The Holocaust... Not Just for Jews

Just like the Palestinian scarves, which have become ubiquitous on the streets of the world's trendy cities, usually adorning the necks of teenage fashionistas who more often than not can't point to where Gaza is on the map, or identify Yasir Arafat in a lineup of 20th century politicians, the constant references to the Jewish Shoah have done nothing but cheapen the cause and the memory of the event they invoke. 

I think that the message of "Never Again" has achieved little besides providing demagogues with new rhetorical etudes to pepper their speeches with.

After Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur the world can give itself a failing mark for genocide prevention. The spineless stance of the West in the face of rising Islamism shows that the "Never Again" message is not even helping to strengthen the resolve of the people directly involved in the Shoah: Europeans and Jews. The policies of appeasement of murderous psychos are alive and well today as they were in the 1930s.

The world has become inundated with Holocaust stories without having gained an ounce of understanding of how important it is to prevent, not weep over such events.

So let's just say enough to token Buchenwald visits and references to how much the Jews have suffered.

Stop cheapening the memory of our tragedy with redundant, meaningless verbiage.

It is not a fashion trend to be fitted to the day's weather! 

I basically understand and relate to your points however this line is a far-sighted lie.

"During World War II we marched Japanese-Americans into internment camps. After 9/11 we didn’t have to march Arab-Americans and other Muslim citizens into camps. But we did persecute them in a similar manner. In a moment of fear, we repeated our historic mistakes".

Liberal hero FDR did order Japanese-Americans (and select German and Italian-Americans) into internment camps despite the protests of FBI Director J Edgar Hoover.

Nothing of the kind in any way happened with Arab-Americans in the United States after 9/11. To the contrary, President Bush ran to the nearest mosque to reassure Arab Americans. Funny how you get the events of 65 years ago correct but do not remember 7 years ago.

Hope you will retract that lie.

Brad, you seem to sabotage your own argument.

 After correctly pointing out that other groups were murdered by the Germans, you cheapen the entire thing by then gracelessly comparing it to the Japanese internment camps and even the treatment of Moslems after 911. That shows me you really don't understand what is different about the Holocaust,  and thus sound foolish when trying to talk down to Dov Hikind about it. You're in no position to adjudge the right and wrong ways of remembrance when you don't even grasp the event yourself.  

 The Holocaust is a part of modern history that we are only beginning to measure and understand. Many people in the world aren't aware of it, or deny and otherwise diminish it for nefarious reasons or otherwise. It isn't about only the victims but also the perpetrators. And it is a definitive moment of history. For all these reasons, and because there is so much misinformation out there, the Holocaust needs to be treated with a certain objective respect. Unfortunately, the tendency is to cheapen the Holocaust by semantically reducing it to "what happens when we allow our fear to get the better of us, essentially no different from treatment of Moslems after 911(!)"

Sorry kid, the Holocaust is more than just a moral equivalency exercise for some grad student. Perhaps the reason people like Hikind appear overly judicious about the Holocaust is because they know how readily people cheapen it, even with the best of intentions. 

Thank you! 

Bradford wrote,

It is critically important that we not bury it, not forget it, if only because it certainly can happen again.

The Holocaust is hardly in danger of being forgotten. What is a danger is if we will remember anything else in Jewish history. These redundant museums should be sold off and the proceeds given to elderly Holocaust survivors, many of whom in Israel are poor.

Over-eager in your desire to care about non-Jewish victims of persecution, you lump post-9/11 Arab Americans in with post-Pearl Harbor Japanese.  Echoing other comments here, this type of inaccuracy is far more pernicious than a simple Bidenesque flourish that colors outside the lines.

The fact is that before the day of September 11 ended, Giuliani had extra cops stationed in Muslim neighborhoods to protect them from vigilante reprisals. And yet, because we have a free (to be irresonponsible) press and other nations have tight controls on their media, half of the world thinks that George W. Bush is a bigger villain than Osama bin Laden.  You perpetuate that mythology with nonsense like this.

It's right to be disgusted by Dov Hikind's myopia, but it's also right to be disgusted by over extending this equal opportunity victimhood to people who weren't actually victims of anything.

Are we really going to try and argue that Muslim Americans and Americans of Arab descent haven't faced discrimination and prejudice in this country, both before 9/11 and accutely thereafter? It's fair to say the U.S. government has acted with greater understanding and restraint than FDR's did, but to cite some boilerplate rhetoric from President Bush is to miss the larger reality. His, after all, was an administration that painted the picture of a moral crusade -- a loaded term if ever there was one -- between the west and Islam. It wasn't until somebody explained that was playing into the hands of Islamic terror groups did they back off.

