On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the hours are filled with countless memories of deep sadness. On Wednesday night, we heard the speeches that all concluded with the same call: to remember.
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Yes, it is safe to assume we will remember. It is impossible to forget the loved ones that were murdered.
Dignitaries will be honored with reading the names of the relatives they lost in the Holocaust in the Knesset. Unfortunately, some of the 120 officials elected to the Knesset will harm and detract from the Holocaust and its memory out of a desire to stir controversy and quarrel with political rivals.
Those people whose history does not include the terrible genocide also harm the memory of the Holocaust. Not so with us. Many of us are very sad that the Holocaust, the most important event in human history, has become a verbal political game piece in the mouths of dignitaries in the Jewish state. We must not conceal or make light of the ugly phenomenon that desecrates – yes, desecrates – the memory of the Holocaust.
Calls to remember are diminished as soon as one of our nation's sweethearts or activists tries to score points in a petty quarrel. It doesn't matter whether the person doing the eroding is "just" a young ultra-Orthodox boy insulting the police and calling them "Nazis." How should we respond to a retired IDF general who intentionally compared the terrible day-to-day Nazi routine with processes that may already, in his defamatory opinion, be taking hold here in Israel? And there is no one to say enough is enough to the ongoing devaluation of the memory of the Holocaust.
It sometimes seems as if the desecration of the Holocaust is taken far more seriously overseas than it is here, where the attitude often seems to be one of indifference. One month ago, in Massachusetts, high-school football players and their coach used antisemitic language that included references to the Auschwitz death camp while making play calls in a game. The coach was immediately fired, and Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka submitted legislation that would make genocide education mandatory curriculum.
The Jewish state must emulate this kind of uncompromising attitude toward those who desecrate the memory of the Holocaust. The memory of the Holocaust should be purged of any sign of "Nazi" slander every single day, and not just on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Desecrators of the memory of the Holocaust should know they would be subject to severe punishment and even ostracism if they don't watch their tongues.
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