Hier Is the Guiltiest One of Them All!
By Carol Jean Delmar
- Rabbi Marvin Hier
Ring Festival LA is technically over although there are some events that are spilling into August, so I am taking this opportunity to respond to Rabbi Marvin Hier’s disturbing June 29 op-ed piece in the LA Times – “Holocaust: A huge word made small.”
On the surface it appears that Hier, the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is doing a noble deed by listing various political figures who have drawn analogies between various current political happenings and the Holocaust, thus trivializing and devaluing an event in history which has no equal: the brutal torturing and merciless killing of 6 million Jews. At first glance, the argument seems sound. Then one realizes that it is Hier himself who is far more guilty of making light of the Holocaust than the people he accuses.
Hier’s list of examples includes Jerry Brown “who likened the attack ads of Meg Whitman . . . to the tactics employed by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels”; Sarah Palin who “criticized President Obama’s handling of the BP crisis . . . recommending . . . an article by Thomas Sowell that compared Adolf Hitler’s use of a financial crisis to give himself dictatorial powers to Obama’s role in creating the BP escrow fund”; columnist David Sirota who described the BP disaster as an “ecological holocaust”; pro-life advocate Mike Huckabee who spoke of “the holocaust of liberalized abortions”; Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) who compared the lack of adequate healthcare insurance to a “holocaust in America”; and Lillian Rodriguez Lopez who likened the Arizona immigration law (“a bill that the Wiesenthal Center criticized”) to “tactics used by the Nazis in Germany.”
Whether you agree with these political positions or not, most of the examples either allude to the practices of the Nazis or to the general word “holocaust,” which refers to the systematic destruction of a people rather than to “the” Holocaust, which occurred during World War II when the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “holocaust” as “a mass slaughter of people” or “a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life.” Another words, the general word “holocaust” might also be synonymous with “genocide” as in the Armenian genocide, the genocide in Darfur or other devastating events.
With reference to the Palin incident: Hitler’s followers were “willing executioners” (per author Daniel Goldhagen). However when Hitler came to power, they were naively looking for economic relief without anticipating the catastrophic events to follow. Palin simply agreed with Sowell who drew a link between a failing economy that enabled the rise to power of a fascist who lived by his own rules and a president who Sowell believes is disregarding constitutional law to formulate policy. Palin and Sowell stopped short of mentioning the Holocaust. Their assertions were about law and democracy.
As for Lopez’s comment and the Wiesenthal Center’s position on the Arizona immigration law, there is no comparison between the law and the “tactics used by the Nazis in Germany.” Lopez’s comment was laughable, but the Wiesenthal Center’s response is also in error. There is nothing discriminatory occurring in Arizona. I was born in America and whenever I take a trip, I am asked to produce my passport. When I write a check, I am asked to show my driver’s license. The last time I parked at the Wiesenthal Center I was asked to show my driver’s license and to open the trunk of my car, then was obliged to pass through a security station before entering the lecture hall. It never entered my mind that I was being discriminated against or that my civil rights were being violated. I am proud to be an American and will gladly produce any documentation required to help ensure the safety of everyone around me.
My parents escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria, then Prague, and they spent a year in Cuba while waiting for their quota numbers to be called so that they could attain visas to the United States. It would have been illegal for them to have tried to sneak into Miami — so they didn’t attempt it. Many Jews were not as fortunate as they were and were forced to remain in Havana. I thank God every day that I was privileged enough to have been born in America where I have never been subjected to the whims of a fascist dictator. But I was born in the United States at a time when people respected the laws.
