Muffled message
The actual event of the Fifth World Holocaust Forum was a dignified one with leaders from 49 countries standing together at Yad Vashem, speaking out in one powerful voice against antisemitism and calling to remember the Holocaust.
But the solemn message of the event was mostly drowned out in Israel this week by the circus surrounding it.
There was a ton of news preceding the event. Yet, the pages of newspapers, like this one, and the reporters on TV and radio focused on anything but the Holocaust.
It’s one thing to write about the unprecedented number of world leaders visiting here. The magnitude of the event is part of what makes it so powerful and moving.
But the headlines were about Naama Issachar, the 26-year-old American-Israeli in a Russian prison
on drug charges, and what gestures Israel will make toward Russian President Vladimir Putin to secure her pardon. They were about Putin trying to stay in office past 2024, and how he’ll emphasize the Red Army’s victory against the Nazis to stir up support. They were about Poland deciding not to attend the event. They were about traffic jams in Jerusalem and on Route 1 between Ben-Gurion Airport and the capital. They were about French President Emmanuel Macron shouting at his Israeli security detail. They were about Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev writing the name of Argentinian President Alberto Fernández on her hand as an aide-mémoire.
But what about the actual subject of the conference, “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism?”
Those headlines were few and far between.
In the excitement over the event, and the politics and surrounding gossip, it seemed like we barely spoke about the Holocaust, and that is unfortunate.
There’s an easy excuse to make here: Something that happened 75 years ago is hardly news.
But it’s a poor excuse. There are more than 100,000 survivors in Israel today, each with a story. There are also plenty of World War II veterans in Israel with stories to tell. There is Holocaust distortion and revisionism happening in Eastern Europe. There is research at Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorials around the world.
The actual ceremony at Yad Vashem didn’t even save the news cycle, though it can’t be faulted. Most of the speakers presented a narrative about WWII and the Holocaust that was politically convenient for them but, luckily, not overtly so. Overall, they stuck to the topics at hand, the Holocaust and present-day antisemitism.
As such, it seemed that focus has been shifted to the topic at hand for at least the last halfday of media coverage around this major event. There was hope that the top headlines of the weekend papers would be about German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier saying his country hasn’t learned the lesson of the Holocaust because of growing antisemitism, or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the Jewish people must take threats of our destruction seriously, or simply “Never Again” or “We Remember” for the tabloids.
But then it turned out that US Vice President Mike Pence was using this trip for something other than remembering the Holocaust. He was apparently going to announce the upcoming publication of the Trump administration’s peace plan. So the focus shifted away from the Holocaust again.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the actual 75th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, is on Monday, January 27. Maybe between now and then we will see an outpouring of news items about the Holocaust. And if not in the ensuing days, then there are always plenty around Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year falls on the eve of Monday, April 20.
But this week still stands as a missed opportunity to tell truly epic stories of survivors who may not live much longer, to keep an important topic on people’s minds and to educate those who need to learn more. •