COMMENTARY: Let’s Keep the Bombs Out of World War II Rhetoric

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Sixty years have passed since the end of World War II in 1945, but in many ways, the war is still with us. In New York City, real estate agents still describe certain desirable apartment buildings as “pre-war.” Everyone immediately knows which “war” they mean. Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Sixty years have passed since the end of World War II in 1945, but in many ways, the war is still with us.

In New York City, real estate agents still describe certain desirable apartment buildings as “pre-war.” Everyone immediately knows which “war” they mean.


Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation,” brought us the stories of Americans who, between 1941 and 1945, fought an “Axis of Evil” that existed years before George W. Bush was born: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militaristic Japan.

Even the late Pope John Paul II was shaped by the war, as he witnessed the mass deportation and murder of Jews in his native Poland, including some of his classmates. He fittingly called the past 100 years the “Century of the Shoah” (the Hebrew term for the Holocaust).

For the pope, Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” and millions of others, World War II was the defining event in their lives. But as the years pass and World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors die natural deaths, memories grow dimmer and language from that period _ which once meant something quite specific _ is currently being tossed around like a verbal frisbee. World War II parlance is now used in disrespectful and wildly inaccurate ways.

Take the Terri Schiavo saga, for example. During TV coverage outside her hospice, I noticed signs with World War II terminology and symbols, including the hated Nazi swastika. The most egregious sign read: “Auschwitz U.S.A.”

That reckless use of language was insulting to the memory of the 1.5 million people _ mostly Jews _ who were gassed, shot, and hanged at the Nazi death camp in Poland. The sign was also an insult to Terri Schiavo because it ramped up the fiery rhetoric and prevented a cogent exploration of the complex issues of her case.

Recently, Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition, a conservative political group located in the Seattle area, also crossed the line of decency when he condemned the announced plans for a Gay Pride gathering in Jerusalem next summer.

“My first reaction was that it was deja vu,” Lapin said. “This was the Nazis marching in Skokie.”


He was referring to a 1970s march of the American Nazi Party through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill. Their ugly action disturbed the lives of the many Holocaust survivors who had started new post-war lives in America. The Nazi parade caused revulsion and sparked a bitter controversy.

Lapin, perhaps realizing he had made a disgraceful error in judgment by trivializing both Nazism and its victims, quickly employed an expedient political “apology” to “explain” his remarks:

“I’m not saying that the homosexuals are Nazis … there is such a thing as deliberate provocation. To hold the march in Jerusalem, which is certainly the center of biblical civilization _ and this is the same Bible that tells us that homosexuality is immoral _ is a provocation.”

We owe the 6 million Holocaust victims the dignity and respect they deserve. Using “Auschwitz U.S.A.” and “Nazis” to score cheap political points in today’s polarized society is shameful.

The Schiavo case was sad, but it did not involve gas chambers, crematoria, and the murder of millions of people. Whatever the issues surrounding a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, the marchers are not Nazi Storm Troopers bent on killing Jews.

My collegial advice to Lapin comes from our shared rabbinic tradition: “O sages, be careful with your words lest you be condemned and … the Name of Heaven profaned.”


KRE/JL END RUDIN

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s Senior Interreligious Adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

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