It was just last year, during the presidential campaign, that a 501c(3) called the Clarion Fund distributed anti-Islamic DVDs in swing states. Examples abound, and these don't touch on the issue of racial profiling or the myriad ways in which federal law enforcement and other government agencies have carried out policies that discriminate against Muslim and Arab Americans.

Are we really arguing that because the U.S. government didn't round up Muslims and toss them in internment camps en masse that Muslims and Arabs in this country have not faced discrimination and racial prejudice from individuals as well as the state? Really?

"we did persecute them in a similar manner"

That is fundamentally false. As for the Obssesion DVD, that is a private group with First Admendment rights like Zeek itself. It want to start silencing speech and dissent like was done in World War II, that's another issue.

Muslims and Arabs in this country have not faced discrimination and racial prejudice from individuals as well as the state in any way to compare to the era of FDR which was your grotesque conclusion.

If you're still making some sort of moral equivalency (because god knows it can't be equated in any other way) between treatment of Moslems in America before or after 911 and the Holocaust, you've totally lost the plot. 

 YOU WRITE: "Are we really arguing that because the U.S. government didn't round up Muslims and toss them in internment camps en masse that Muslims and Arabs in this country have not faced discrimination and racial prejudice from individuals as well as the state? Really?"

 "We're" not arguing anything like you suggested. You're the one arguing that the Holocaust is on par with what Moslems on America face on a daily basis. By presenting yourself as a moral authority on the Holocaust and then shifting the goal posts of your own argument from 'what Moslems face in America = Holocaust' to "do any of you suggest that Moslems in America don't face racial discrimination?", you've lost it. You're now saying that the Holocaust is nothing but a form of racial discrimination, just like a Muslim getting extra screening at the airport, and should be treated as such. 

Apparently you're angry at Dov Hikind, but you should end this silly tantrum now. If you really think the things you're saying, you're only showing that you're the one who has something to learn from Dov Hikind and not the other way around.

 You started this whole game with a heavy handed attack on Hikind for preventing the truth of the Holocaust from getting out, ie Hikind's trying to keep Jehovah's Witnesses and gays killed by Germans out of the Holocaust Memorial. For this you suggest Hikind is denigrating the victims and cheapening the meaning of the Holocaust. And yet, you cheapen the whole thing far more by making asinine comparisons between what the Germans did from 1933 until the Allies literally took the zyklon cannisters out of their hands with what America did after 911 and everything in between. 

 Shameful.  

 All you've shown here is that you need to learn a little bit more about the Holocaust and why it's remembered. 

Let me just get this out of the way, not because it really should have to be said, but because critics of my argument have made it the core of theirs. No where have I made the argument that the experience of Jewish victims of Nazi Germany (or any victims of Nazi Germany's extermination campaigns) is "on par" with the experience of American Muslims and Arabs after 9/11. That is a straw man that rises up with every Holocaust remembrance, the better to thwart any comparisons, the better to maintain the unique superiority of the Holocaust amidst all other genocides and persecutions.

The reason I've never made that argument, here or any other place, is because I'm not in the business of rating genocides. "Well the Holocaust is clearly a 100, the worst of them all. Pol Pot's slaughter of 1.7 million of his own people, well that's pretty bad but it was his own people. So let's give that a 79. Slavery in America, an 88. In Europe they ended it sooner, so let's say 81. And American prejudice against gays, well we're not killing them en masse so let's say 12." Bullshit.

Does it matter that the Holocaust claimed six million Jews and only 5 million other people? That only 1.7 million Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge? Or that Nazi Germany went after sexual orientation, race, or religion while Pol Pot only cared about some insane utopian political ideology? Of course not. Comparing genocides to other genocides or bigotry or persecutions in this manner is a pointless exercise. It furthers nothing other than inane agendas of identity politics and the parochial interests of the side saying their suffering was worse.

 This is the entire core of my argument, conveniently side-stepped by critics here who'd rather play the game I'm actively encouraging us to stop playing. Let me restate what I wrote:

"The Holocaust, with a capital H, has become the purview of Jews. We demand that the memories of six million never be forgotten while doing everything we can to divorce their persecution from the same savage impulse that brought Nazi wrath down on gays and others. Does the irony escape anyone?

