Jan. 27, the anniversary of the day Soviet soldiers entered the gates of Auschwitz death camp in 1945, has been designated as the annual International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. The United Nations, which will convene a solemn ceremony at its world headquarters, features on its website this statement by Holocaust survivor and scholar Professor Nechama Tec: “The Holocaust teaches us that no matter how oppressive life is, some people are able to rise above the cruelty of their times by extending helping hands to one another. It is this ability to risk one’s life on behalf of others which ought to give us hope.”
In our own troubled times — when conditions, though bad, are nowhere near as bad as the Holocaust — it is time for the international community to go beyond the annual moment of silence on behalf of Hitler’s victims by unambiguously speaking out against the multiplying global anti-Semitism — including Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism masquerading as “anti-Zionism” — that is becoming more and more prevalent. Some examples:
• While the world’s diplomats line up to court the electorally victorious, supposedly “moderate” Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the group’s first move was to block Jewish prayers at the graveside of a saintly scholar. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s Arabic language webpages tout Holocaust denial while a spokesmen observes Holocaust Remembrance Day by declaring that the Shoah is “a tale” exploited for politics and that “the entire world, and Germany in particular, has become yearly scapegoats of world Zionism and has capitulated to the greatest political extortion in history.” No western democracy has condemned the Brotherhood’s religious intolerance.
• Libya’s new “Arab Spring” government refused to allow David Gerbi, exiled to Italy at age 12 after the 1967 Six Day War, to clean the long-closed Tripoli synagogue and rehabilitate the Jewish cemetery. None of the western governments, who helped remove Gadhafi from power, raised a voice to help Gerbi on his humanitarian quest.
• As EU members prepared to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Dutch government rejects calls for an apology for Holland’s “indifference” to the fate of over 100,000 Jews — 75 percent of Dutch Jewish citizens — murdered in the Holocaust.
• In Latvia, a Riga court removed the city council’s ban on Legion Day, paving the way for a march in the city center honoring 140,000 Latvians who fought in the Waffen SS during World War II.
• In Lithuania, authorities pay lip service to the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry during the Holocaust but rewrite the historic narrative of World War II to deny any collaboration by Lithuanians in the mass murder of more than 90 percent of their Jewish neighbors.
• London School of Economics students chose Nazi-themed drinking songs. A Jewish student had his nose broken for daring to protest, leading an activist group to label the LSE “a campus conducive to intolerance and anti-Semitism.”
• “Hitler chic” continues to manifest in fashion, music, advertising campaigns and even school competitions across Asia from Japan to Thailand to India.
• The Friends Seminary in New York refuses to withdraw an invitation to musician-turned-polemicist Gilad Atzmon, whose book, “The Wandering Who?” argues the Holocaust “was not at all a historical narrative,” Auschwitz was not a “death camp,” “accusations of Jews making matzo out of young Goyim’s blood” may be true and “Hitler might have been right after all.”
• While international action is belatedly launched to head off Iran’s nuclear ambitions, no government or non-governmental organization has tried to drag Tehran to the Hague for its state-sponsored Holocaust denial, its drumbeat of pre-genocidal anti-Jewish and anti-Judaic rants, websites and its recent TV show “Saturday Hunter,” whose loathing of Jews and Judaism would have made Hitler weep tears of joy.
• Then there is Germany; the nation that ’til this day struggles with the legacy of hate left by Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich. Bad news abounds on multiple fronts as a just-released report commissioned for the Bundestag acknowledges that anti-Semitism remains deeply embedded in Germany society, not only among the far-right and Islamist extremists but also the public at large. From Holocaust denial online to chants of “Jews to the gas chambers” at soccer games, to denial of Israel’s right to exist by increasingly radicalized Islamists, Wolfgang Thierse, vice president of the German Parliament, hit the nail on the head when he told Der Speigel “the problem is not a question of a few selective issues but is long-standing and chronic.”
What do these diverse examples have in common? Silence and indifference. Too many diplomats, media and respected ethical voices fall silent when those targeted for hate are Jews.
Despite the fact that hatred targeting Jews and Judaism remain disproportionately high, in 2012, Jewish victims are not deemed worthy of moral solidarity. Yet history confirms, again and again, that unchallenged anti-Semitic libels ultimately ignite anti-Jewish acts.
This International Holocaust Memorial Day will have meaning if those who take the time to stand in silence for 6 million dead Jews will begin to speak up in defense of embattled live Jews.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Dr. Harold Brackman, a historian, is a consultant to the Wiesenthal Center.
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