For almost a decade I worked at a small Holocaust museum in Brooklyn. The mission was simple and impactful. While most Holocaust museums focus on the perpetrators, the Nazis, and how they came to power, the impact of propaganda, and the extent of their unimaginable evil, our museum centered on victims of the Holocaust: the Jews and their experiences. We constructed period rooms with prewar artifacts, showing how Jews lived in different communities in prewar Europe. We displayed report cards Jewish children received in schools and notices about what time to bring your family’s cholent to the local bakery before Shabbat.
The main difference, to my mind, in focusing on perpetrators vs. victims is the ability to universalize the message. It’s easy to demonstrate how propaganda works, how attractive antisemitism becomes and has always been especially in times of turmoil and stress, and how groupthink can convince regular people to commit evil beyond imagination. Almost every day since October 7th I have reflected on how the increased acceptability of antisemitism in the world is just a new chapter in historical cycles that have gone on for thousands of years.
Focusing on victims, however, is particular. This is how Jewish communities, Jewish leaders and Jewish individuals respond to heightened danger. It’s a message about suffering and equally about resilience.
Another unique aspect of this museum was its inclusivity of the Orthodox experience, something that has been, until recently, shamefully neglected by many Holocaust institutions. Most prewar German Jews were famously secular and seemingly well integrated into German society, while Poland’s Jewish community, almost completely wiped out by the Shoah, were more traditional in their lifestyles.
As director of collections, I often spoke to Holocaust survivors and their children who would share religious objects with me that they hadn’t previously donated, not because they didn’t want their items to bear witness but because the context, spiritual meaning and resilience encoded within a pair of tefillin, for example, needed to be honored just as much as the courage necessary to sneak in a religious object into a concentration camp.
Even in the face of undeniable terror, we maintained agency in our identity, in our hopes, in our relationships, in our prayers and in our songs. When you turn the Holocaust into a generic moral lesson you rob it of its particular evil and you rob the victims of their own narratives. It becomes an allegory rather than a historical event and thus, removed a little more from reality, it gets whitewashed.
“Zone of Interest” is a movie about evil. It is a movie about people’s ability to not see what they don’t want to see. No matter how powerful and unflinching, Jonathan Glazer’s film is a Holocaust film with no Jews. This is what allows the director and filmmaker to declare:
“Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”
I believe his words are wrong and a betrayal, and his refuting Judaism is privileged, because his home, family and existence are not being threatened; it is also disrespectful. Setting aside the fact that Gaza has not been occupied since 2005, Glazer tells us in his film and in his speech that he is more interested in the morality lessons of the Holocaust than in the stories, the experiences, and the victims. This is what he takes from the Holocaust.
What do I learn from the Holocaust? That I will always be a Jew no matter what I say and no matter what I do. But far from that being an embarrassment, it is a core piece of my identity and a source of immense pride and comfort; pride in our survival and comfort in knowing that Jews all over the world are my family. The hostages? They are my family. That half of the world’s Jewish population who is living in Israel and fighting for its very survival? They are my family.
Were Jonathan Glazer alive and safe in America during World War Two, would he have refuted his Judaism being used to justify the murder of Nazis in the name of liberating Jews? Hamas and all proxies of the Islamist regime of Iran are not so different. They have never hidden their genocidal agenda. Indeed, it’s in its charter. The massacre of 1,163 Israelis on October 7th is part of its strategy; it’s one more step towards the complete annihilation of the Jewish state. That is not a justification of war. War is terrible and necessarily has undeserving victims. War is not to be celebrated but avoided as much as possible in favor of diplomatic channels when open to us. But to accuse us Jews of using our Judaism to justify inflicting evil when Israel’s war is actually a push towards survival is wrong. We have agency. We don’t want to be annihilated and we will fight back.
In the long Jewish tradition of tragedy, I have no choice but to end on hope. Recently, our modern Orthodox congregation invited a group of chassidim to join us and to lead the davening. At Shacharit, we sang a song that has become an anthem in this historical moment, “Achenu Kol Beit Yisrael – all Jews are siblings,” first found in an 11th century siddur.
As for our brothers, the whole house of Israel, who are given over to trouble or captivity, whether they abide on the sea or on the dry land:
May the All-present have mercy upon them, and bring them forth from trouble to prosperity, from darkness to light, and from subjection to redemption, now speedily and at a near time.
To our enemies, all Jews, including chassidic and modern Orthodox Jews, surely look the same. Sadly, however, we ourselves often focus on our differences. Not now. Every Jew is my sibling. Glazer, you are my sibling too. Siblings can disagree and I don’t know about you but I will never ever refute my siblings.
