On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Reflections on Burgeoning American Anti-Semitism

This Blog is being written on Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2023; the day commemorates the SIX (6) million Jews killed by the Nazis, during World War II, the Holocaust. The date was chosen because it marks the date the concentration camp Auschwitz, was liberated from the Nazis by Soviet troops during World War II. 

What is shocking, nay appalling, is the rise of anti-Semitism among Americans in 2023; what is shocking is how the righteous Ruling Elite in America intends, to combat this rising anti-Semitism, with platitudes and bromides and with worn out sophomoric appeals to America’s better angels. 

Doesn’t the Ruling Elite have any clue about the American character? 

Winston Churchill, whose mother was from Brooklyn, knew more about the angels in America than any current American thought leader. 

It was Churchill who pegged the American character: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.” 

Americans in 2023 see no benefit in opposing anti-Semitism; it is not like they are going to hurt Sandy Koufax, or Paul Newman, or Arthur Miller, or Leonard Bernstein, or Irving Berlin, or J.D Salinger, or Richard Rodgers, or Oscar Hammerstein, or John Garfield, or Jules Feiffer, or Paddy Chayefsky or Ruth Roman, or Bob Dylan. 

In 2023 anti-Semitism is cheap on the  open market, with little downside for most Americans; for in 2023, who does anti-Semitism hurt? George Soros? Lorne Michaels? Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Tony Kushner? Wendy Sherman? Doug Emhoff? 

2023 Americans are attracted to anti-Semitism, because to them, there is no cost to them. Who will lose friends if one insults George Soros? 

Americans, in 2023, are trying anti-Semitism, because it is cheap, tawdry and not right. 

Americans will try the right thing, after their personal cost analysis, informs them of the great cost their policy of bigotry will extract on them. 

Black Americans flirting with anti- Semitism are sacrificing their American Blood Memory; which is ruinous on many levels. Black Americans support the Somali refugee, the anti-Semite Ihlan Omar, and relish the rise of Haitian refugee Karine Jean Pierre. 

Yet this Blogger does not remember any Somali or any Haitian giving up their lives to win Black Americans the right to vote in Mississippi. Just like Medger Evers, Jews were martyrs to a better America. 

In Mississippi, on  June 21, 1964, Black  James Chaney, and Jewish Americans  Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were tortured and murdered by the KKK with help from the deputy sheriff. 

Wasn’t enough Blood shed by Jewish Americans to blunt anti-Semitism among Black Americans? 

The American cowboy is the quintessential American icon but the subconscious power of that iconography is the theme music from the great Classic Westerns: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, HIGH CHAPPARAL, BONANZA, THE BIG COUNTRY, HIGH NOON, RED RIVER, GUNFLIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, RAWHIDE and on and on…..all those themes; these American hymns, were composed by Jewish Americans. 

Can America be secure with its self image without those themes, without those instantly recognizable hymns? 

 No, but they are all put at risk by anti-Semitism. 

Finally, to every American who has entertained anti-Semitism; look at your children, look at all American children. They walk and bike ride and run and play because they do not need iron lungs. Would any American give back the polio vaccine to the Jewish doctor who discovered it, to indulge their bigotry. 

No. 

The polio vaccine alone should quell anti-Semitism until 2100. 

For years, upon years, to fortify the Judeo-Christian ethic in America, at Easter time, a network ran the film THE TEN COMMANDMENTS; so everyone knew the story of the Jews escape from bondage. 

The Ruling Elite needs to begin work forging a consensus about the horror of the Holocaust. May this Blogger humbly suggest that every January 27^th, going forward, one network and all the streaming services offer, FREE, a screening of Steven Spielberg’s SCHINDLER’S LIST. 

It  needs to be the TEN COMMANDMENTS of the Holocaust. 

Following are excerpts from a PBS program, on January 27, 2023; the excerpts lament the fact that American youth is ignorant of the Holocaust. 

“Holly Huffnagle, American Jewish Committee: …. American Jewish Committee, we have been doing studies on American Jews and the U.S. general public for the past few years on the state of antisemitism in America, how Jews are experiencing antisemitism, if the general public's even aware. 

And, this year, for the first time, we put in questions about the Holocaust to the general public to see what they knew and if what they knew corresponded to how they answered questions about antisemitism. 

John Yang: And what did you find? Is there a link between knowledge of the Holocaust and antisemitic views? 

Holly Huffnagle:….we found that Americans who answered three or more of the four questions, or three or four of the questions correctly, so they knew something about the Holocaust, they were more likely to know what antisemitism is, to know that it has increased in our country in the past five years, and to say that it's a problem in the United States, which is not something that those who answered less of those questions correctly were able to do. 

John Yang: What do you think accounts for this knowledge or lack of knowledge about the Holocaust that the survey found? 

Holly Huffnagle: I think there's a few unfortunate issues right that we're working with right now. And Holocaust knowledge questions are being asked by many different communities around the world. In fact, the Claims Conference just came out with one on the Netherlands this week showing just how many people in the Netherlands, young people, think the Holocaust was a myth. And so what we're up against is, one, the passage of time. So, today marks the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland. So time is working against us. And many of the survivors, we probably only within the next decade will have actual eyewitnesses to that atrocity with us. The second thing is, there are more genocides and more atrocities that have happened since the Holocaust. Unfortunately, never again, it has been again and again. 

And some people might not connect the reality of needing to learn those lessons from the Holocaust, needing to know that Hitler was democratically brought to power and how that can apply today. And so they don't make those connections. 

And I think the third and final piece is this younger generation, which we do know knows less about what happened, has grown up on social media, has grown up on the Internet, where, unfortunately, that's where we see the most Holocaust denial, Holocaust distortion and antisemitism today.

John Yang:  How should Holocaust education or the teaching of the Holocaust be improved? 

Holly Huffnagle: So, we're seeing some improvements even right now, as we speak. There was a bill that was — it's going through Congress right now on encouraging states to mandate Holocaust education. Right now, only 20 U.S. states mandate Holocaust education. And several others have commissions. There's a total about 39 U.S. states that are doing something related to ensuring that the Holocaust is taught in schools. But more can be done. ….PBS, January 27, 2023.” 

SKIP THE BILL, SHOW SCHINDLER’S LIST. 

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL had more power than MEIN KAMPF

BIRTH OF A NATION had  more power than anything W.E.B. DuBois wrote.