Editor’s Notes: This is a JJ online exclusive piece.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a public transit agency, recently accepted money for running ads produced by an anti-Semitic group that promotes Holocaust denial and distortion. The transit agency defended its controversial decision based on the First Amendment rights of the group. This action comes at a time when the number of anti-Semitic incidents has risen rapidly in the United States, especially on college campuses.
Along with hundreds of thousands of commuters who use the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in San Francisco and its suburbs, we are deeply disturbed at BART’s misguided decision to allow advertising on its electronic billboards from a nefarious hate group that masks its denial of history in a veneer of pseudo-scholarship. This California-based group believes that Hitler was a role model, denied that anyone was gassed at Auschwitz and “questions” the historical validity of the Nazi Holocaust.
We wish that BART had contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to seek its counsel on what would be an appropriate response when first approached by the so-called Institute for Historical Review (IHR).
For starters we would have informed BART, the IHR tried to place its disgusting advertising on the Washington, D.C. METRO system but was turned down by METRO.
The decision makers at BART appear to have a blind spot for the concerns of the Jewish community, especially Holocaust survivors and their families. Nobody at BART took notice that the IHR ad ran during the Jewish High Holy Days. Without question, had this hate group targeted women or Hispanics or African Americans or the LGBT Community, BART would have rejected the hate ads in a picosecond! But in the immortal words of George Orwell in his classic book, “Animal Farm,” … “but some groups are less equal than others!” So much for the hypocrisy of governmental commitment to a level playing field.
Not surprising, an IHR spokesman boasted that as a result of the ads on the BART subway platforms, IHR saw an increase in web traffic and received inquiries from other people. Congratulations, BART, on proving that advertising works — even when it comes to Holocaust denial and distortion.
The Holocaust is the most thoroughly documented, genocide in human history. Nazi Germany was meticulous in its record-keeping about its victims. In the post-WWII era, the German government in cooperation with the International Tracing Service took possession of some 50 million records regarding 17 million of the victims of The Third Reich. Readers are welcome to search online to learn more about this unimaginable low point in human history.
So what should BART do?
- End the ads immediately.
- Donate the monies that they received from the IHR to local Holocaust survivors in the SF Bay Area.
- Run ads for free with the faces of real victims of the Nazi Holocaust victims who rebuilt lives in California.
- Order a review of current by-laws and upgrade those rules immediately. Otherwise, prepare for a bevy of extremist groups to follow up on the IHR victory.
Emil Fackenheim, who died in 2003, was a noted Jewish philosopher and rabbi. He taught and believed that in addition to the 613 commandments in Jewish tradition, Jews should observe a 614th: Do not grant Hitler a posthumous victory. By allowing this horrible error in judgment to go unanswered, BART has violated the 614th commandment.
Simon Wiesenthal, the great Nazi hunter who himself lost 89 family members in the Holocaust, and the unofficial ambassador of 6 million victims of the Holocaust, against all odds, brought some 1,100 Nazi War Criminals before the bar of justice. He stated these two important calls to action to the post-Holocaust world:
“Freedom is not a gift from heaven, it must be earned every day” and “Hope lives when people remember.”
BART, are you listening?
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean, director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Morey Schapira is a past national president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and lives in the SF Bay Area.
‘History Matters’ but Hope Lives Only If People Remember : https://ift.tt/2BZ426B
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