Letters to the editor

Recognize and resist the conditions that made the Holocaust possible
The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with the normalization of ideas that portrayed Jews as uniquely malevolent, uniquely powerful, and uniquely deserving of exclusion. The mission of Holocaust education is not simply to preserve the memory of what happened in the camps. It is to help society recognize and resist the conditions that make such atrocities possible.

It is clear from “A profound failure by a Pittsburgh institution” (in print Aug. 7), that this goal of Holocaust education is not being met.

Today, Jews across North America are experiencing a surge of harassment and violence. These incidents are justified by an ideological movement that casts the world’s only Jewish state as uniquely evil. Anti-Zionism provides a permission structure for hostility toward Jews by portraying the national identity embraced by the overwhelming majority of the world’s Jewish community as uniquely illegitimate.

The consequences of that permission structure are already visible. After a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist drove an explosives-laden vehicle into Temple Israel in Michigan while more than 100 preschool children were inside, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said, “hurt people do hurt people,” suggesting that the attack could be understood through the lens of the assailant’s personal response to events in the Middle East. That instinct — to contextualize anti-Jewish violence rather than recognize it as anti-Jewish hatred — is precisely the kind of moral confusion Holocaust education should challenge, not reinforce.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Israeli government policy is beside the point. Holocaust education — and all education about antisemitism—should equip people to recognize how conspiracies, dehumanization, collective guilt and demonization are propaganda that evolve into hatred of an entire people. When institutions dedicated to Holocaust remembrance ignore these dynamics — or worse, lend credibility to those who excuse or sanitize them — they are not remaining neutral. They are failing to fulfill the very purpose for which they exist.

This is not a debate about free speech. People are free to express controversial views. The Holocaust Center is equally free — and morally obligated — to exercise judgment about whom it elevates and what ideas it legitimizes. Its responsibility is to help the public recognize the warning signs of Jew-hatred before violence follows.

The Holocaust Center has an opportunity to recommit itself to that mission. It should make clear that contemporary Jew-hatred — including the forms that emerge through the demonization of Zionism — deserves the same seriousness as every other manifestation of anti-Jewish hatred. Institutions dedicated to preventing the next Holocaust cannot afford to ignore the ideology fueling today’s antisemitism. If they do, they are missing the moment, acting in opposition to their mission, and making Jews individually and collectively vulnerable.
I look forward to hearing about the specific ways the Holocaust Center will address this.

Aviva Lubowsky
Pittsburgh

Fighting a brutal enemy is not genocide
In “Pittsburgh protester presses Rep. Khanna on Israel and support for Platner,” Julie Paris confronts members of Congress regarding their stand to cut aid to Israel. I can understand people’s reaction to the war in Gaza, but it is not genocide. After the horrendous Oct. 7 attack, what were Israel’s options? The Hamas terrorists, after killing 1,200 and taking hundreds hostage, retreated into the general Gaza population. They have been using every square inch of Gaza as fighting positions, killing hundreds of Israeli soldiers. At any time they could have realized the suffering they were causing the Palestinian people. They could have surrendered and release the hostages, but they chose to prolong the war, reaping the propaganda benefits. And it has worked. Many around the world accuse Israel of genocide. Comparing Israel’s war against an enemy hiding behind civilians to the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people is repugnant. Ending aid to Israel is even more repugnant. I was in Israel last year.

Not far from my hotel stood a row of buildings destroyed by an Iranian missile during last year’s war. Cutting aid to Israel would weaken Israel’s ability to respond to such attacks. Members of Congress calling for ending aid to Israel have bought into Hamas’s bloody propaganda.

Mitchell Nyer
Pittsburgh