"It is fair enough to say the Nazis singled out Jews. They did, and they certainly killed vastly more Jews than gays or Roma. If you add up everybody else they exterminated, we’ve still got one million more victims. But if this kind of one-upsmanship is what our Holocaust remembrance has become, then go ahead and forget. Really, forget.

"We’re not learning anything from that kind of remembrance."

It's illuminating to see Hikind's original quote in total: "These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust. It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims... The Holocaust is a uniquely Jewish event."

It takes real hubris to say you cannot compare one with the other, because such a statement is driven by an inane rating scale that compares our suffering to everybody else's and says, "Our's was worse." Commemorate your's, but do it somewhere else, because our's was unique. And by G-d don't try and take away from our experience any lessons about your own plight, because that would cheapen just how special and unique and worse our's was.

That is at the core of why fewer and fewer young Jews list the Holocaust as a major component of their Jewish identity. It's why every year I work on the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival I hear the same refrain from every 20-something or 30-something I meet: "Please no Holocaust films. No more!"

Not every instance of prejudice or bigotry has to rise to the level of gas chambers and death camps before we can apply a lesson learned from the Nazi's crimes. We don't need a literal replay of the Holocaust before we can say, "Alright... fair game! They're similar." Otherwise the Holocaust is a meaningless memory, completely cut off from our future, buried in a lesson-less past.

I was immensely moved by Elie Wiesel when he stood in front of an American President and invoked his experiences as a Holocaust survivor to plead for intervention in the Baltic States in the late 1990s. I wasn't the least bit surprised to hear other Jewish voices arguing that the Holocaust had nothing to say about Bosnia (or Rwanda, or pick a place).

I can understand those who believe the Holocaust was so epic and great a trauma to have its lessons applied to something like the fight for gay rights or the very real bigotry experienced by Muslims and Arabs in our midst. Certainly if the quickest way to end an argument is to compare someone to Hitler, then it's fair to say we should step lightly when we apply legitimate lessons from Hitler's terror, and if I have tread without such care then I'll accept that criticism. But I cannot accept that the Holocaust is incomparable. I cannot accept that lessons about acquiesence in the face of bigotry can apply to instances where genocide isn't actively occuring, but racism and fear-mongering is. We really have to decide. Is the memory of the Holocaust so valuable we can't touch it? And is there any value left at that point?

Fact - The Jews were singled out and had no chance of being spared unlike other groups that fell victim to the Nazis that had a chance to pass if they chose to or keep their mouths shut and submit to the regime.

Gays (Ernst Rohm and many of the Brownshirts and presumedly a significant portion of the German population), Communists (Roland Frisler), Catholics (Reinhard Heidrict) Social-Democrats (Konrad Adneauer) ect, ect.

Hitler lost the war because he made the genocide against the Jews a top priority. 

First of all, you meant Balkan, not Baltic. 

More importantly, it's you who's trivializing the Holocaust by invoking body counts. No one seems more obsessed with ranking genocides by numbers killed than you. Hikind may have said a few things that you find objectionable but you're going off the deep end in reaction.

The Holocaust isn't only about body counts and gas chambers.  It's about the people who pushed an eliminationist ideology on a harmless ethnic group and virtually an entire continent that went along with it. The efforts that went into ridding Europe of its Jews was unparalleled. And although this may offend you, Hikind is right. What happened to Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, and gays was really not on the same level. Apparently you don't realize that, and instead of challenging your own ignorance, you choose to lash out at Hikind and Holocaust remembrance in general. 

I don't care whether a bunch of cloistered film buffs are in a 'no Holocaust' phase of their lives this season. The world doesn't revolve around post adolescents with too much time and education on their hands.

You mentioned admiration for Wiesel and his speech about the Baltics (sic). How impressed do you think Wiesel would by with your comments about the Holocaust here?  

I'm guessing not very much. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to see you pick an argument with Wiesel since he clearly doesn't share your opinion about how the West is treating Moslems post 911 and its comparability to the Holocaust.  

I think the larger issue here is an effort by the left to make specious moral equlivancy arguments that just don't hold weight. Like Jews suffered like Gays and gypsies did; Arabs suffered as much as Jews. Japanese-Americans suffered as much as Muslim-Americans. It is totally false and promotes lies but it emotionally appeals to a bogus sense of fairness among liberals. The problem is that eventually they really start believing these lies themselves.

Jewish liberals who finally snap out of it and realize these falsehoods and lies are then tagged as neo-cons. :)

"myriad ways in which federal law enforcement and other government agencies have carried out policies that discriminate against Muslim and Arab Americans"

Like what? Can you please name some for educational purposes?