My parents’ passports had a big red “J” on the front page. “Israel” was written above my father’s name and “Sara” above my mother’s name. German and Austrian Jews in the 1930s and early ‘40s were legal citizens of the Third Reich, yet were discriminated against, thus forcing them to flee for their lives. They followed the laws of the countries they entered, and those countries had the right to exclude them if they could not produce the appropriate documentation. The SS St. Louis circled around Cuba and was not permitted to dock in Havana or the United States although Cuban and American leaders were aware that if the ship was turned back, the passengers would face an uncertain future, possibly death. This was unforgivable. Yet now we are supposed to give amnesty to everyone who enters the United States illegally, including their children, for we do not want to offend them by asking for documentation. Respecting one’s civil rights is essential to our society. Enforcing the law does not abuse those civil liberties.
That said, Rabbi Hier may have had cause to draw attention to those who have used the word “holocaust” too freely to make their points. But he totally forgot to remember the Holocaust himself when he, as the leading rabbi of the Wiesenthal Center, did nothing to stop the countywide Wagner festival, did nothing to broaden it, did nothing except allow the Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance to become a participant in the festival with the sole speaker on his turf being James Conlon who spouted erroneous proclamations denying the presence of Jewish caricatures and anti-Semitism in Wagner’s operas; pontificated about how Hitler “hijacked” and used Wagner’s music; and concluded that Wagner was an anti-Semite like many other artists of his generation, did not wish for the destruction of the Jews, and would have despised Hitler even though most of his family members became Nazis. His daughter-in-law had a relationship with Hitler and his grandson was a leader at a concentration camp. The list of Conlon’s proclamations proves that art for Conlon clearly takes precedence over morality.
Noted musicologist Gottfried Wagner explained in his lecture at the American Jewish University that a direct line leads from his great-grandfather Richard Wagner to Hitler. Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, the Wiesenthal Center’s director of interfaith affairs, was quoted in the Los Angeles Daily News on May 3, 2009 as having said: “My concern is that Wagner was one of the literary architects of the Holocaust. He was the one who wrote you cannot abstract the artistry from the artist.” For The Forward (May 1, 2009), he said: “We would be much happier if Los Angeles would find other musical heroes to celebrate. As long as there are Holocaust survivors alive – and there are many in Los Angeles – public accolades for Richard Wagner are a terrible slight.”
In a subsequent correspondence to me, Adlerstein wrote that the Wiesenthal Center’s position would be determined by his “employer.” Later he wrote me: “We are not – for a variety of reasons – going to lead a battle against the Festival. We will continue to make it clear that we would have preferred that such a festival [aside from the ‘Ring’ performances] have nothing to do with Wagner. If the festival won’t be pulled – and it won’t — I think the job of all of us ought to be to have people learn how toxic his beliefs were, and how music does NOT necessarily remain value neutral.”
Then on June 17, 2009, Adlerstein e-mailed me: “We communicated our displeasure, made suggestions about remedies – including, but not limited to dropping Wagner. But we don’t have the resources for a protracted battle.” A day later he wrote me: “We will also not be seen as ‘with them’ – but as having a working, non-combative relationship to preserve Jewish interests.”
So what did the Wiesenthal Center do? The Center became a festival participant with James Conlon as the sole speaker at a lecture which perplexed many in attendance and incited a protest from an observant Orthodox Jew.
It has therefore struck me as odd that the day before the conclusion of the festival, Rabbi Hier would be so quick to suddenly “remember” the Holocaust by attacking people who used the word “in ways that cheapen it.”
“The Holocaust was a horrific atrocity and watershed event in human history. The meaning of the word is being distorted and demeaned in political rhetoric and casual comparisons,” the op-ed piece asserted.
Hier may have attacked others for having used the word as part of political rhetoric, but he has also proved that for the last year, the actual horrific event, not just the word, was removed from his memory bank. His organization participated in a festival that honored a vehement racist — one of the major architects of the Holocaust — and it disseminated erroneous information that is contrary to the research published by most scholars on Wagner today.
Rabbi Hier is far more guilty of trivializing the Holocaust than the people he has so pointedly accused. For a rabbi known for combatting anti-Semitism, bigotry and hate, he certainly missed the boat with the “Ring” festival. I hope that he prioritizes better in the future as he weighs his politics and loyalties to the Jewish community.
