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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER

21, 1990

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•

Holocaust

Continued from preceding page

and motion. We like things
reduced to their simplest.
And that's why I am worried
about all these museums go-
ing up. Because the tenden-
cy — the temptation to
trivialize and to vulgarize in
a country like ours, with the
best of intentions — will be
overwhelming."
Ms. Miller said that in
their zeal to remember the
Holocaust, American Jews
sometimes trample upon the
dignity of its victims and
survivors.
"I think there are better
ways to remember," said Ms.
Miller. "I think that using
the Holocaust to raise money
to sell Israel Bonds is not an
appropriate way to con-
tribute to those who died. I
really don't want to see the
Holocaust become another
fund- raising vehicle for any
group. I'm not even comfor-
table with all these private,
large donations to the U.S.
Holocaust Museum.
"I think if it is something
the nation really wanted to
do and thought it was really
important to do, then we
could have built something
less expensive, more
austere, but that would have
had congressional funding
and truly have been a na-
tional project."
Ms. Miller resents com-
memoration being used not
only as a fund- raising tactic,
but in order to gain political
support for Israel.
"Because it is too easy to
turn that support around in-
tellectually, to say, 'All
right, does that mean if
there hadn't been a Holo-
caust we wouldn't have to
support Israel?' I don't like
that correlation because I
think Israel ought to be sup-
ported in its own right, just
as I think it ought to be
criticized when it does some-
thing that American Jews
don't like or find objec-
tionable. Israel will withs-
tand that."
Ms. Miller was born in
New York and lives there
now, but grew up in Miami
and Los Angeles. Her father
is Jewish; her mother is
Irish Catholic. "I've chosen
to be Jewish," she said. "I
feel culturally and re-
ligiously Jewish."
Her background, she said,
has shaped her own percep-
tion of what are the best
ways to remember the Six
Million.
As she writes in One, by
One, "My experience with
Judaism and Jewish ac-
tivists taught me . . . that
there could be no Jewish
welfare without general,
well-being. I concluded that
the Holocaust suggests that

Jews and all threatened
minorities need allies in
their societies, that no
minority can survive in po-
litical and cultural isola-
tion."
That conclusion leads her
to lament the aborted at-
tempt by the council that
planned the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial to establish a
human rights monitoring
group.
As envisioned by Hyman
Bookbinder, the former
Washington representative
of the American Jewish
Committee, the "Committee
on Conscience" would have
tracked and exposed
worldwide holocausts in the
making. The suggestion was
dropped due to the objections
of the White House and the
State Department.
Ms. Miller recognizes that
forming such a committee
has built-in traps for the
Jewish community: How,
after all, would a Jewish-
sponsored human rights

"There is almost
a maniacal
obsession with
the Holocaust."

— Sharon Miller

group treat possible human
and civil rights violations
among Palestinians in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip?
She is also rankled by at-
tempts of revisionists to
"relativize" the Holocaust,
to say that the Nazis were no
more cruel than the U.S.
troops in Vietnam or the
French in Algeria.
Still, "I find it very sad in-
deed that the only thing that
the committee proposed that
was forward-looking, that
was human- rights oriented,
was rejected," Ms. Miller
said.
Jews, she said, have a
"special obligation" to
uphold human rights.
While she rejects the no-
tion that the Holocaust
"teaches" anything, Ms.
Miller concedes: "It means
to me that human rights
have to be defended on a one-
by-one basis."
The title of her book also
refers to Ms. Miller's percep-
tion of how the memory of
the Holocaust can most
effectively be transmitted:
as a tragedy that affected,
and is best remembered by,

Short of a Committee on
Conscience, Ms. Miller con-
siders the most important
and appropriate efforts be-
ing undertaken to cora-