What Is It With The Government And The Holocaust?
Image by Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Ever since its first days, the Trump Administration has had an issue with its Holocaust history. First there was Trump’s ridiculously short, vapid Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, in which he insinuated that Jews should be grateful that Trump took the time to make any kind of statement at all.
And now, in a very slightly related note, theJewish News Service (JNS) reports that a historian employed by the U.S. State Department (she has, been at the State Department in this capacity for over ten years – so while she currently operates as a part of the Trump government, she has held her post since Bush) has drawn ire from Holocaust scholars for a paper published in the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In the JNS report, scholars like Dr. Rafael Medoff (of the David S Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies) and Professor Bat-Ami Zucker (of Bar-Ilan University), criticize the journal article for “for trying to minimize the accomplishments of Hiram Bingham IV, a dissident consular official who helped Jews escape France and was punished by the State Department” as well as for glossing over the anti-Semitism of William Peck, a U.S. official in Vichy France (I must note, the article is not accessible to those not affiliated with an academic institution, so I am taking the JNS report on good faith – do with this what you will).
In a vacuum, this is a non-event – a dispute over an esoteric journal article between scholars and a fairly obscure government employee. If the article is indeed as damning as the JNS reports, then, in the context of Holocaust denial or minimization from governments both here in the United States and abroad in places like Poland and Hungary, it becomes rather more troubling
Jake Romm is a Contributing Editor for The Forward. Contact him at [email protected]
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
