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18 • Friday, October 12, 1984
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Bauer of Wiesenthal. "Basic to it is the lack of comprehen-
sion for what one might call the gradation of evil." Bauer
argued that this universal approach threatens to de-
Judaize and dissipate the meaning and impact of the
Holocaust.
The inscription at the entrance of the Wiesenthal Center
Holocaust Museum pays tribute to "six million Jews and
to five million of other faiths," but the Center, in its printed
material, now refers to six million Jews "and millions of
others."
The museum itself opened in 1978 on the lower level of
the Center, which also houses YULA and a Holocaust
library. It is small and crowded with photos and multi-
media images. Just inside the entrance are drawings made
by Wiesenthal when he was a Nazi prisoner, including a
sketch of a guard tower with walls formed of human skulls.
Next to the entrance a 25-minute film is shown relating
the Holocaust to current events, especially anti-Semitic
incidents. It is updated every six weeks.
Along one wall are displays about the roots of anti-
Semitism and the Jewish resistance movements, both arm-
ed and spiritual. There is a pictorial chronology of the
Holocaust and facts and figures on the destruction of Euro-
pean Jewry. The one-room museum includes a scale model
of a concentration camp, audio-visual recordings about
Nazi brutality and a display containing photos of Nazi
leaders.
Hanging from the ceiling and covering the walls are
photos of Jews being herded into concentration camps.
There are also artifacts like a burnt Torah and a pair of
tefillen found at Auschwitz.
In a far corner of the room is a photo montage wall dis-
play. It shows concentration camp inmates pointing an
accusing finger, with the inscription: "Here is the world
that didn't care, those that had ears but would not hear,
eyes but would not see, hands but would not act, and the
few saints amongst them who cared, who bled, who suf-
fered." Raoul Wallenberg is shown as one of those saints;
Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill and Pope Pius XII are depicted
as "the bystanders."
Outside, adjacent to the one-room museum is a
Holocaust Memorial Plaza with six black majestic
sculptures, each symbolically shattered at the top, and a
marble slab inscribed with the names of concentration
camps. A flame burns in honor of the victims.
The outside plaza offers a quiet spot to reflect on the
exhibit's powerful and disturbing visuals. It is here, away
from the intensity, that the overwhelming sadness sinks in.
--
Simon Wiesenthal
and Elizabeth Taylor
at a Wiesenthal
Center event. The in-
stitution has been
criticized for using
Hollywood film stars
to promote its
activities.
agreed to make the center the social action institution
Wiesenthal envisioned and to contribute at least $5,000
a month to Wiesenthal's Documentation Center in Vien-
na for his ongoing help.
One key difference remained: Wiesenthal was and re-
mains a universalist on the Holocaust. He prefers to speak
of the 11 million people of all faiths killed by the Nazis
rather than the six million Jews who perished.
Many Jews, especially survivors, are infurated with this
thinking. They argue that unlike the others who died, the
Jews alone were singled out for total annihilation and were
not simply victims of war."He alienates all of the Jewish
survivors," says Elie Wiesel of Wiesenthal's views.
Dr. Alex Grobman, former director of the Wiesenthal
Center and a Holocaust expert, said that Wiesenthal made
"a colossal blunder" in referring to 11 million victims. "His
motives were understandable," Grobman said. "He felt
that few people care about the Jews, and he could broaden
interest in the cause if he included the Christians. But first
of all, 11 million is an arbitrary number. And more impor-
tantly, it distorts history and de-emphasizes the very
crucial difference between the Jews and the other victims."
Dr. Yehuda Bauer discussed the matter in a 1980 arti-
cle in Midstream. The professor of Holocaust Studies at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem said that Simon Wiesen-
thal "invented the '11 million' formula that is a key slogan
in the denial of the uniqueness of the Jewish experience."
He said that the number "in purely historical terms is
sheer nonsense" because Wiesenthal's figure is either much
too high (about 500,000 non-Jews died in concentration
camps) or much too low (about 20 million non-Jewish
civilians died at the hands of the Nazis during the war).
"His mistake is not arithmetical, but conceptual," wrote
•
Two Holocaust Museums,
Two Miles Apart
"One day your children will mark this
historic date: namely, the decision of the
Jewish people of Los Angeles to erect a
memorial to our martyrs."
Simon Wiesenthal
June, 1973
Ironically, while there are only a handful of Holocaust
museums in the United States, there is another one in Los
Angeles, only a few minutes' ride from the Wiesenthal
Center.
The Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust
is housed in and affiliated with the Jewish Federation of
Los Angeles. The two museums opened within a few