Holocaust Views: One Royal, One from Tinseltown
Friday, August 28, 2015
JERUSALEM, Israel -- More than 70 years after one-third of European Jewry perished at the hands of Germany's Third Reich, an Israeli-born American Jewish actress suggested Holocaust education no longer needs to be at the "forefront."
The following week, the reigning monarch of Monaco asked forgiveness for turning a total of 90 Jewish refugees over to the Nazi occupiers in neighboring France, nine of whom survived the genocide.
The startlingly different statements, one from Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman, 34, whose paternal great-grandparents perished at Auschwitz, and the second from Prince Albert, 57, son of the fairytale marriage of the late Prince Rainier and American actress Grace Kelly, came within days of each other.
In a recent interview with The Independent, Portman suggested the Holocaust wasn't really so different from other genocides and perhaps the Jewish community should back off its predisposition with Holocaust education.
"I think a really big question the Jewish community needs to ask itself is how much at the forefront we put Holocaust education," she said, clarifying that it's "an important question to remember and to respect, but not over other things."
"We need to be reminded that hatred exists at all times and reminds us to be empathetic to other people that have experienced hatred also, not used as a paranoid way of thinking that we are victims," Portman said.
Not surprisingly, there were some who didn't agree with her.
In a statement posted on its website, B'nai B'rith International said the Holocaust is inseparably connected to Jewish identity.
"An emphasis on the Holocaust in a Jewish education is extremely important as it is tied to our identity. The focus does not come at the expense of learning about other tragedies, such as those in Rwanda and Bosnia."
Author Aaron Goldstein explained why her remarks are so deeply disturbing.
Author Aaron Goldstein explained why her remarks are so deeply disturbing.
"The problem with this view is that the Holocaust is not a thing of the past. Anti-Semitism is the world's oldest hatred, and there are forces that wish to see the Jewish people eliminated from the face of the earth," Goldstein wrote in an op-ed in The American Spectator.
"The most prominent of these forces is Iran, and President Obama's nuclear agreement now gives them the means to destroy the State of Israel once and for all," he explained. "This is why her comments are so deeply disturbing."
Meanwhile at a ceremony Thursday evening at a cemetery in Monaco, Prince Albert asked forgiveness for what took place 73 years ago to the day, on August 27, 1942, when 66 Jewish refugees were rounded up and turned over to the Nazis in neighboring France. Later, another 24 Jews were handed over to them.
"We committed the irreparable in handing over to the neighboring authorities, women, men and a child who had taken refuge with us to escape the persecutions they had suffered in France," Albert said, standing in front of a monument with the names of the Jewish victims. "In distress, they came specifically to take shelter with us, thinking they would find neutrality."
The contrast between Portman's desire to relegate Holocaust education to a back burner and Prince Albert's better-late-than-never public apology for delivering dozens of French Jews to imprisonment and death reveal two stunningly different perceptions of memorializing the Nazi reign of terror.
