This morning, the world learned that the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign was stolen yesterday night from the entrance of Auschwitz. As Channukah is coming to an end, a holiday when we celebrate our victory over historic enemies, we are hurt by new enemies. I read today in JTA that the former Polish President Lech Walesa stated that he hoped this theft was simply “a sick joke by scrap-metal thieves who didn’t know what they were doing.” I beg to differ. Auschwitz has an intricate security apparatus such that no ordinary thief, that is, a thief without intimate knowledge of the system, could access the grounds to get to the sign. This to me means that the theft was deliberate. The sign is also very heavy. It weighs about 90 pounds, thus would likely require two people to carry. People interested in breaking into Auschwitz solely for scrap metal would not have the time to escape from security personnel with the sign, and instead might opt to swipe lighter metal from barrack roofs. I thus consider this a deliberate action, intended to undermine our sense of security and to trivialize our dark history, and I support Jews across the world speaking against this in a thoughtful and productive manner.
I want to emphasize that I really dislike simplistic accusations of anti–Semitism in reactions to events like this, as there usually a lot more to it. I am a Jew who wants to see our people rise above our historical victimhood not only so that we can feel safe and proud in our identity but also so that we can acknowledge our agency in our interactions with other peoples. I hope that I read the news tomorrow and am proven wrong; I hope that this was actually a much more benign incident than I see it currently.
Yet above this, I am very uncomfortable when Jews use events like this to legitimize the status quo in Israel. Believing that the world is against them, some Jews either accept or advocate for hawkish treatment of Palestinians and Arabs involved in the conflict in the name of security for the Jewish people.
I think this reaction is allowed to happen because right–wing Israel organizations speak most equivocally and more often about anti–Semitism than left–wing Israel organizations do; this is something that we talked about briefly at the J Street U Conference this past October. When I go to the ZOA website, I find an official position on anti–Semitism. I do not find this at the J Street website, nor do I find that they respond to events like this very often (correct me if I am wrong). I certainly understand that J Street may refrain from making a statement because (1) these issues are not directly related to Israel and (2) they do not want want to inadvertently confound anti–semitism and anti-Israel sentiment. Yet Jews confounding the two concepts is precisely why J Street should talk about anti–Semitism in a more sustained way. J Street wants American Jews to feel empowered to criticize Israel in a normative way, and helping them decouple anti–Semitism and anti–Israel sentiment will help J Street achieve this goal. I thus believe that J Street would be wise to tackle the issue of anti–Semitism as related to Israel so that Jews think about both anti–Semitism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in a healthier way.
I hope I am not the last left-wing activist to tackle this issue.
