Opinion

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Dry Bones Team

Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us .
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Editorial

Death Camp Legacy

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espite a shaky economy, America
has pledged $15 million to pre-
serve the Auschwitz-Birkenau
death camp memorial in what was once
Nazi-occupied Poland. The Obama admin-
istration's five-year pledge has merit.
Congress first must weigh the pledge
request against other budget consider-
ations. The money certainly wouldn't go
to waste.
A U.S. Department of State statement
said the pledge "illustrates the significance
of the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, helps
commemorate the 1.1 million victims
who perished there and demonstrates
America's commitment to Holocaust edu-
cation, remembrance and research:'
Well put.
The camp has fallen into disrepair. Its
remains stand as a symbol of the barbar-
ity of the Holocaust and the depths of
depravity to which human beings can be
dragged by hatred and bigotry.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiter-
ated that in a speech she delivered at the
Schindler Factory Museum in Krakow.
Oskar Schindler was a German entrepre-
neur who saved 1,300 Jews during the
war. Said Clinton: "At a time when the last
witnesses are still alive, we hear increas-
ing voices of denial and denigration of the
Holocaust. The preservation of Auschwitz-

Birkenau will be a lasting memorial and
an eternal reaffirmation of the truth about
what occurrecr
It sure will.
About 90 percent of the victims at
Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews. Others
included Poles, Roma, Sinti, Soviet prison-
ers of war and tens of thousands of people
of diverse nationalities. People not lured
into the shower-like gas chambers died of
starvation, forced labor, disease or medi-
cal experiments — or were individually
executed. The Nazis had multiple methods
to rid Europe of non-Aryans.
Heinrich Himmler, who was the
Reichsfuhrer (commanding general of the
SS) and Germany's minister of the interior,
designated Auschwitz-Birkenau as the
locus of the "final solution of the Jewish
question in Europe." From the spring of
1942 until the fall of 1944, transport trains
delivered Jews to the gas chambers from
all over Nazi-occupied Europe.
Given the world's length list of ills, death
camp preservation isn't America's highest
priority by any stretch of the imagina-
tion. But keeping Auschwitz-Birkenau, the
largest and most notorious death camp
of Nazi Germany, open for public viewing
will underscore the terror that a genocidal
madman — or a rogue regime — can
unleash. That's an important point given

Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The U.S. financial
outlay will help fund a
$150 million endow-
ment to preserve
Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Our commitment may
prompt other civilized
nations to contribute to
the Auschwitz-Birkenau
fund so current and
future generations also
can glimpse the signa-
ture factory of horrors
engineered by Hitler.
More than 1 million
visitors each year com-
memorate the Holocaust
through the stark
images of the memorial,
located in Oswiecim.
On Jan. 27, 1945,
Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops
— a day commemorated as International
Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1947,
Poland founded a museum on the site of
Auschwitz I and II, reached through the
iron gates crowned with the infamous
motto Arbeit macht frei ("Work makes you
free").
The state department announcement
vividly captures why Auschwitz-Birkenau

DryBonesBlog.com

is essential to teaching how the world can
never again allow a place of such hatred
and persecution. The site also shows
doubters and deniers that the Holocaust
— the death scene for 11 million people,
including 6 million Jews
was no m
By 1945, Nazi Germany had killed
two of every three European Jews. Their
dogged fight to freely live as Jews lives
on in the legacy punctuated by the
Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial. E

—

Binding Israel, World Jewry

Jerusalem

T

he recent debate about conversion
in Israel has brought to the fore
an important question for Israeli
society. Let's leave aside for now whether
the proposed legislation in fact constitutes
a change in policy toward Conservative and
Reform conversions in the United States or
whether it will be at all helpful in facilitat-
ing conversion in Israel for the roughly
300,000 non-Jewish citizens.
I believe that the answer is "No" in either
case, and the debate is more about politics
than substance. The question remains, how-
ever, to what extent must Israel take into
account the beliefs, concerns and ideologies
of those who do not live in Israel?
It seems that every government in Israel
faces this core dilemma at some point:
choosing between the agendas of its coali-
tion partners for whom liberal Judaism is
either irrelevant or a convenient punching
bag around which to rally its supporters
and Israel's supporters around the world.

34

July 29 a 2010

Israel and world Jewry today
are at a crossroads in which
each (while often reflecting
and representing very different
populations, political interests
and Jewish beliefs) has to
decide whether we are going to
continue to function as a reli-
gion with one nation and one
people or whether we are going
to proceed alone.
For world Jewry, the key
question is not whether they
are willing to take a leap of
faith and support every policy decision, leg-
islation or action taken by the Israeli gov-
ernment, Knesset or society. The question
is whether they are willing to take a leap of
loyalty in which their commitment to Israel
as a critical and essential part of their mod-
ern Jewish lives is strong and secure.
Such a commitment, far from demand-
ing agreement, in fact encourages debate
and criticism. It requires a commitment to
Israel not as it is, but as it ought to be, and

a willingness to invest in creat-
ing such an Israelit requires a
deep caring, whereby, in times of
failure and in times of need, they
stand by staunchly and work to
build and sustain an Israel that
they can respect and love.
We Israelis, despite brash state-
ments to the contrary, yearn for,
and need, that love. The problem
on our part is that we are often
not willing to do what is neces-
sary to sustain and support it. We
think all that we need to do is to
wave the military "crisis du jour" to rally
the troops and reap financial and political
dividends.
Israel, as the homeland of the Jewish
people, can no longer claim a self-evident,
essentialist argument for its necessity for
the future of Jewish survival — or for that
matter its birthright as the leader of world
Jewry and world Judaism. The future of the
relationship between Israel and world Jewry
is not dependent on claims of necessity, but

rather of meaning and importance. Jews in
many places around the world, particularly
in North America, have created a home and
a vibrant and vital Judaism for themselves.
If Israel is to have a role in their lives, it
must earn it. To earn it, Israel must be a
place where religious pluralism and diver-
sity reign. It must be a place where the
various Judaisms of the Jews have footholds
and a place of respect. It must be a place
where our foreign and military policies are
morally and Jewishly defensible. It must
be a place where the impact of our policies
on world Jewry is an integral part of our
political deliberations. It must be a place
that strives to represent the best of what the
Jewish people stand for.
Such a place will emanate an energy and
creative light that will attract loyalty and
sustained love in good times and in bad,
in times of agreement and in times of dis-
agreement.
It is time to stop bemoaning the chasm
that is being torn in the foundation of our
people and begin the task of reestablish-