On Yom HaShoah, a Lesson Not Learned at NYT

1. "New Looks At the Fields Of Death For Jews"; By Ethan Bronner; A6
   
2. "Museum Lets Local Voices Memorialize Distant Death"; By Susan Saulny; 14, 19; Sunday, April 19
   

With Yom Hashoah, the Jewish people's day of remembrance for the Holocaust, taking place from Monday night to Tuesday night, NYT printed two articles that dealt with, arguably, the greatest tragedy in Jewish history. 

First, it must be said that since Max Frankel's account of NYT's conscious effort not to publicize the horror in Europe during World War II, the paper of record has been particularly respectful in its coverage of Holocaust-related matters. 

A rather somber piece, "New Looks At the Fields...," possesses two statements, however, that speak to how NYT approaches the Shoah, the Hebrew for the Holocaust.

The first is a quote from David Bankier, head of Research at Yad Vashem. He says that the work he is doing to reveal death totals at killing fields "provides material for research on genocide elsewhere, like in Africa." From this, the reader learns that the universalistic lessons of the Holocaust are what matter. In other words, the Jewish Holocaust teaches us about genocide in general, more than it does about the Jewish hatred that led to the Holocaust. 

This emphasis on the universal - and implicit downplaying of the particular - is reinforced by Ethan Bronner's casually dismissive remark about Holocaust deniers in the second paragraph. "Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II." This statement is a bit too comfortable considering that the day it was printed, Iran's Ahmadinejad was denying the Holocaust in the most important international forum of the week, the UN Conference Against Racism.

"Museum Lets Local Voices..." similarly mentions the universal lessons of the Holocaust twice and the particular lesson - the need to fight anti-Semitism in its many varieties, including anti-Israelism - not once. 

NYT's efforts to make-up for the non-publicity of the Jewish tragedy of the 1940s appear inadequate, as it turns away from the role that hatred of the Jews plays in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon.