6 Febraury 14 • 2019
jn

T

he past few months, since the 
end of working through the 
Michigan midterm election 
cycle, I’
ve had a lot of time for self-re-
flection. I have evaluated my role as the 
sole Republican Jewish 
voice and political orga-
nizer in the Michigan 
Republican Party aside 
from our chairman, 
Ronald Weiser. I built 
relationships with key 
stakeholders in Wayne 
County by incorporat-
ing my own identity 
and talking about my experience grow-
ing up as a conservative American-
Israeli. 
The election outcome took an emo-
tional toll on me, but I quickly over-
came the anxiety. The turning point 
came when I revisited the memories of 
my participation on the March of the 
Living in 2013 with my high school 
graduating class. 

DEEP IMPRESSIONS
In Auschwitz-Birkenau, I walked 
through the eerie silence of the crema-
toria, saw the prosthetics, shoes and 
hair of the deceased, and heard the 
loud screams of my murdered ances-
tors as I stood in front of the wall of 
death. In Treblinka, I held one of my 

best friends while he cried his heart out 
on the bus after he read the mourner’
s 
Kaddish for his family who had been 
murdered in the extermination camp. 

In Majdanek, I inherited what would 
eventually be my permanent mental 
scar when I saw Hell right before my 
very eyes. Hell is a giant mausoleum in 
Lublin that carries the blood, flesh and 
ashes of more than 18,000 Jews, mur-
dered on that very spot. Hell is the out-
come of real systemic oppression, the 
brutality of a dictatorship that sought 
nothing but global dominance through 
a regime built on ethnic cleansing. 
In Birkenau, I wrote a letter to 
myself where I promised to always 
remain strong no matter the situation, 
to educate people of other faiths and 
backgrounds on this experience, and to 
carry and embrace my identity wher-
ever I go. 
Two years later, on my 20th birthday, 
I received that letter in my dorm at 
Michigan State University. I collapsed 
in the hall and burst into tears upon 
seeing it, but the fact that I had hon-
ored the promise I made to myself two 
years ago on the frigid train tracks of 
Birkenau gave me a sense of pride. 
Flash forward four more years, in the 
midst of the political divide, and I only 
feel a sense of confusion. It is the year 
2019, and it is with great disappoint-

ment that I still have to remind people 
— sometimes even of my own faith or 
my own party — about how truly evil 
the Hitler regime was. 

TRIVIALIZATION OF THE HOLOCAUST
When people call someone a “Nazi” 
or “Hitler” out of a petty political dis-
agreement — or draw historically inac-
curate parallels about the Holocaust to 
current events to score political points 
— they are cheapening the severity of 
what millions of Jews endured. 
 Although I was distinctly critical of 
the Obama administration due to its 
mistreatment of Israel, I would never 
compare him or his actions to Hitler or 
the Holocaust.
Trivializing the Holocaust is the most 
damning form of demagoguery. This 
disgusting habit of fear-mongering is 
practiced by both sides of the aisle and 
we can no longer deny it. 
Establishment Republicans have 
incorporated this tactic primarily in 
the “pro-life” argument. A county party 
delegate in the 11th Congressional 
District publicly compared the exter-
mination of “helpless Jews” to the 
extermination of “helpless babies.” He 
added on a Facebook thread: “In fact, 
the argument can be made that the 
evil of abortion is actually magnitudes 
more evil than the Holocaust that was 

brought against the Jewish people 
and other people groups by the Nazi 
regime.”
I tried to explain to the candidate 
why such a polarizing comparison is 
deemed offensive to Jews and how it 
draws the line in terms of support and 
was threatened with political reprisal.
Seriously, what do women’
s repro-
ductive rights have to do with the 
intended genocide of more than 6 mil-
lion Jews? This is a question that radi-
cal, provocative groups such as the reli-
gious California-based Survivors of the 
Abortion Holocaust refuse to answer 
logically. Its strategies include sharing 
memes on Facebook of concentration 
camps with the “Planned Parenthood” 
logo written on the barracks and 
aggressive intimidation protests outside 
the facilities. 
To my conservative colleagues, if 
you choose to continue to advertise the 
pro-life cause, that is your legal right, 
but our scabs are not for you to peel. 
The Democratic Party applies a more 
mainstream approach to marketing 
their platform under the Reductio ad 
Hitlerum fallacy (Latin for “Reduction 
to Hitler”), where it is sprinkled around 
like confetti. 
Members and leaders of the 
Democratic Party have linked Zionism 
to Nazism, Trump and Netanyahu to 

guest column
The Political Trivialization of Trauma 

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