ve never laughed so muca nor have I cried so rn.uch in one (fir k ti rt fi 7-41 q 1-11 1.- evoo-N 4-NI-1, e Part Take Back Lirouolat, The Holocaust r na clon 'Lo oar tears to our eyes and pnae s, community, year prior, the" eGn cept of a Michigan Miracle Mission was at most one El Al direct flight servicing 200-400 Detroiters. A pent-up demand resulted in S0111 i,300 Detroit Jewish communit members occupying three El Al - MA mission jets. w °uses ? ever spo es of not to hotels water a Cilys to facil in April at C IA° ' 4., k A4 : ---1 rn Li A. a ELLIOT JAGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS I • Pri. Y."WN , 417 include ras4le-ot-rncti0n ntasses art Pubes and nursery classes Subscribe Now. Receive 52 issues plus 6 issues of Style magazine for only $39 ($54 out-of-state). Save with a TWO YEAR SUBSCRIPTION FOR $72 ($94 out-of-state). ❑ Yes, I'd like my own Please bill me. year subscription to the Jewish News. ❑ Payment enclosed. ❑ I'd like to send a year subscription as a gift to: Name My Name Address My Address City City State State Zip Zip Phone Phone Gift Card Message Please send all payments along with this coupon to: Detroit Jewish News, P.O. Box 2267, Southfield, MI 48037-9966. Allow 2-3 weeks for delivery. e For faster service, call 1-810-354-6620 and charge it to your Visa or MasterCard between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. AD394 t was a 'holocaust' here," de- clared the new head of the fi- nancially ailing New York Historical Society to charac- terize the conditions she encoun- tered at the museum. Some homosexual activists metaphorize the deadly AIDS dis- ease as a gay "holocaust." A Washington newspaper used the headline, "Delta Plane Had Engine Trouble: Survivors Kept Cool Amid a 'Holocaust.'" The Church of Scientology has been running ads complaining that its followers in Germany are being treated like the Jews were during the Holocaust. Catholic leaders compare "the killing of 4,000 babies a day in the United States" to the Holo- caust. This carelessness with words illustrates that the universaliza- tron of the Holocaust has gone too far. Holocaust museums and memorials dot our landscape; schools use the Holocaust to teach tolerance; Hollywood directors make Holocaust movies for pop- ular consumption. And at least eight states have adopted Holo- caust curriculums. This has had an unintended consequence. People are now de- sensitized to the awesome, unique catastrophe that de- stroyed European Jewry. Will what happens on April 27's Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remem- brance Day, reverse the dismal way people have come to "re- member" the Holocaust? The Holocaust museum busi- ness is booming, and bigger, bet- ter, state-of-the-art Holocaust museums are being built. One is already in Washington. Another is in Los Angeles. Soon, one will be built in New York. We are not just trying to preserve the mem- ory of the Holocaust for Jews. We are asking the world to learn the universal lessons of the Holo- caust. We want our Holocaust — and we want to share it, too. Has our obsession with memo- rializing the Holocaust to the world at large made future geno- cide less likely? Plainly, the news from Africa (Rwanda, Burundi and the rest), Asia (where the mass murderer Pol Pot is alive and well in Cambodia), Europe (where the Jews' tormentors dur- ing the Holocaust are now the tormented in Bosnia) and many other parts of the globe demon- strates that, 50 years later, hu- Elliot Jager, Ph.D., an adjunct instructor of politics at New York University, is executive director of TSOMET I USA. mans still practice mass murder. Moreover, can the Holocaust teach universal lessons without losing that which makes it the only one of its kind? Consider how Palestinian-Arabs have used the Holocaust in their psycho- logical warfare campaign against Zionism. "In the eyes of the Arabs," wrote Emile Habibi, a prominent Arab citizen of Israel, "the Holocaust is seen as the orig- inal sin which enabled the Zion- ist movement to convince millions of Jews of the rightness of its course.... If not for your — and all of humanity's — Holocaust in World War II, the catastrophe that is still the lot of my people would not have been possible." In this twisted interpretation, it is the Arabs who are the longest suffering Holocaust vic- tims. Publicity about the Holocaust has prompted some African Americans to engage in a "we-suf- fered-more-than-you" competi- tion with Jews. Many blacks say the "greatest holocaust in histo- ry" was slavery. And there is now a move among some blacks to de- mand government reparations to the descendants of slaves. Its ad- vocates point to German repara- tions to death-camp survivors as somehow providing precedent. Has the obsessive memorial- ization of the Holocaust at least contributed something practical in how Jews assess security threats to Israel and world Jew- ry? Hardly, as Israel's worsening self-inflicted security situation demonstrates. Nothing better captures how the lesson of the Holocaust has escaped Israel's leaders than their preaching about the need to overcome the "Holocaust mentality" that has restrained Israel from making dangerous concessions for peace. Even Holocaust survivors have enemies. Far from learning the lessons of the Holocaust — that human beings are capable of unimagin- able cruelty and mass murder — too many Jews put their faith in a credo that suggests there is no such thing as intractable hatred; that somehow, there is a negoti- ated solution to every problem. Some still discount the idea of what Ruth Wisse terms "intran- sigent political will." So, as organizational, temple and Jewish center planners be- gin preparing for Yam Hashoah, a few program suggestions come to mind: * The word "Holocaust" has HOLOCAUST page 10 •