My dear friend Jessi and I periodically visit the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich., to refresh our understanding of the Holocaust, and to inform ourselves about the power of prejudice.
On our most recent visit, our guide began his tour by removing a giant tome from a pedestal in the center’s lobby. Walking it slowly through our group, he explained why the book was so large: It contained all 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, each recalled simply, line after line, page after page, as “Jew.”
The book, which we had never seen on previous visits to the center, was a poignant, breathtaking reminder that there will always be more to learn about the Holocaust.
Since taking office in 2019, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., whose 13th congressional district lies moments away from the center’s campus, has made several disconcerting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements while reinforcing her commitment to anti-Israel causes. Her latest self-serving attempt to reframe the historical role Palestinians played in the post-Holocaust creation of Israel has posed a direct challenge to the Holocaust Memorial Center’s mission “to engage, to educate, and to empower by remembering the Holocaust.”
The Palestinian American Tlaib said on a podcast that the Holocaust gave her a “calming feeling” that her Palestinian ancestors had “provided that right” for Jews to have a “safe haven” in Israel after the Holocaust, though it had caused them to lose “their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, [and] their existence in many ways.”
Though commentators like the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein had already debunked Tlaib’s flawed history, I reached out to the center with questions within their mandate about how to counter the congresswoman’s misinformation and her anti-Semitic statements.
Rather than answer, the center requested I contact Michigan leaders at the Anti-Defamation League or Jewish Community Relations Council.
The ADL provided a copy of its official statement about Tlaib’s remarks. While correcting Tlaib’s misstatements, they also condemned Republican attempts to correct the congresswoman as “weaponiz[ing]” the Holocaust.
With regard to @RashidaTlaib‘s comments, 3 things can be true at the same time:
1) When any public figure makes comments about deeply sensitive issues, such as the horrors of the Holocaust, that are inaccurate or misinterpreted, it’s appropriate to clarify/correct their remarks. https://t.co/xTUZts6krs
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) May 13, 2019
3) Nevertheless, it is not acceptable for elected leaders to weaponize others’ comments about Jews or the Holocaust for political gain. To move forward in fighting #antiSemitism, we must end the blame game. https://t.co/KCcCf5dzgf
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) May 13, 2019
Increasingly throughout the past three years, as Americans have viewed current events through a lens heavily colored by their political identities, the Holocaust has become a part of our political dialogue. Unfortunately, the era is rarely addressed with the context required to acknowledge and honor its weight and trauma, but rather with a lightness which is incongruous with the tragedy of its 11 million victims.
Tlaib’s approach of spreading misinformation about the era to pursue a personal political agenda, and her subsequent attacks on those who seek to correct her, marks a new and disgusting low in political discourse surrounding the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.
In the last seven months, white nationalists carried out deadly anti-Semitic shootings on two American synagogues and temples. Two days before, and two days after the latest attack in Poway, Calif., the New York Times’ international edition published anti-Israel cartoons with anti-Semitic tropes. Between 2017 and 2018, the Anti-Defamation League recorded a 105% increase in “physical assaults against Jewish individuals.”
At this juncture of American history, with a communal tendency to talk around, rather than about, the Holocaust, and as politicians who speak out are slammed for “weaponizing” the period, we desperately need groups like the Holocaust Memorial Center to provide measured input.
On our most recent tour, Jessi and I found that the center’s docents were not afraid to weigh in on current political issues.
When we toured in January 2019, our guide gave a first-rate exploration of the center and the history of the Holocaust. However, he passed the history through his personal political lens, peppering the tour with one-sided commentary about the migrant caravans approaching our southern border.
The inappropriate diatribe did not detract from our experience. Jessi and I visit the Holocaust Memorial Center not because we are conservative, but because we are human beings who seek to understand how pseudoscience and hatred launched a terrible genocide.
Our visits are not taken lightly. I return out of a commitment made when I was a child first trying to comprehend that horrible history. Jessi’s visits come at great emotional cost. Her great-aunt’s family perished during the Holocaust, and the period has had a permanent effect on the people she loves dearly.
One of the last exhibits at the Holocaust Memorial Center is a diorama of Auschwitz, surrounded by larger-than-life photographs of a transport of victims newly arrived at the death camp. As our tour guide explained that the photograph showed the final hours spent by harmless people before they were led to their undeserved deaths in the gas chambers, Jessi began to cry. I grabbed her hand, and we stood together in the discomfort of recalling the tremendous horrors of that past.
The Holocaust Memorial Center stands not to be political, but to educate the public about a terrible period of history. However, when American politicians or commentators muddle the truth, and heated political debates ensue, educational organizations should stand apart from the fray to present the facts, absent of blame or shame. If such organizations stand on the sidelines as hatred rises and that vital history is misrepresented, Americans will continue to find themselves engaging one another with the very prejudice, hatred, and false facts which once paved the way for the murder of 11 million people.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area. Jessi Levine contributed to this piece.
