https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-885138
Vice President JD Vance marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 with a message honoring “millions of lives lost,” yet he did not mention Jews or Nazis.
At a time when global antisemitism is at an all-time high, omitting these two simple words is more than just a small oversight. It weakens the very purpose of the day, and given the current split and rise of antisemitism within the Right in America, it is worrying that the omission came from the vice president.
What happened is simple. The vice president posted a solemn remembrance, invoked “never again,” and paired it with commemorative imagery. But he avoided naming the Jews as the targeted victims and the Nazis as the perpetrators. Other senior officials, in contrast, referenced Jews and antisemitism directly. The omission sparked backlash online from X/Twitter users, senior Jewish figures, and even op-eds in this very paper
You know, the BBC did the same thing - across multiple programs and news reports, it kept repeating the phrase "Six million people".
ReplyDeleteNow, perhaps they're all trying to be inclusive. After all, thousands of gays and Romas were also killed and, like the Jews, they were not an official enemy population like the Russians or Poles. If we're remembering the horror, then just talking about the Jews could be seen as insulting to them. They suffered and died in the camps alongside us.
But it's the number - six million - that betrays the erasure. It wasn't six million people, it was six million Jews alongside those other groups. That's what stings.