Fighting Anti-Semitism Requires Leadership

A light was reported to have gone off in a class recently when an instructor, in speaking about the events that had occurred on October 7, compared Hamas’ slaughter of Jews to the pogroms that Jews had suffered at the hands of the Cossacks in Russia and Ukraine. The teacher suddenly realized that most of the students had no idea of what a “pogrom” was.

November 9th is the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht (the night of the Broken Glass) when 267 Synagogues were destroyed, 91 Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jews were arrested all over Germany. It would be curious to consider how many of the students in the aforementioned class have any idea what Kristallnacht was.

In 2020 the Pew Research Center released a study asking Americans various questions concerning the Holocaust. Among teens (ages 13-17), their knowledge about the Shoah was approximately identical to those without post-secondary education.

A second study, U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) among Millennials and Gen Z members, indicated a serious lack of knowledge about the Holocaust among this cohort. The data indicated that 36% of respondents believed that less than 2 million Jews were killed and 48% could not name a single death camp or ghetto.

Those states which had the lowest knowledge (as the survey defined it) of the Holocaust included New York and Florida, both of which have among the largest Jewish populations in the country. In the study, 11% of Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe that Jews caused the Holocaust, including 19% of New York respondents. Among respondents, 59% indicated that they believe something like the Holocaust could happen again.

It is this level of ignorance of relatively recent history, let alone the history of anti-Semitism, that one must analyze among the reactions consider especially of progressives, Millennials, and Gen Z’s particularly on college campuses. Coupled with this lack of historical knowledge is a totally unnuanced comprehension of 19th and 20th Century colonialism as well as South African apartheid. In addition, there is a failure to distinguish the gaps in moral behavior by political entities—states, nations, groups, and terrorists. Much of the rhetoric espoused even by progressive leaders reflects a total absence of contextualization of the facts of history or a willingness to recognize false moral equivalencies.

To be totally clear, the killing of innocent people, non-combatants, is unacceptable. There, however, is an enormous difference between Cossacks riding through a Russian village in the Pale of Settlement and arbitrarily killing every Jew in sight or the systematic, organized slaughter of Jews in gas chambers by the Nazis, on the one hand; versus the deaths of innocent individuals who are being used as human shields by Hamas terrorists in the hope that civilized adversaries therefore will refrain from attacking them.

In addition, it is remarkable how quickly progressive leaders of many left-of center groups and political leaders forget the engaged participation of Jews in progressive causes has been. They were and are very active as well as leaders in labor unions, the anti-war movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the environment movement, and the civil rights movement, et.al. today as well as throughout modern history.

There is no rational explanation for the increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and throughout the world as a result of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. The proliferation of anti-Semitism has exposed the deep hatred for Jews that persists 90 years after Adolph Hitler came to power and 78 years since the end of the Holocaust.

The education system is totally broken at all levels in the United States. Many of the leaders of leading, elite academic institutions have succumbed to the norms and values of marginalizing Jews and Jewish concerns as was prevalent before the Holocaust. They are not confronting the inadequacies of their students’ education, they are reenforcing it. University presidents and leading scholars have assumed gutless postures in many cases when confronted with anti-Semitic hated and even violence that is prevalent on many campuses.

It is the University community which has the opportunity to right the inadequacies of primary and secondary education. Dialogue and conversation in the academy are exactly what should be occurring. Efforts to create understanding and increase knowledge is precisely what should be conducted, not withdrawing and permitting hate to grow and fester. Task forces and investigations are all constructive, but strong voices of leadership are much more important. It is in and from the University and this community that the Millennials and Gen Z generation have been and are emerging. They will be the leaders of the future.