Penny Pritzker Says ‘Fear of the Other’ Rising in Holocaust Remembrance Message

Image by getty images

By Ron Kampeas May 5, 2016

WASHINGTON — A top Jewish Obama administration official decried the rise of “the fear of the other” in the United States, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah.

“I do not think a Holocaust is happening in America, but I do worry about what is happening when we betray the principle of inclusion,” Penny Pritzker, the U.S. commerce secretary, said in remarks Thursday in the Capitol building.

“Today in our beloved United States, we are witnessing a rising fear of the other,” she said. “We are better than the language of hate. America is not the tribe of folded arms,” Pritzker said, using a metaphor for the Germans who stood by while the Nazis rose to power and carried out the mass murder of Jews and Roma.

Pritzker, who is Jewish, did not name perpetrators of hate speech, but she noted rising feelings of insecurity among Hispanic and Muslim Americans, who have been the targets of broadsides by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

“Do we sit with our arms folded while words are used to dehumanize other human beings?” she said.

Pritzker, the scion of a Chicago hotel family, was one of Obama’s first backers.

Also speaking was Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer, who identified some extremes of anti-Israel rhetoric in present-day Europe, including in some cases in governments, with the anti-Jewish rhetoric that preceded the rise of the Nazis.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO