Dear Editor:
As readers continue to extend the local controversy past the “grudging apology,” I want to reiterate the most important lesson as a son of Holocaust survivors. The avoidance of filthy politics is not the primary lesson.
The holiness of the survivors and of the martyrs’ memory must always be sacrosanct and always shielded from the deniers, the equivocators and all their ilk. But Holocaust memory must also not be tinged by politics on any level – even unintentionally.
One aspect of avoiding this circumstance is an unwritten standard common to Holocaust museums and memorials throughout the nation: senior political party leaders – of either party – ought to serve the community in other ways, but not as chairs of Holocaust museums. In our world, it is unavoidable that those segments of a person’s life would eventually intersect – as it did here.
I am not naive: through different election cycles, elected officials and presidents will appoint political allies to such boards (we see this most prominently at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Commission). That is understandable. However, one who is involved in the actual workings of elections as a senior party leader should not chair a Holocaust museum. Were I vice chair of the Nassau Republican Party, I too, would have made a choice to serve my party. If I were to be chair of the Holocaust Museum and Tolerance Center, I’d forgo the former.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld
Great Neck
