From the Instagram page of the US Holocaust Memorial:
I cannot understand this statement or the ideas it reflects. But it may reflect how far I have moved from professional Jewish leadership (or how far professional Jews have moved from me). Jonah Gelbach called the statement a shanda.
ICE, CBP, and the Administration are targeting people–including children–because of their immigration status, in connection with their race, ethnicity, and national origin. They are seizing people or demanding to “see your papers” based on accents and appearance. Agents of the state are masked, armed, and using excessive (if not regularly deadly) force. They went to Minnesota to target Somalis; reports suggest they turned their attention to Asian communities. And they retain the usual obsession with people from Latin America–at least after finishing their meals. They have detained small children or used children as bait to lure parents into custody. Some people are hiding children from the authorities. Some parents are making legal arrangements for their children in the event they are seized. And government agents are targeting–threatening, injuring, and killing–those who stand up to the state to protect members of their community–likening them to insurgents rather than members of an American society.
Where is the false equivalency? Is it that the American regime has not turned systematically murderous–that it wants to deport Somali or Hmong or Nicaraguan people rather than send them to death camps (never mind that many of the people ICE has detained or abused are citizens)? That might mean we are in 1935 rather than 1942; it does not mean they are not being targeted. I hope the Memorial does not believe that the targeted characteristics here are different in kind from being targeted for being Jewish–that injustice and authoritarianism is worse when it targets Jews than when it targets other groups or for other reasons. That sentiment would contradict what I understand to be Jewish values.
In fact, this might reflect something good–the world learned the lesson of Anne Frank and people want to protect and help their community before things spin out of control. We study history to learn and to avoid repeating its mistakes. Using history to appeal to society’s better angels and to do better should not be derided as offensive “exploit[ation].”
The Shoah is not generalizable–it was a uniquely Jewish thing, at least in its underlying rationale. But the lessons of it should be generalizable. “Never Again” should mean never again as to anyone, not only as to Jews.