It’s Not Ours, But It’s Vital

Nine years ago, I was engaged in a discussion with a colleague about the utility of the January 27th International Holocaust Memorial Day which is observed on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. At the time, I was remarking on what looked to me like a misdirection of focus. I wrote:

“It's not my Holocaust Memorial Day, dear world, it's yours. Mine is every day; or, at least, on a day chosen religiously, like Tisha B'av, or nationally, like Yom Hashoah. Chosen. By Us. And we will draw the necessary conclusions from our national experience, from our history. No. Today is about YOU. Europe, UN, Canada, US, it's about what YOU learn from our horrific experience and loss. Or, as it seems more apt, it's about what you haven't learned, what you quickly forget, and what you are prepared to countenance among others with murderous and hateful agendas. I hope that some of you will pardon our low expectations…Scholars of the ten commandments will know that the corollary of Zachor - remembrance, is Shamor - guard and observe.We will always remember, and never drop our guard.”

I can think of no year where these thoughts have been more true than this one. I cannot and do not approach this day with the same thoughts or feelings I have on our designated days of mourning and loss, to which we have added October 7th/Shemini Atzeret. I’ve also come to a conclusion which I have shared here before and very deeply believe: Antisemitism does not and will not diminish until it becomes more costly to act in an antisemitic way (or countenance antisemitism in one’s role) than to leave us alone. And yet, I also cannot absolve any nation or organization of their responsibility to learn lessons from the Holocaust.

It is with this responsibility in mind that Jewish communities across the world developed incredibly well thought out and powerful Holocaust Museums. We have one of the best, right here in Rockland, the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance & Education located at the RCC campus. Museums like these that bring in thousands of schoolchildren every year and guide them through the exhibits while also providing ongoing educational opportunities as well as crisis intervention play a vital role in sharing the external and eternal lessons of these consequences of hate.

There is a challenge, though, that has troubled me, and that troubled one of American Jewry’s clearest voices on antisemitism, Dara Horn -author of People Love Dead Jews- so much that she wrote a long essay about it. Horn conducted a lengthy study of Holocaust Museums across the US. She came to the conclusion that at many of them, the educational aspect was aimed at youth who while they came out convinced that had they been in Europe at the time of the Holocaust they would have been ‘upstanders’ now that they had the understanding provided to them. But Horn discovered something else.

Few if any of these young people learned that they could and would engage with living, breathing Jews and Jewish communities all across America, and few if any of them connected the confidence of being an upstander with any understanding of those Jewish communities, the threats they face, the prejudices surrounding them, and assumptions made (by the very generation being educated) about Jewish identity and distinctiveness.

There is no better proof that Horn was unfortunately right, than to see what has been countenanced and what has become of a generation of young Americans since 10/7.

I’m strengthened and proud to share that our local Holocaust Museum has grappled with these very challenges and that their education reflects a need to demand and sustain not only tolerance, but respect, understanding, and empathy - with all Jewish communities and all vulnerable minorities including a very real and distinctive Jewish community right here in Rockland. Federation is proud to count the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance & Education among our core beneficiary agencies.

Another museum and educational center addressing the challenge Horn identified in a key, constructive way is the Auschwitz Jewish Foundation Center. Rockland’s own Simon and Stefany Bergson have provided key leadership in the museum’s critical mission of educating against hate - especially to those who will be responsible to confront it, like officers in the US military, teachers here and abroad, and many others. It is the combination of the universal message and the particular experience of the living Jewish people that sets apart these institutions and others like them.

The message to a globe full of institutions that have disappointed us - learn your lessons from the past and from those ready to educate you, and it won’t become necessary for you to learn those lessons based on legal, legislative, financial, social and reputational costs. Follow the example of those who learn these lessons at the outset of their careers, at institutions devoted to the protection of life and liberty.

As for us, we’ll always remember, we’ll mourn on our own terms, and with the lessons of October 7th in mind, never again drop our guard.