opinion
Is ‘Never Again’ Now? The Ukraine War
Ignites a Recurring Debate
BY ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
S eventy-nine years ago this month,
crowds twice filled Madison
Square Garden for a pageant, “We
Will Never Die,” meant to draw
attention to the slaughter of Europe’s
Jews by the Nazis. Screenwriter Ben
Hecht organized the spectacle and
wrote the script; German refugee
composer Kurt Weill wrote the
score. A young Marlon Brando had a
leading role.

Two million Jews had already been
killed. The performance included
the lines, “No voice is heard to cry
halt to the slaughter, no government
speaks to bid the murder of human
millions end. But we here tonight
have a voice. Let us raise it.”
In the self-congratulatory amne-
sia called hindsight, American Jews
often look back on “We Will Never
Die” as a watershed in raising aware-
ness about the Holocaust — and a
condemnation of America’s failure
at that point to stop the genocide.

What’s often forgotten is that Hecht
had trouble getting major Jewish
organizations to sign on as sponsors.

“A meeting of representatives of 32
Jewish groups, hosted by Hecht,
dissolved in shouting matches as
ideological and personal rivalries left
the Jewish organizations unable to
cooperate,” according to the David
S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust
Studies. This was 1943, mind you, so the
debate over whether the United
States should commit blood and trea-
sure to the defense of its Allies was
already settled. But the “ideological
and personal rivalries” are reminders
that Americans were never of one
mind about entering World War II,
and certainly not about whether and
how to save the Jews.

America and its allies are
embroiled in a similar debate now,
and World War II and its lessons
are being invoked by those urg-
ing a fierce Western response to
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chief
18 among these are Ukraine’s Jewish
president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who
has specifically cited the Holocaust
in asking governments, and Jewish
groups, to intervene.

“Nazism is born in silence. So shout
about killings of civilians. Shout about
the murders of Ukrainians,” Zelensky
said in a call with American Jewish
groups. He spoke about the Russian
missile strike near the Babyn Yar
memorial to slaughtered Jews, say-
ing, “We all died again at Babyn Yar
from the missile attack, even though
the world pledges ‘Never again.’”
Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minis-
ter of Ukraine, also invoked “never
again” in a Washington Post oped.

tweeted. “Please stop the hype.”
In some ways the debate is seman-
tic. ”Never Again” is a phrase popu-
larized by a Jewish militant, adopted
by mainstream Jewish groups and
eventually absorbed into the global
vocabulary as a shorthand for — for
what, exactly? Is it about interven-
tion when a government targets a
people or ethnic group for slaughter,
as in Rwanda? Does it include cam-
paigns of terror meant to “ethnically
cleanse” a region, as in Bosnia or
Myanmar? Is it about a system of
“reeducation camps” meant to erase
a people’s culture, as the Chinese
are doing to the Uyghurs?
Or, as Kuleba defines it, does it
If nothing else, the debate over “never
again” demands more humility and
forgiveness in judging the failures of
previous generations.

“For decades, world leaders bowed
their heads at war memorials across
Europe and solemnly proclaimed:
‘Never again.’ The time has come to
prove those were not empty words,”
he wrote.

The rhetoric may be soaring, but
not everyone is convinced. “I’m
seeing the term genocide & the
phrase ‘never again’ used more in
the context of Ukraine,” tweeted
Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the
Scowcroft Center for Strategy and
Security. “I understand why they’re
being used — & the resonance they
carry — but they’re not accurate
ways to talk about a conventional
war between states, even one with
humanitarian casualties.”
Damon Linker, a columnist at The
Week, made a similar point. “What
Russia’s doing is terrible, but it’s what
happens in war. It isn’t genocide, and
it certainly isn’t the Holocaust, which
is what that phrase refers to,” he
MARCH 17, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
mean “stopping the aggressor before
it can cause more death and destruc-
tion”? According to that conception
of “never again,” the Holocaust may
have ended with the death of six
million Jews, but it couldn’t have
begun without unchecked territorial
expansion by a brutal regime.

The debate is also highly concrete.

If Kuleba is right, history will judge
America poorly if it doesn’t do more
to stop Russia’s attacks on civilians
and its razing of Ukrainian cities.

And yet, while the United States
and its allies have committed arms
and sanctions meant to cripple
Russia’s economy, President Biden
has ruled out sending ground troops
to defend Ukraine, or enforcing a
“no-fly zone” over the country that
would make direct conflict with
Russian jets inevitable.

The bloody Russian invasion,
bound to get bloodier still, has not
risen to what most people and offi-
cial bodies would call a genocide.

And even if it were to, it would be
surprising if the United States would
commit troops to the battlefield.

Most Americans have little stomach
for a hot war with Russia. The threat
of nuclear escalation is terrifying.

A Cygnal poll taken last week
found that 39% of U.S. respondents
supported Washington “joining the
military response” in Ukraine — a plu-
rality but hardly a landslide. A broad
majority still preferred non-military
intervention. The United States, like the rest
of the world, has a checkered his-
tory in fulfilling the promise of “never
again.” Bill Clinton was ashamed of
America’s inaction in Rwanda. Barack
Obama in 2012 launched a White
House task force called the Atrocities
Prevention Board, although it didn’t
prevent the mass slaughter of Syrians
by their own government and Russia
on Obama’s watch.