 "anti-Islamic DVDs in swing states"

Was this like "Fitna" anti-Islamic, where Islam is exposed for the totalitarian, violent ideology that it is? Or "blood libel"  anti-Islamic? 

No, Jews are not the only people to suffer a holocaust (as opposed to The Holocaust).  Under the holocaust rubric we can include those you list, plus Caananites, Christians, Huguenots, Indians, Afro-Americans, Armenians, literate Cambodians, Tutsis...oh, and let's not forget any infidel in the path of ancient Muslim conquest or modern Muslim terror campaign.

Muslims?  Victims?  Of whom?  Maybe each other.  OK, there were the Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims, whom we rescued and who paid us back by hosting al Qaeda.

Let's put your puerile canard to bed right now.  Muslims weren't rounded up or otherwise persecuted after 9/11.  Before and after 9/11 the safest place in the world for a Muslim to be has been the United States.  Short of paradise where, with the Prophet, he can endlessly deflower virgins, every Muslim has wet dreams of living in the land of the Great Satan.  

Have Muslims been subject to a heightened scrutiny since 9/11?  You're damn right!  Do you really expect us to become stupid, in order to appease the superior sensibilites of Bradford Pilcher?

You claim you're not "rating genocides".  So, why are you even raising the bogus issue of persecution of Muslims in the same context as the Holocaust?  Since you don't "rate" the two, I guess you're making them equivalent, in some obscure academic sense, which no one takes seriously outside the endless silly season of the Columbia campus, where self-loathing Jewish adolescents parade their virtue by boycotting Israel and worshiping at the temple of Edward Said.

It seems you've painted yourself into a corner and with a vomitus of verbiage are trying to paint yourself back out.  Sorry.  Your silliness is on record.  Can't take it back.

The Holocaust is the culmination of centuries of pogroms of Jews.  America's persecution of Muslims is a lie, in support of which you are a) a callow nincompoop or b) a liar.  Which is it?  There is no c).

I am gay and Jewish and would be delighted to see the jewish gay community included in Holocaust Memorial.

I am sure you mean the whole gay community that was persecuted under the Nazis and not just Jewish or else you draw the ire of Bradford.

How about having a memorial for gay Iranians in about 65 years instead of demanding that the "citizen if the world" President and his phoney "hope & change" supporters do something now to help them?

 As a child of a Jewish Holocaust survivor living in Brooklyn, I totally disagree with Hikind's stand on only having Jewish markers at the Broklyn Holocaust memorial. I may be echoing what was written so far, so please excuse this.

Hikind, whom is a supporter of the Jewish Defense League and ultra- Israel hawk, does not know the history of those who were disabled physically and mentally in Nazi Germany and the occupied countries in WWII. Hitler, who borrowed on the US and British Eugenics movements of the 1920's and 1930's, went one step further and exterminated them using gas, BEFORE the Nazis unleashed their killing machine on the Jews.  Hitler signed off on the extermination, seeing that those with disabilities, was a "threat(sic) to the master race." It is said had the families who were deceived in learning how their disabled family members were killed, had risen in mass, Hitler would possibly have never undertaken his death machine on the Jews and other minorities. So I am for markers of all those who were victims of the Nazi death machine.

"Hitler, who borrowed on the US and British Eugenics movements of the 1920's and 1930's".

I would add that the eugenics movement was a racist LEFT-WING movement championed by "progressive" hero Margaret Sanger who was founder of Planned Parenthood.

it is touch and go on Margaret Sanger. But I was no implying any political stripe. I think those on both sides of the political spectrum were guilty of eugenics movement. Last note on eugenics: the US movement was so powerful it helped implement the Immigration Exclusion Act of 1924. I may have gotten the name wrong, but this act put quotas on immigrant groups coming to the US. This was a reason Jews who were escaping Nazi persecution were barred entry. (and of course anti-semitism from many political sides) 

The main reason of Immigration Exclusion Acts of that period had more to do with Anarchists and Communists who were flooding into America from Europe. One of these was Fritz Kuhn of the German-American Bund and was sent to an internment camp during WW2.

Alcove-One,

The anarchists and communists were part of that reason and the anti-semite, Fritz Kuhn was neither. The German-American were fascist sympatheziers to the German Nazi regime. Whatever the main reason, Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis in Germany and the occupied countries were the main victims of this Immigration act.

