The Problem With Subverting Vaccination: Appropriating the Holocaust

Source: Image by FotoRieth from Pixabay

This week, an open letter was drafted by 50 survivors of the Holocaust via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) addressed to American leaders and citizens cautioning against the rise of anti-Semitism. In addition to identifying the threats that come with this rising tide of anti-Semitism, these survivors also stated:

This targeted violence is happening as we also watch with great dismay a persistent and increasing tendency in American public life to invoke the Holocaust for the purpose of promoting another agenda. It is excruciating for us to see our personal history—the systematic destruction of our families and communities and the murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children—exploited in this way. What we survived should be remembered, studied, and learned from but never misused (“Open Letter,” 2021, para. 2-3).

There has been a disturbing trend of appropriating the Holocaust as part of political discourse that is both widely inappropriate and devoid of any proper historical context for this genocide. Indeed, this has become the playbook for many radicalized GOP members, who I will not give credence to by identifying in this article.

Just as disturbingly, the yellow star of David—mandated to be worn out in public by the Nazi regime to make Jewish people easily identifiable, which was a specific symbol used to stigmatize, categorize/separate, and ultimately persecute and kill Jewish people living in Europe—has recently been appropriated by HatWRKS, a hat shop in Tennessee.

As I was scrolling through my Twitter feed the other morning, I was stunned to find a screenshot from the store’s Instagram page featuring the smiling owner proudly donning a yellow star of David on her lapel. Upon closer inspection, I found the insignia inside the star read, “Not Vaccinated.” To appropriate such a symbol in such a perverse way truly stunned me.

Here is the historical context missing from that egregious post. Stanton (1988) has documented “Eight Stages of Genocide,” well-known by genocide scholars. In the early stages, both “Classification” and “Symbolization” are identified as ways that cultures draw distinctions between groups, setting the stage for “us” versus “them” dichotomies. Symbolization specifically reflects an extension of this classification by developing outward signs or symbols that separate a group from the rest of society. Oftentimes, the targeted group is forced to be identified in a specific way by a symbol or marker that represents both their lesser status within the larger genocidal regime and stigmatization associated with membership in that group.

The yellow star of David for Jewish people forced upon them by the Nazi regime is a classic example of this pernicious symbolization and a historical marker of the radicalized Nazi policy that would culminate in the systematic slaughtering of millions of people.

But yeah, why not fuse it with the anti-vaccination movement because the human rights violations associated with genocide are akin to asking people to wear masks or get vaccinated so they can stay protected from a deadly virus, right?

Thankfully, it appears that this Nashville business is getting the appropriate backlash, as recent articles from mainstream sources such as The New York Post and Newsweek are bringing attention to this perverse and ill-advised decision on the part of this business owner.

In her article aptly titled, “Hidden Histories and the Appropriation of the Holocaust in the American Narrative,” Weston (2014) writes, “Many arguments can certainly be made that a problematic connection exists between our little-known history surrounding the Holocaust and how the American people have eagerly appropriated the event into cultural consciousness” (p.2).

“Holocaust” is used to denote threat or violation, at the same time that terms associated with this genocide have been appropriated and distorted to serve various political or cultural agendas, as bemoaned by the survivors in their open letter. The overuse and misuse of the term, however, both severely diminishes the real experiences of those who survived this horrific genocide—as well as their descendants—in addition to furthering the misinformation and lack of historical context for events that appear to be rampant in our political and cultural discourse today.

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While one may not be able to separate American ignorance of history and specifically the Holocaust from the ways it is appropriated here, just as disturbingly, it is appropriated in specific nations whose lands were occupied and worse during the Second World War. For instance, in Walbrzych, Poland, in response to a mandate for all adults to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, a mob of protestors gathered outside of the mayor’s home, waving banners, screaming—and inexplicably, comparing him to Josef Mengele, one of the most notorious Nazi doctors who oversaw brutal experiments against inmates of the concentration camp system (as reported by Higgins, 2021).

Here is the historical context for the atrocities overseen and perpetrated by Mengele and his followers. As I write in a book in progress on bystander behavior during the Holocaust, survivors of the horrific medical experiments find themselves at a particular loss of words to try and convey in testimony what they endured. For instance, in interviewing two survivors of Auschwitz who underwent brutal medical experiments, the writer recalls one stating that what occurred in the experimental blocs were “’things impossible to say’” (Abramovitch, 1986, p. 205).

Similarly, in recounting the other survivor’s experiences, the interviewer recounts that “over and over he seemed to come up against the limits of language, the inadequacy of words to describe what he had gone through, saying, ‘There are no words to describe my suffering'" (Abramovitch, 1986, p. 204). The interviewer goes on to conclude that, “Concerning their own physical suffering, both [survivors] expressed an inability to communicate to its ineffable extent the dehumanization before, during, and after their captivity” (Abramovitch, 1986, p. 209).

It goes without saying that to refer to this mayor in Poland as in any way being reminiscent of Mengele based on this vaccine mandate is wildly inaccurate and ignorant but also offensive and cruel to those who actually endured and survived such brutalities.

What makes this report even more disturbing is that Poland was the site of some of the deadliest extermination camps of the entire Nazi concentration camp system, in addition to the nation’s invasion being the catalyst for the start of the war. How short in memory is the collective consciousness of those who stormed this Polish mayor’s home that they would even consider equating a vaccine mandate—which, by the way, was virtually unenforceable and largely symbolic—to that of the inhumane and unspeakable medical experiments imposed by one of the most notorious Nazi perpetrators in history?

While the Nashville store has since reportedly deleted the offensive post, the larger question this incident and the aforementioned one in Poland poses is what this trend of appropriating the Holocaust means and what it says about us as a society when we are engaging in a type of appropriation that is not only offensive but also just wrong—not only ethically and morally but historically as well. It appears that in the race to be provocative or “trendy,” many people have lost or do not have basic knowledge regarding what the Holocaust was, who the perpetrators were, and who the victims were.

There seems to be similar ignorance regarding who the real victims of this pandemic have been.

The oft-quoted saying that those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it appears particularly cryptic in this cultural moment. I write this article today to stand in solidarity with those who came together to develop and post the open letter via USHMM. I stand in solidarity with those who speak out against anti-Semitism and other forms of radicalization in our culture today, not just as an ally to Jewish people or as a Holocaust scholar, educator, or researcher, but first and foremost as an American citizen.

These antics are not okay, and each of us must condemn them in whatever capacity we can use our voices.

Copyright Azadeh Aalai 2021