Brooklyn, NY – A plan to honor gays and other non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in Brooklyn’s Holocaust Memorial Park was blasted Sunday by critics as political pandering.
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Politicians and community activists gathered at the Sheepshead Bay park Sunday to demand Mayor Bloomberg block a plan they contend undermines the memorial’s core message.
“The Holocaust is a uniquely Jewish event,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), whose mother is a Holocaust survivor and only Jews persecuted during the Nazi reign should be honored at a Holocaust memorial in Brooklyn.
Hikind said even though 5 million people from other groups — including gays, the disabled and Jehovah’s Witnesses — were killed along with 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust, the memorial in Sheepshead Bay should be for Jews only.
“To include these other groups diminishes their memory,” said Hikind, as he stood next to his 89-year-old mother, Frieda. He said he is not against a memorial to honor the other groups — as long as it is somewhere else.
“These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust,” Hikind said following a press conference at the memorial. “It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims.”
Hikind’s fiery comments were the latest in an emotional debate over the wording of granite markers at the city-owned Holocaust Memorial Park at Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard.
He made his remarks after city officials approved a bid to have markers honoring homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled, political prisoners and Roma and Sinti Gypsies, who were also persecuted and killed by the Nazis.
A Parks Department spokeswoman said the city signed off on the recognition “to reinforce its educational purpose to remind us of the historical circumstances of the Holocaust.”
“There’s no doubt that most of the atrocities at the Holocaust were done upon Jewish people,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “But it goes against history and their memory to not commemorate all groups that were persecuted by the Nazis.”
Mayor Bloomberg declined to comment on the issue.
Although the memorial already recognizes five of the persecuted groups in the narrative inscribed at the base of its brick tower, advocates have pushed for a more prominent honor among the scores of granite stones that surround the main memorial.
“The Holocaust memorial means you memorialize anyone who died in the Holocaust,” said Theresa Scavo, president of Community Board 15, who lobbied for the additional recognition. “It doesn’t matter what color or sexual orientation you were.”
It is racist to say that only Jews are the only ones important enough to be remembered.
leave the jews alone…get your own park
It is a Holocaust victims memorial. Non-Jews were victims as well. Their families lost them as well. It was a crime against them as well. Let them be remembered!
There were many Nazis, Y’S, who lost their lives in the Holocaust. Some perished while carrying out their nepharious duties in the death camps. Some were accidentally shot by fellow Nazis while they were herding Jews to their death. Others died of other causes in their carrying out their duties.
How can we not memorialize these men who died to bring us the main focus of our new Judaism, …. The Holocaust. ??
Obviously, to many Jews today practicing Judaism, the Holocaust, and issues pertaining thereto, has replaced obeying the Torah as their modern Jewish Practice. Therefore, we owe those Nazis a debt of gratitude, or hakoras hatov, for giving us our new religion.
Before WWII, we were grateful to Moshe Rabbainu for bringing us the Torah, whose laws we obeyed and followed. Today, we should be grateful to the Nazis who brought us the Holocaust. “Remembering the Holocaust” is certainly an easier religion than obeying the Torah. And absolutely, those Nazis who gave their lives so we can have this Holocaust to “observe” deserve to be commemerated.
(Yes, to those of you who are literal minded, the above was not intended seriously, but was intended to provoke thought and a chuckle, to those who find it funny or find some other redeeming quality in it. No, I am really not in favor of commemerating the Nazis…. and I certainly do not belittle the tragedy of the Holocaust. My comment is only on how it, together with supporting Israel, has seemed to replace Torah Observance as the new definition of “being Jewish”)
5 million targetted victims from other groups is massive. When we say “never forget” do we mean never forget the Jewish victims?
Without a doubt Jews were singled out for a “final solution” because we were considered the main threat, where as other groups where just considered “undesirables” and political or social enemies. What the liberal left is attempting to do is suggest that those who are against gays lifestyle and gay marriage are nazis. They will now begin to argue, nazis were against gay rights so are you a nazi sympathizer? etc…
Putting aside the moral issues, politically, this is an incredibly stupid move by Mr. Hikind.