The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum has a Center for
the Prevention of Genocide. And
yet to paraphase Stalin, “How big is
its army?”
And yet, many refuse to allow real-
politik to deaden their response to
the tragedy in Ukraine. “We can dis-
cuss and debate a no-fly zone, but
there is one thing we can’t debate,
and that is this should be a no-cry
zone,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik,
head of the New York Board of
Rabbis, during a recent interfaith ser-
vice for Ukraine. “We should never,
ever see innocent people merci-
lessly murdered.”
Few could dispute that. But if noth-
ing else, history reminds us that
slogans are not policies, and that the
very best intentions crash up against
self-interest and self-preservation. If
nothing else, the debate over “never
again” demands more humility and
forgiveness in judging the failures of
previous generations. JE
Andrew Silow-Carroll is the editor in chief
of The New York Jewish Week and senior
editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.




opinion
What Ukraine Has Taught Europe About
the Need for Nationalism
BY FIAMMA NIRENSTEIN
Erhoman / iStock / Getty Images Plus
E urope’s new thinking on Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s
war against the nationalist and
democratic Ukrainian resistance
could be promising, if it signals that
the West is finally about to descend
from the sense pacifist supremacy
that has characterized it since the
end of World War II.

Already, however, all the boasting
by E.U. leaders about the newfound
unity and meaning that will change a
post-Putin world resembles the froth
of classical European rhetoric. It’s
a powerful choir that may not only
silence all the uncomfortable truths
revealed by the conflict, but deplete
its energy to plan for the future.

Witnessing, as I do, the Ukraine
war from Israel, a country perpet-
ually at war—and one, like any
democracy, which abhors war —
is instructive. Having Hamas and
Hezbollah missiles rain down on the
country’s civilian population; living in
a place where at least 2,000 people
were killed during the years of the
Second Intifada; inhabiting a nation
that has been attacked from all sides
for the last 80 years — nevertheless
induces first and foremost optimism.

Indeed, small nations tied to their
history, culture and origins possess
extraordinary strength of resistance.

Ukraine, therefore, is capable of win-
ning this war despite the torment
that it’s undergoing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky, whom Ruth Wisse has
called a kind of post litteram Isaac
Babel, a Jew and a Cossack, can
succeed in the way of the late Israeli
Prime Minister Golda Meir or other
Jewish-Ukrainian leaders, among
them Zev Jabotinsky. And Zelensky
is well aware of this from his family
history. The Jews of Ukraine are survi-
vors who owe their survival solely to
themselves. Today, too, the Ukrainian
people, like the Jews, will receive no
substantial help; no “cavalry” will be
coming. Loneliness is a lesson that
the prime minister of Ukraine cer-
tainly learned as a Jew and is now
teaching to his people.

Herein lies the first post-world war
global lesson: Putin was shocked
by the resistance he met, because
he had told himself lies and drawn
a non-existent geopolitical reality
in which Ukrainians were Russians.

But Ukrainians aren’t Russians, as
we are now seeing clearly. And they
have always been searching for their
identity in the West, for better or for
worse, precisely in order to escape
Russia. Now European culture, for which
nationalism had been muddied by
the Nazi-fascist past, must under-
stand that the nation-state is not only
necessary; it’s the historical bearer
of freedom. Indeed, the evils mis-
takenly attributed to nationalism are
actually those of imperialism.

The E.U. has to recognize that
human beings are born free and
fight for the freedom of their national
collective through their heroes, tra-
ditions and institutions. It needs to
rehabilitate the word “nation,” and
with it develop a different relation-
ship with the state of Israel.

But this is for tomorrow. In the
meantime, to preserve its internal
cohesion, the E.U. must step back
from its globalist absolutism and
grasp that there are differences and
contrasts in Europe. Moreover, it
must mercilessly reject “cancel cul-
ture” in all its stupidity. The heroes
and monuments of the past have
shown their power, after all.

And here’s more for productive
conservative thought. During the
current war, men remained to fight,
as they have always done over the
course of millennia, while mothers
and grandmothers have taken chil-
dren by the hand to safety. It’s a
magnificent revival of a de-ideol-
ogized feminism that will consider
women’s primary task during both
war and peace as key to safeguard-
ing freedom.

Liberalism, nationalism, freedom,
democracy and tradition must go
hand in hand. Europe must separate
itself from some of its postmod-
ern dreams, parlance, rhetoric and
socialist origins, and reduce its uni-
versalism. Even war, the most abhorred con-
cept, has to be finally reconsidered.

Pacifist smoke signals don’t prevent
or stop it. It is Putin who must be
stopped. Germany doubled its defense bud-
get within a single day, an instructive
somersault. Here in Israel, the coun-
try wouldn’t survive a day if it didn’t
know how to fight, win wars and
cultivate valor. It takes a lot of moral
strength to risk one’s children’s lives.

The E.U. has completely forgot-
ten this principle, but now needs
to remember it. If Israelis, whether
religious or secular, on the left or the
right, didn’t know how to rise above
their own hard principles and stick
together in need, we wouldn’t have
survived and flourished. Blessed is
the country that has its heroes; not
the one that doesn’t need them.

Finally, as the late Middle East
historian Bernard Lewis explained
to me, the Turks didn’t realize that
the recoil of the cannons made their
beautiful war ships sink.

We must move the cannons of
democracy to prevent our vessels
of freedom from sinking like the
Ottoman Empire. JE
Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein was a member
of the Italian Parliament (2008-13), where she
served as vice president of the Committee
on Foreign Affairs in the Chamber of
Deputies. She served in the Council of
Europe in Strasbourg, and established
and chaired the Committee for the Inquiry
Into Anti-Semitism. She is a fellow at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

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