Shabbat Shalom! 

The German American bund.

Fascist sympatheziers emerged out of the socialist tradition and I think the brownshirts qualify as anarchists in many respects.

It has been fun spliting hairs with you.

Shalom Shalom

Ditto

Brad,

You are correct about the Roma. Otherwise, you are a leftist trying to usurp Jewish history for anti-Jewish ends.

Please 

1) Read the Pink Swastika. The followers of Ernst Roehm were not out to kill all gays. Many Nazis were gay or ephobphiles.

2) Look up Jewish law on homosexual acts. Why do want Judaism to be persecuted?

3) Prove that you are a Jew, rather than a leftist who wants Judaism to go away.

there was an element of antisemitism (aka jew hatred) that was close to the essence of the german nazi movement.  studying this essence is important.  yes, humanism is an important "lesson" of evil.  but not all the lessons of the nazi depradations can be learned in an op ed piece.  some require real study and thought.  the interconnectedness of nazism and jew hatred is one of these subjects.

of course dov hikind is a politician rather than a thinker and we can depend on him to say something that will stir up a headline.  big deal.  dov hikind.

but the role of jew hatred in totalitarian movements is the first thing to be discussed by hannah arendt in "the origins of totalitarianim" and one hopes that the author of this essay has more to teach or more to learn about the nazis and their jew hatred, than the "can't we all just get along" soundbite that he feels is its essence.

Good point, yonah.  In fact, isn't "can't we all just get along" Obama's prescription for dealing with the Islamists, who pretty much have the same attitude vis-a-vis the Jews as the Nazis?   Isn't that essentiallly what his Cairo speech was about?

lbjack: you have raised a potent subject by raising obama and the president's speech in cairo.  there: can't we all just get along is the starting point, but the president's presence is another factor and his professorial confession style is yet another.  but i would feel more comfortable discussing obama on some other page, one not under the title of Holocaust.

 The Holocaust is a part of modern history that we are only beginning to
measure and understand. Many people in the world aren't aware of it, or
deny and otherwise diminish it for nefarious reasons or otherwise. It
isn't about only the victims but also the perpetrators. And it is a
definitive moment of history. For all these reasons, and because there
is so much misinformation out there, the Holocaust needs to be treated
with a certain objective respect. Unfortunately, the tendency is to
cheapen the Holocaust by semantically reducing it to "what happens when
we allow our fear to get the better of us, essentially no different
from treatment of Moslems after 911(!)"

Yonah, I didn't mean to make Obama the subject of the thread.  Unless I got it wrong, your point about "can't we all just get along" in the face of anti-Semitism is about the fecklessness of appeasement.  Appeasement was why Chamberlain went to Munich and why Obama went Cairo.  I equate totalitarian Islamism, whose epicenter is Cairo, with totalitarian Nazism, whose epicenter was Munich.  In fact, before I read your post I'd been referring to Obama's "Rodney King speech in Cairo," so when I saw your "can't we all just get along" I couldn't resist making the connection.

To expand a bit about Jew hatred and totalitarianism, while anti-Semitism is often coincident with totalitarianism, I don't think there's a functional relationship between the two.  In fact, there have been cases when Jews could thank totalitarians for their deliverence.  One which comes to mind is Cromwell, who ended centuries of ethnic cleansing of Jews in England by fiat.  Another is Japan, which gave sanctuary to Jews in World War II (Latvian Jews in particular) and expressly refused to have any part in the Final Solution.  Sometimes it was only the power of the local tyrant which protected Jews, as was often the case in old Germany and Eastern Europe.  While anti-Semitism certainly has been a part of totalitarian policy, I don't think you can make it an intrinsic part.  It depends on the particular interests, biases or æsthetics of the tyrants.

Jew hatred is often a popular movement.  Democracy as a vice is mob rule, which only arbitrary force (such as a Bill of Rights) can subdue

As a Holocaust educator -- I'm amazed and appalled at the education you have received in Holocaust studies. How shameful -- your social studies teachers did you no favors.

Let's clear things up --

First -- the Holocaust is NOT a Jewish event.  A Jewish event would be something that Jews themselves as a people or on an individual bases (Provided they are Jewish) as in the case of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. This would be a Jewish event. He was Jewish and was thereby murdered by a Jew. (May his name be erased from memory.)

The Holocaust was never a Jewish event -- the Jewish people in part or in whole simply does not and will not OWN this event. Not to mention, there were non-Jews who were also slaughtered by the Nazi regime.

