opinion
Holocaust Remembrance and
Inexcusable Hyperbole
Ruthie Blum
D uring his Holocaust Remembrance Day speech
on April 17 at Yad Vashem, Israeli President
Isaac Herzog admonished the public never
to invoke the genocide of the Jews in any context
other than the Shoah itself. This was a not-so-veiled
reference to a practice that’s become frighteningly
commonplace in the politically polarized country.

“The Nazi abomination is an unprecedented evil,
unique by any measure,” he said. “We must remember,
repeat and emphasize again and again: These, and only
these, are Nazis. This, and only this, is the Holocaust.

Even when we are in the midst of fierce disagreements
on our destiny, calling, faith and values, we must be
careful about and guard against making any compari-
son, any analogy, to the Holocaust and the Nazis.”
He went on to remind the citizens of Israel that
the “Nazi monster” didn’t distinguish between one
member of the tribe or another, regardless of their
“views, beliefs or lifestyles.” Indeed, he stressed, such
“nuances” were utterly meaningless to those who set
out to annihilate every last Jew.

“For them,” he pointed out, “we were one people,
scattered and separated among all the nations, with
one sentence: death. And our victory over them, as well,
which takes place every day, is a victory of one people.”
He concluded: “We are currently celebrating 75 years
of Israeli independence — 75 years of victory during
which the Jewish and democratic state of Israel and
its [proud] society are standing up and declaring to the
Can’t Forget
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being spoken. I eyeballed Germans on the street and
asked myself: How old are they? Did they commit heinous
crimes against my family and my people?
By 2018, when I dedicated a Stolpersteine in my
maternal grandmother’s memory, my judgmental
attitudes and harsh feelings had softened. Maybe I
realized that 75 years later, the ordinary citizen on the
street could not be held responsible for the carnage of
the Holocaust. Also, working with non-Jewish German
volunteers in planning the ceremony showed me their
humanity, sensitivity and outright remorse for Nazism’s
impact on my family and their German state.

My visit in February shed further light on my
evolving relationship with Germany and Germans.

Today’s Germany is doing teshuva, or repentance,
Nazi monster and those who, even in this generation,
are following in its path: ‘You cannot defeat us, because
we are brothers and sisters; yes, siblings who know how
to argue and dispute, but never hate one another, are
never enemies.’ We are one people and we will remain
one people, united not only by a painful history but also
by a shared destiny and a hopeful future.”
It was an appropriate message with just the right
tone. As is the case with all such pleas, however, the
people who most needed to hear and heed it either
weren’t listening or didn’t think it applied to them.

Indeed, within minutes, Herzog’s social media feed
was filled with nasty remarks from both sides of the
spectrum. Supporters of the government accused him of
abetting the opposition to thwart judicial reforms.

Members of the protest movement were more vitriolic.

“I’m ashamed that you’re the president of my
country,” tweeted one respondent. “You have nothing
to say about the pure evil [Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu] that’s trying to destroy the country just to
get out of going to jail.”
Another, writing “Yair Golan was right,” posted an
article from 2016 about the then-deputy chief of staff
of the Israel Defense Forces, who took the opportunity
of Holocaust Remembrance Day to caution against the
country’s own “seeds of intolerance, violence, self-de-
struction and moral deterioration.”
Yet another argued, “Make no mistake; the compari-
son [of the current government] to the rise of the Third
Reich is absolutely spot on!”
So much for Herzog’s words about Jewish unity,
delivered at the World Holocaust Remembrance Center
in Jerusalem. Simultaneously, at a Tel Aviv synagogue
service marking the somber event, MK Boaz Bismuth
from Netanyahu’s Likud Party was heckled loudly as
he attempted to express a similar sentiment about
brotherhood. Shouting one of the key chants at anti-government
rallies (“shame, shame, shame”) and ordering him to
leave, many congregants wouldn’t let him speak. Some
attendees yelled at them to stop harassing their guest.

Faced with the altercation that was threatening to turn
physically violent, Bismuth exited the premises.

“When your daily job is to corrode the remains of
Israeli statehood, and then you appear at a Holocaust
Remembrance Day ceremony and pretend to repre-
sent something, don’t be surprised when you’re thrown
out on your butt,” tweeted Raanan Shaked, an editor at
the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

This type of hyperbole, along with the very compari-
sons and analogies that Herzog insisted rightly should
be taboo, is not only now the norm; its spewers refuse
to refrain from employing it even while the country
mourns the 6 million who didn’t live to see the birth of
the Jewish state and honors the survivors of the unfath-
omable atrocity.

It’s as inexcusable as any form of Holocaust denial.

Shame on any Israeli who engages in it. ■
by strengthening democracy, creating an inclusionary
society, responding resolutely to far-right extremism,
educating its young about the Holocaust, offering
sanctuary to Jews fleeing Russia and Ukraine and being
a true friend to the state of Israel.

My relationship became much more nuanced upon
learning that Germany was once home to five generations
of my family, as far back as 1760, in the small town of
Grobzig where Matthias Nathan Meyerstein was born.

On our visit to its mid-17th-century Jewish cemetery,
I gazed incredulously at the graves of Meyersteins. I
saw schutzbriefen, documents issued by the reigning
duke, that assured my ancestors protection, commercial
privileges and religious rights.

Before my retirement, I never knew that Grobzig or
Leipzig or other towns were in my family’s history. This
discovery led to one conclusion: Unquestionably, 1933
to 1945 was a tragic anomaly in human history and
especially Jewish history. However, I must also gratefully
acknowledge the Germany that sustained my family for
over 300 years, and Jewish communal life for 1,700 years.

Nazi Germany’s ill-treatment and intolerance of “the
other” still affects me today as I mourn my relatives’
death. On the other hand, I feel heartened by this
sentiment written by a non-Jewish German who funded
research about my family: “For me, as I am part of this
country and its history, it will be a never-ending task
to find ways to deal with this horrible past and most
importantly, never to forget,” she wrote.

Navigating this complex relationship with Germany
and Germans is intellectually and emotionally messy for
Jews. My engagement with “the other,” however, has
been profoundly satisfying. ■
Ruthie Blum is a Tel Aviv-based columnist and
commentator. She writes and lectures on Israeli
politics and culture, as well as on U.S.-Israel
relations. Rabbi Michael Meyerstein is a retired Conservative
rabbi and a former professional fundraiser.

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