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‘History Matters’ but Hope Lives Only If People Remember

[additional-authors]
October 4, 2018
Photo from Gigaom

Editor’s Notes: This is a JJ online exclusive piece. 


Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a public transit agency, recently accepted money for running ads produced by an anti-Semitic group that promotes Holocaust denial and distortion. The transit agency defended its controversial decision based on the First Amendment rights of the group. This action comes at a time when the number of anti-Semitic incidents has risen rapidly in the United States, especially on college campuses.

Along with hundreds of thousands of commuters who use BART in the greater San Francisco area, we are deeply disturbed at BART’s misguided decision to allow advertising on its electronic billboards from a nefarious hate group that masks its denial of history in a veneer of pseudo-scholarship. This California-based group believes that Hitler was a role model, denied that anyone was gassed at Auschwitz and “questions” the historic validity of the Nazi Holocaust.

We wish that BART had contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to seek its counsel on what would be an appropriate response when first approached by the so-called Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

For starters, we would have informed BART that the IHR tried to place its disgusting advertising on the Washington, D.C., METRO system, but was turned down by METRO.

The decision-makers at BART appear to have a blind spot for the concerns of the Jewish community, especially Holocaust survivors and their families. Adding to the insult: The IHR ad ran during the Jewish High Holy Days. Without question, had this hate group targeted women or Latinos or African-Americans or the LGBT community, BART would have rejected the hate ads in a picosecond! But to paraphrase the immortal words of George Orwell in his classic book “Animal Farm, “… some groups are less equal than others!” So much for the hypocrisy of governmental commitment to a level playing field.

BART spokespeople reportedly have said that the agency doesn’t endorse the message or the group. Photos online reveal that the ads say “History Matters!” (the institute’s motto) with the name of the institute. Mark Weber, the IHR’s director, has been quoted on several media outlets as saying his group paid $6,400 for the ads. He told reporters that BART initially rejected the ads when the designs featured the group’s URL. After that was removed, the agency said the ads met the guidelines.

Not surprisingly, an IHR spokesman said that as a result of the ads at BART train stations, IHR saw an increase in web traffic and received inquiries from the public. Congratulations, BART, on proving that advertising works — even when it comes to Holocaust denial and distortion.

The Holocaust is the most thoroughly documented, genocide in human history. Nazi Germany was meticulous in its record-keeping about its victims. In the post-WWII era, the German government in cooperation with the International Tracing Service took possession of some 50 million records regarding 17 million of the victims of The Third Reich. Readers are welcome to search online to learn more about this unimaginable low point in human history.

So what should BART do?

  1. Stop displaying the ads immediately.
  2. Donate the monies that it received from the IHR to local Holocaust survivors in the Bay Area.
  3. Run ads for free featuring faces of victims of the Holocaust who rebuilt their lives in California.
  4. Order a review of its current bylaws and upgrade those rules immediately. Otherwise prepare for a bevy of extremist groups to follow up on the IHR victory.

Emil Fackenheim, who died in 2003, was a noted Jewish philosopher and rabbi. He taught and believed that in addition to the 613 commandments in Jewish tradition, Jews should observe a 614th: Do not grant Hitler a posthumous victory. By allowing this horrible error in judgment to go unanswered, BART has violated the 614th commandment.

Simon Wiesenthal, the great Nazi hunter who lost 89 family members in the Holocaust and the unofficial ambassador of 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, against all odds brought some 1,100 Nazi war criminals before the bar of justice. He stated these two important calls to action to the post-Holocaust world:

“Freedom is not a gift from heaven, it must be earned every day” and “Hope lives when people remember.”

BART, are you listening?


Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean, director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Maurey Schapira is a past national president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and lives in the SF Bay Area.

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