August 29 • 2019 5
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publisher’
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Deep Political Divide Ignores
Nuances of Holocaust Center 
W

hen it comes to public 
symbols, none in the 
Detroit Jewish com-
munity is as significant as the 
Holocaust Memorial Center (HMC) 
in Farmington Hills. Located on 
a heavily traveled 
street and adjacent 
to restaurants and 
low-slung office 
parks, the imposing 
building is by design 
an architectural con-
tradiction. It shock-
ingly communicates 
the enormity of the 
unparalleled crime against Jews that, 
in many cases, was occurring next 
door to a fence, wall, gate or street 
where non-Jews were still going 
about their everyday business.
The contradictions go beyond the 
physical. Initially opened in 1984 
adjacent to the Jewish Community 
Center in West Bloomfield, the 
HMC was tucked into a small and 
mostly subterranean space sur-
rounded by acres of greenery. Its 
founder, Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig, 
and the Shaarit Haplaytah — the 
survivors/remnants of the Holocaust 
— made the HMC a place for 
Zachor — remembering what was 

done by the Nazis and their collabo-
rators to their own families and the 
Six Million. The HMC was also a 
place that would protect the almost 
unspeakable uniqueness of this 
War Against the Jews, as the author 
Lucy Dawidowicz called it — always 
countering those who would attempt 
to revise, diminish or dilute it.
In its current facility since 2004, 
the HMC continues as a national 
focal point for learning the lessons 
of the Holocaust. As the HMC’
s 
website states, “knowledge of the 
past is essential in order to avoid its 
repetition.” It also states that “wit-
nessing the horrors perpetuated by 
the most educated society in Europe 
brings the rude awakening that edu-
cation, including religious educa-
tion, is no barrier against hatred and 
violence. The education one absorbs 
at the HMC veers one toward con-
structive social consciousness.”
Collectively, the HMC is a place of 
nuance. It preserves and protects the 
uniqueness of the Holocaust, serves 
as a continuing memorial for survi-
vors and their families, and teaches 
lessons intended to promote toler-
ance, reject bigotry and take righ-
teous stances against oppression.
So, with our political climate 

already supercharged, rhetoric flying 
and Twitter accounts aflutter, it was 
only a matter of time before the ugly 
situation at our country’
s border 
with Mexico would bring a clash of 
competing narratives to our com-
munity’
s doorstep: one depicting 
helpless refugees from strife herded 
into concentration camps staffed 
by Nazi-like Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents; 
the other depicting aliens invading 
our country, often with rapists and 
convicts in tow, who cannot enter 
without proper documentation and 
are temporarily housed in detention 
facilities. 
And that time occurred on Aug. 
20 when an estimated 200 people 
— separated by Farmington Hills 
police and their vehicles — gathered 
in front of the HMC. None could 
recollect a previous occasion when 
a group with a significant number 
of Jewish protesters were challenged 
by a group of mostly Jewish count-
er-protesters at a revered Jewish 
institution that both sides honor 
and respect but claim as justification 
for their positions and actions.
Close the Camps Detroit, a group 
that includes Holocaust survivors, 
Holocaust educators and communal 

Arthur Horwitz

Y

ou know your kids love you 
when they’
re little, when they’
re 
proud to walk alongside you, 
clutching your hand and swinging it 
merrily (often belting 
out a song at the top of 
their lungs). They give 
you sloppy kisses, gifts 
of lovingly handpicked 
bunches of weeds and 
floppy dandelions and 
always want to sit next 
to you, or on you, and 
sleep next to you, or 
on you. 
Then as they get older and grow 
more independent, things change 
slowly, starting from a rather polite 

whispered, “Can you please not kiss 
me in front of my friends?” to walking 
10 feet in front of you lest people real-
ize you are actually related. 
Then comes the day like one I expe-
rienced a few years ago. We were out 
of town for Shabbat and my teenage 
boys went to a new shul. Hours later, 
I ventured there myself, peeked into 
the sanctuary and saw my boys all the 
way at the back. I opened the door 
a little and gave them the trademark 
embarrassing two-handed mom wave, 
which they pointedly ignored but 
which caused the gentlemen standing 
in front of them to swivel around to 
ask my boys, “Do you know her?”
Later they told me proudly what 

they had responded.
Son one: “No.”
Son two: “Never seen her before in 
my life.”
I reckon that if there was a Most 
Embarrassing Parent Championships, 
I’
d at the very least get an Honorable 
Mention. And I’
d probably stand on 
the stage, waving it over my head, yell-
ing to my kids, who are shuffling out 
the back door, “Yoohoo! Snufflepants! 
Snookums-Wookums! Come take a 
picture with me!”
These days, I’
ve been going to the 
gym with two of my teenagers. While 
there, they do all these lunge-y moves 
and lifts that look super professional 
and sporty, studiously avoiding my 

Rochel Burstyn
Contributing Writer

for openers
Step by Embarrassing Step

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