I Walked Away Furious from an Auschwitz Exhibit: Here’s Why
As a member of antisemitism awareness groups on Facebook, I have seen more Jews opposed to helping the Latin American refugees than I thought was possible. So here is a message to those people: your parents and grandparents who survived the camps and your ancestors who didn’t would be disgusted by you. Do you think there is a difference between the boats of Jewish refugees turned away from entering the US and the refugees trying to enter through the southern border? Do you know what happened to the Jews on those boats? Most of them were put to death at the hands of the Nazis. What if that had been one of your ancestors?
In comment threads I have been called a liar, a “libtard,” a conveyor of fake news, all for sharing legitimate facts I learned while at the Jewish Heritage Museum (and subsequently found in scholarly sources). Did you know the camps began as places to imprison major players in political, social, and cultural organizations that Hitler believed to be a threat to his regime? Did you know that in these early camps there were secret, nonconsensual, and forced sterilizations of hundreds of thousands of people who posed a threat to Hitler’s superior race?
The concentration camps, which are so named due to the physical concentration of a group of people, existed for nearly a decade before they became death camps. In the beginning, most Germans believed these camps could never take such a turn, just like some Jewish Americans today speak of the camps at the border. Propaganda in the 1930s convinced Germans that Jews were the enemy, coming for their jobs and endangering their children, just as the propaganda of today has convinced Americans the same about Hispanics.
After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about the concentration camps at our border, she was met with outrage and death threats, but I am one of many Jews who feel that the association is valid. The inhumane treatment at the migrant detention centers is comparable to the early treatment of prisoners at the Nazi camps. When do we, as Americans, as Jews, decide it’s time to intervene and liberate the camps? Do we wait for them to become death camps before we decide to care? For an entire culture of people who recite “never again/le-olam lo,” you’d think we’d recognize the signs when it is, in fact, happening again.
According to the Smithsonian, “World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen – although today’s refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale.” So I ask you, descendants of Holocaust and pogrom survivors, descendants of refugees and immigrants, who turn a blind eye to the conditions of the detention centers along the Mexican border, who support their existence and chant “build the wall” like brainwashed minions and want to turn away refugees seeking asylum, how dare you?
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lilith Magazine.
3 comments on “I Walked Away Furious from an Auschwitz Exhibit: Here’s Why”
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I wholeheartedly support your outrage at the flagrant hypocrisy and selfishness of Jewish people who claim to want the holocaust to be remembered yet at the same time condone the atrocious way our government is treating desperate people feeling violence and death in their home countries. Jewish people who see nothing wrong with this are a betrayal to their cultural and religious background. At the same time, it is important to keep the memory of what happened at Auschwitz alive as a warning to future generations and as a reminder of what that even industrialized, educated societies can look away from human suffering or condone it. I still would not call the migrant crisis a Holocaust. There has been and will continue to be human suffering and to compare every situation to the Holocaust is unnecessary. It amounts to a disservice to the cause of tbe individuals who have suffered since each event stands alone in it’s own right. I do not need to compare the way this country is betraying one of its reasons for being as a land of freedom and opportunity to the Holocaust in order to be outraged by what is happening at the border.
Another irony is that during Obama’s administration some reich wing commentators tried to stir their followers up by claiming that Obama was going to put them in FEMA camps. It is almost as if God is showing extreme contempt for Americans by giving us such obvious, inept, and buffoonish challengers to our human decency.
Great article. It’s right for Jews to talk about the suffering of others. I’m a conservative so let me note something and many of us are offended by the suffering and treatment of immigrants. We recognize that many Democrats would rather let this suffering be publicized than work towards bi-partisan solutions.
Consider this solution. People should be able to come here, but not enjoy governmental benefits. In the 1890’s Jews, then Italians and others came to Ellis Island but there was no pot of free benefits. Indeed Jews in 1937-40 would have welcomed the opportunity to work.