6 | APRIL 20 • 2023
1942 - 2023
Covering and Connecting
Jewish Detroit Every Week
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opinion
What Do You Think
When You See a
Pile of Rings from
Auschwitz?
T
wo hands holding wed-
ding rings from a huge
pile on display in the
Auschwitz concentration camp
museum. Those rings belong to
murder victims, mostly to Jews
who were mass
murdered by
Zyklon B gas and
stripped of all of
their belongings —
rings, jewelry and
even gold teeth,
the valuable mate-
rials that were left
after their extermination.
How much empathy do you
have toward the victims and their
surviving families? Do you won-
der if there is a difference in your
reaction if you are a Jew or if
you aren’t? I have so many more
questions, and I really am inter-
ested to know your answers.
I’ll tell you why. It is because
both of my parents are Holocaust
survivors. This picture is a real
photo from Auschwitz, and the
Holocaust really did happen.
It is amazing to me that
someone would deign to use
Holocaust imagery to support
their political agenda, even going
so far as to call the other side
Nazis. Can it be that these people
are misinformed, unaware or
ignorant of that time in history?
Of course; but I believe in the
case I am discussing, the people
who used this Holocaust imagery
to support their political views
did this fully aware of the histor-
ical facts and used it to stoke fear
and hate with implicit antisemitic
over- and undertones.
Last month, Kristina Karamo,
chair of the Michigan Republican
Party, used the above-mentioned
photo to stoke fear about upcom-
ing gun safety legislation in the
state legislature. She purposefully
used this horrific image with
untruthful captioning to claim
that “they” are coming to take
your freedom, stoking hate and
fear. She then doubled down
when called on it.
Freedom is not defined by
the number of guns one has.
The freedom to purchase mil-
itary-style weapons has led to
hundreds of mass shootings with
higher and higher victim counts
every year, and that number is
increasing by the moment.
No, the poor victims of the
Holocaust had no guns. They
were unarmed, scared and
defenseless. They were mostly
Jews but were also LGBTQ+,
the disabled, the Roma and even
Black people like Chairwoman
Karamo, none of whom deserved
to be discriminated against or to
PURELY COMMENTARY
continued on page 9
Avishay
Hayut
HOLOCAUST ENCYCLOPEDIA
Rings collected
from Holocaust
victims.