However, the response to the Holocaust is very much a Jewish event. The construction of Holocaust museum and education centers are all part of that Jewish response. To be taught that only Jews fell victim to the Holocaust or exhibitions of only Jews are shown at the Holocaust Museums is false. In fact there is an exhibition going around now on the homosexuals that fell victim to the 3rd Reich.

Homosexuality was outlawed in the 1800's - in Poland the 3rd Reich actually thought about reversing that law -- in their minds they thought if they legalized homosexuality less "sub-humans" would be born. Remember, slaves -- Poles were a step above Jews. 

I do want to point out that you are all missing a vital part in all this. The word "Genocide" is either not used correctly, or is abused. The Holocaust is the Jewish genocide -- there is no question, and I would highly recommend you to understand what constitutes genocide and what constitutes crimes against humanity. 

There are eight levels to genocide -- although not all eight levels have to be achieved before genocide can occure. 

Another thing to point out -- you were probably taught about the Holocaust and WW2 from the segway of understanding the treaty of Versailles. It would really behoove you to learn about the Armanian genocide 1915 and then go into WW2. This gives you a much better back drop in understanding genocide itself.

Please remember the Holocaust is not an ancient event -- we are still learning and there is always new information for us educators to learn, then teach. Simply put, the Holocaust has complexities like no other that's been studied. "Never Again" means never again to genocide anywhere.  It is not an empty threat but a beacon of hope.

Take yourself to the Holocaust Museum web sites -- Chicago has one, Washinton DC, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in California.  These are very good sites that will give you a better understanding on what is being taught today -- which some of you may find vastly different from how you were taught in the past.

I hope this helps you in your quest for learning the Holocaust.....

Thank you "Me" (commentor above). You should be aware though that unfortunately  the Wiesenthal Center has a checkered and frankly disgusting history of abbeting denial of the Armenain Genocide.

I used to be an avid supporter of the centrer's work but turned my back on them when they refused to recognize the genocide (iocluding in a musuem funded by general taxpayer funds), and actually lobbyed against its recongition admitting later that they were carrying water for the Israeli embassy which has spent more behind the scenes time and funds on  denial of the Armenian Genocide than the Turks do!

Here is a quote from the director when the Wiesenthal center partially relented after years of criticism:

Summing up the center's approach, Cooper said: "We try to take a stand
that is true to history, but which is also true to our friends, and
hopefully our Armenian and Turkish friends understand. That a genocide
of the Armenian people took place is a fact, and that for hundreds of
years, the Turkish people [aided Jews in danger], when Christian and
Muslim nations did not is also a fact, and that Israel needs close
relations with Turkey is also a fact. That's not an easy triangulation,
but it's our responsibility to make it."

Aftrer years of excluding the Arminian genocide from the exhibition they finally relented under pressure of removal of all tax funds, but "triangulation" on history? Triangulation on history projects funded by the California taxpayery? Pretty craven if you ask me.

 That doesn't mean Norman Finkelstien is right, but it does mean that segment sof our own community, and ciertainly the govenrment if Isreal has used and exploited the Holocaust, has attempted to falsely portray it as exceptional by denying genocides against others and therby feed the idea among some that the Holocaust is a tool

lbjak wrote:  To expand a bit about Jew hatred and totalitarianism, while
anti-Semitism is often coincident with totalitarianism, I don't think
there's a functional relationship between the two.  In fact, there have
been cases when Jews could thank totalitarians for their deliverence.
One which comes to mind is Cromwell, who ended centuries of ethnic
cleansing of Jews in England by fiat.  Another is Japan, which gave
sanctuary to Jews in World War II (Latvian Jews in particular) and
expressly refused to have any part in the Final Solution.  Sometimes it
was only the power of the local tyrant which protected Jews, as was
often the case in old Germany and Eastern Europe.  While anti-Semitism
certainly has been a part of totalitarian policy, I don't think you can
make it an intrinsic part.  It depends on the particular interests,
biases or æsthetics of the tyrants.

Jew hatred is often a popular movement.  Democracy as a vice is mob
rule, which only arbitrary force (such as a Bill of Rights) can subdue

 Wow. Ho hope your realize you can  can subititue ANY minority group for Jews there! That is the problem, your point can be taken by observers to indicate Jewish exceptionalism when a simple subsitution of many minorities shows that you are not illustrating anti-semitism, but prejudice against minorities in general!

I hope in your teaching of the course in GEnocide you might mention that