by Rabbi Clifford M. Kulwin

June 11, 2009

That strange question became the subject of a demonstration this past Sunday at a Brooklyn Holocaust memorial where, according to the Daily News, “politicians and community activists gathered at the Sheepshead Bay park to demand Mayor Bloomberg block a plan they contend undermines the memorial’s core message.”

That “core message,” they believe, is that the Holocaust belongs to us.

Two hundred thirty-four granite markers now stand at the memorial. The New York City Parks Department intends to add an additional five markers to honor Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political prisoners of the Nazis.

Local community members, however, object. They consider the site a memorial to, in the words of New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, “a uniquely Jewish event.”

The vice president of the memorial committee feels additional markers are unnecessary. He notes that some of the markers already honor non-Jews. He furthers charges that the city is acting against a memorandum of understanding agreed upon when the memorial was established.

Still, it is hard to read accounts of the demonstration without seeing the protesters as asserting ownership not only of the memorial in question, but of the Holocaust itself.

Historically, we Jews have certainly made the Holocaust ours. Jews in Israel and abroad have supported a vast scholarly enterprise to study and record what took place; the great institutions of memory and education, like Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, are the result of Jewish commitment and philanthropy. The energy we put into reminding ourselves and teaching our children what happened is enormous.

At the same time, however, our collective memory must include those non-Jews who were also victims of the Nazis. On a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website, we quickly find pictures of Marzhan, the first concentration camp for Gypsies; an account of the Nazi crackdown on same-sex bars and clubs; and a transcript from the Doctors’ Trial just after the war, in which German physicians admitted to euthanizing individuals whom the Nazis simply did not consider worthy of life: the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, and the physically impaired.

How many non-Jews were among the Nazis’ victims? Estimates vary from the hundreds of thousands to the millions. While in a very real sense the Holocaust was “ours” and always will be, we cannot, especially in the public arena, claim some kind of monopoly. By so doing, we dishonor those who were victims every bit as much as our own loved ones.

What particularly concerns me, however, is not historical accuracy or even the importance — great though it be — of showing respect to all victims of the Holocaust. What concerns me is not the past, but the future.

In a short time there will be no more witnesses. We now take for granted the ability to listen to those who were there to tell us their story. Soon we will no longer have that privilege. Mountains of records have been collected — photos, first-person accounts, interviews, documents, artifacts — that tell the story of the Jews during the Holocaust. But once the last witnesses are no longer among us, their stories will become easier to refute, debase, and deny. We must use every tool at our disposal to ensure the world retain an accurate recollection of just what took place.

When it comes to others who were victimized by the Holocaust, we must view them not merely as fellow sufferers; we should not accept them just as having a piece of this particular story. We should embrace them. They are an integral part of our own history and, more important, our partners in keeping that story alive.

Nearly two million hits result when the phrase “Holocaust denial” is entered into Google. In years to come that number will only rise. We must reach out actively to all whose own history is in danger of being rewritten. Our common effort will be critical in the struggle ahead.

I do understand the concern of those who gathered in Brooklyn this past Sunday. The Holocaust was a profound, personal, familial event. They wish to see it remembered the way it was to them — a horrific, unthinkable, unhuman, Jewish catastrophe.

But in the years ahead we will need help in keeping that memory alive. We must regard the mourners of all who suffered as our brothers and sisters in that holy effort.

Rabbi Clifford M. Kulwin is religious leader of Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston.

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