On Memorial Day, the History Channel rebroadcast the epic HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, about the valor and drudgery of Easy Company in the Allies’ victory in Europe. In a graphic and remarkable episode called “Why We Fight,” the soldiers stumble upon a concentration camp, abandoned by its German guards. Asking what the prisoners did to deserve their treatment, a survivor explains that they were not criminals, but bakers, students, housewives, farmers — and Juden, Jews.

Juden. Why is a mere televisions series able to use the word when talking about the Holocaust, but it somehow escaped the lips of Pope Benedict XVI during his much anticipated visit to Auschwitz? Jewish leaders welcomed this act of solidarity and repentance, but were disappointed when the pontiff failed to use the occasion of his visit to make any sort of statement about the anti-Semitism that was the driving force behind the Nazi genocide and remains a disturbing phenomenon in many parts of Europe today. The pope added insult to injury by invoking the names of two Catholics who died at Auschwitz: Father Maximilian Kolbe, a theologian dogged by charges of anti-Semitism, and Edith Stein, a Jew who converted to Catholicism.

There is nothing inappropriate about reminding the world that it was not Jews alone who died at the hands of the Nazis. We need to remember that the Nazi madness extended to Catholics, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled. But to ignore the Jewish character of the Holocaust and specificity of Hitler’s “Final Solution” is to distort history, and hobble reconciliation.

There are universal messages in the Holocaust, and it calls on every individual to rise in defense of the weak and defiance of the powerful. But the unique character of the Shoa must too be acknowledged. Millions died in the camps because they were Juden, and because so many non-Jews couldn’t bring themselves to admit it.

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