Using the Killing of George Floyd to Universalize—and Minimize—the Holocaust https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2020/11/using-the-killing-of-george-floyd-to-universalize-and-minimize-the-holocaust/

November 30, 2020 | Ruthie Blum
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The Holocaust museum in Maitland, Florida recently unveiled a new exhibit that consists of photographs of people responding to the death of George Floyd, a black man gratuitously killed by a white police officer in May. Ruthie Blum comments:

Floyd’s case is . . . utterly irrelevant to the Holocaust. And a center dedicated to commemorating the slaughter of six million Jews during World War II has no business devoting wall space to it. But the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center (HMREC) boasts of the “inspiring and powerful” pictures of the location of and witnesses to Floyd’s killing.

“The mission of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida is to use the history and lessons of the Holocaust to build just and caring communities free of anti-Semitism and all forms of prejudice and bigotry,” [the museum’s executive director, Lisa Bachman], told the UK-based Jewish News on Wednesday. . . . She is either missing the point of Holocaust education or, worse, intends to shift its focus. Contrary to this ever-growing attitude among liberal Jews and closet Jew-haters, anti-Semitism is not merely one among many “forms of prejudice and bigotry.” It is particular and must be treated as such.

[J]uxtaposing the wrongful death of a lone criminal, whose killer was indicted for murder, with the purposeful and brutal extermination of millions of innocent men, women, and children by a well-oiled governmental machine violates all standards of ethics. . . . A site created to remind visitors why they must “never forget” the starvation, rape, torture, and gassing of Europe’s Jews should not be using a pictorial rendition of an individual American’s fateful run-in with a bad cop as an “educational” tool. Shame on the heads of the Holocaust center for thinking otherwise.

Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/a-new-exhibit-uses-george-floyd-to-universalize-the-holocaust-650404