holocaust, to reaffirm our commitment to Jewish life, and carry on the tradition that the Nazis sought to destroy.

In the past two weeks there have been a variety of new stories where references to the Holocaust, or the use of Holocaust imagery has been used to score political points regarding current issues. Perhaps you saw or read about some of them. Representative Madison Cawthorne of North Carolina compared the idea of vaccine passports to the laws of Nazi Germany. Others have invoked the yellow stars of David that the Nazis forced Jews to wear to voice their opposition to such policies. Representative Cawthorne even made the following comments “proposals like these smack of 1940s Nazi Germany. We must make every effort to keep America from becoming a show your papers society.”

Even Richard Grenell, a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council recently tweeted a meme showing a Nazi officer in the Quentin Tarantino film Inglorious Bastard’s saying “you are hiding unvaccinated people under your floorboards, aren’t you? “You didn’t have to see the original movie to know that in the actual movie, the people who were being hidden under floorboards were Jews.

Now there might be those who think that I’m taking pot shots at the far right.  You’d be wrong. Because the insincere and disrespectful use of Holocaust imagery and the suffering of the Jewish people is not only the province of the far right. You find it on the far left as well.  You may recall that two years ago, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, called the conditions at the southern border a concentration camp, and, when many criticized her choice of words, there were Jewish organizations that defended her. And I could go on and on and on. The antiabortion movement in this country calls abortion a holocaust, and the doctors who conduct a procedure Nazis.  PETA, the loathsome animal rights organization once compared the slaughter of 6 billion chickens to the murder of 6 million Jews. And in perhaps the most criminal misuse of the Holocaust and its sacred symbols and images, the murderous and vile PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and Hamas and their supporters routinely call Israel and Israelis Nazis, and compare the current conditions of the Palestinian people to those of Jews during World War II.  And it’s particularly galling when one considers that very charters of these organizations contain language that apes that of the Nuremberg laws, and leave no doubt as to their actual intentions regarding Jews. And this approach is characteristic of European leftist politicians, and even the radical segment of the American Jewish community that has foolishly and irresponsibly abandoned Israel.  

That’s why we must take a moment every year to think about the Holocaust.  For in this way we not only remember those who suffered but also guard their memory from those who would misuse it.  In this way, we are doing our small part to ensure that the story of their sacrifice and heroism is never forgotten, never distorted, and never cheapened by people who care so little for truth.  We owe that to the generation that suffered, and the ones that will follow us. For as our rabbis have taught us, in remembering, there is redemption    

 

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