To make a Holocaust memorial in a PUBLIC PARK that speaks only about the deslaughter of Yidden is foolish, disrespectful, and spits in the face of everyone else who was murdered. I don’t care if they were gyspies, gays, Poles, etc. If they were slaughtered they deserve to have their memory respected.
Let’s not forget that many of the dead were captured and killed defending YIDDEN. Many were killed for hiding YIDDEN. Because of the secrecy involved, we will never know the actual number of those who sacrificed their own lives to save our families. Should they not be represented too?
What about those with mental disorders. Countless numbers with Down’s Syndrome were slaughtered. Are their lives not worth remembering, regardless of their religion?
As a side note, the “memorial parks” are nice, but meaningless if they don’t remind us of what genocide and the systematic slaughter of human beings really is. Remembering the Holocaust is important for the world, not just Yidden. There are still genocidal maniacs walking this earth. There are people being slaughtered today in huge numbers in Africa while we stand by and do nothing. Clearly, making the Holocaust a strictly “Jewish” thing has made us quickly forget that genocide still happens today. If we are not actively trying to help stop genocide anywhere it happens, we have learned nothing other than how to build nice memorial parks.
The Holocaust affected mainly Jewish people, but many others were also killed. If this is a public memorial to the Holocaust and not specifically to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, there can be no good reason to exclude others.
It defies reason — indeed, it is very ugly — to argue that the suffering of even one non-Jewish person is somehow less relevant than that of a Jew.
In fact, the Nazis thought that the Jews, the Gypsies, and the others were “not in the same category” as German people and therefore not worthy of equal treatment in society. Hikind makes the same kind of argument about non-Jews: “These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust.” What is this “category” that it makes another person or group less worthy of memory? Is it the same kind of “category” that made Jewish lives less worthy than Germans’?
Hikind should recant and remain in silence. He has brought shame on the Jewish community.
The Holocaust affected mainly Jewish people, but many others were also killed. If this is a public memorial to the Holocaust and not specifically to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, there can be no good reason to exclude others.
It defies reason — indeed, it is very ugly — to argue that the suffering of even one non-Jewish person is somehow less relevant than that of a Jew.
In fact, the Nazis thought that the Jews, the Gypsies, and the others were “not in the same category” as German people and therefore not worthy of equal treatment in society. Hikind makes the same kind of argument about non-Jews: “These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust.” What is this “category” that it makes another person or group less worthy of memory? Is it the same kind of “category” that made Jewish lives less worthy than Germans’?
Hikind should recant and remain in silence. He has brought shame on the Jewish community.
Well said # 15.
By Hikind’s flawed logic, a 9/11 memorial built at the site of the WTC should exclude the name of the Asian tourist who was killed because she chose that fateful morning to take a tour of the WTC. Al Qaeda’s primary targets were Americans or, at a minimum, Westerners. Would it “diminish the memory” of the US-born victims of 9/11 if that memorial also included the name of the Chinese tourist who was killed in the WTC collapse that fateful morning? And the case for including the names of gypsies on the Holocaust memorial is that much stronger than the case for including the non-US born victim on the 9/11 memorial because the gypsies were undoubtedly among the intended victims of the Nazis, regardless of whether Hikind thinks they suffered as much as Jews.
Hikind should remember what Eli Weisel said “… all Jews were victims but not all victims were Jews.”
The argument is that the Jews were one group of many that were murdered in grand scale by the Germans. But the argument is false. It describes it as 6MM v. 5MM, but the 6MM is one group and the 5MM is many groups. Further, the damage done to the Jewish people was far more extensive, with an estimated 1/3 of all Jews in the world killed. That can’t be said of any other group.
So what should be? Let there be a new memorial to all victims of the Holocaust, without taking away form the uniqueness of the existing Jewish memorial. Leave the current one alone, and build a second one, separately, for the 11MM combined victims. And of the Roma want a third one for their 1MM victims, so be it, let them push to get one.
There losses were big, not to be put down, but still pale in significance compared to our by number or proportion.