A Note on The Louisville Courier-Journal's Defamatory Op-Ed on The Holocaust

On Friday, in observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Louisville Courier-Journal ran an editorial which ought not to have been run:

Jews do not have a monopoly on persecution and atrocities.

For one group, for one person, to claim that the hate and violence towards them is more important than another’s, only encourages more acts of violence against others, including Black people, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims, LGBTQ+, trans-gender and Native Americans. This list is not all-inclusive. 

Good Lord!!!

Jews have never claimed such a monopoly. If anything, Jews have demonstrated a strong solidarity with other groups who have been subject to persecution and atrocities. But if we are to never forget The Holocaust then we must never forget that the aim and objective of The Holocaust was to eliminate Jews from the face of the Earth. Instead, the writers of this op-ed claim, "Hitler was just one of many dictators." Hitler nearly conquered all of Europe and sought global domination. It took nearly the entire world to stop him.

While Hitler's aims and objectives ultimately did not succeed, the global Jewish population has never reached its pre-Holocaust levels, and this will remain a part of the Jewish psyche for centuries to come. To suggest that acknowledging this fact somehow encourages violence against Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims, LGBTQ+, trans-gender and Indigenous people is not only defamatory but represents a profound ignorance of how the horror of The Holocaust came to pass. 

With fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors among us to help set the opinion writers of the Louisville Courier-Journal straight, I am afraid we can look forward to a lot more articles casting aspersions on Jews while minimizing the evil of Hitler and trivializing the memories of the men, women and children who were murdered because they were Jewish.