Hila Shachar theguardian.com, Monday 27 January 20
Using images of those killed by the Nazis to make a point about our own government's refugee policies is demeaning to victims. They should be remembered for their individual humanity
Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan visits the Auschwitz monument in the Wertheimpark in Amsterdam. Photograph: Remko De Waal/EPA
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorated annually on 27 January on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Designated by the UN General Assembly, the day honours the victims of the Nazi era.
In thinking about what it actually means to honour the victims, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the best ways to do this is to continue reminding ourselves that those victims were individual human beings. This should seem obvious, right? And yet, the victims of the Holocaust continue to be appropriated as political metaphors and dehumanised in the process.
Specific examples can be both well-meaning or purposefully disrespectful. Take the animal rights group PETA, which is known for its insensitive shock tactics when it comes to its marketing. In 2004, the group created the Holocaust on your plate campaign, using images of emaciated victims of Nazi concentration camps and comparing meat-eaters and those working in the meat-production industry to Nazis. I hope I don’t need to explain why this is wrong. But as I’ve been watching Facebook and Twitter conversations about the Tony Abbott government’s treatment of refugees degenerate into comparisons with the Nazis, I have to wonder if perhaps I do.
Recently, I came across this Facebook post that uses an image of a child who was killed in Auschwitz next to an image of a baby who was born in Christmas Island detention centre. It’s highly emotive and also, in my view, highly unethical. Using images of those who were killed by the Nazis to make a point about the Australian government’s policies is demeaning to those who died. It is essentially saying that their deaths are not to be remembered for their own sake, but rather because they are useful tools as points of reference and comparison in contemporary political debate. It turns Holocaust victims and survivors into concepts, decontexualised imagery and generalisations, and erases their individuality as human beings – even when the intentions behind it are sincere and well-meaning.
This approach defeats the purpose of fighting for the sanctity of human life in current ethical debates about detention centres, because it appropriates the sanctity of the lives of those who are not here to speak for themselves. Enough dehumanising violence was done to second world war victims during their own time; we have no right to add to that violence by further reducing them to nameless images in our current advertising and social media campaigns. Their bodies and lives are not our public property.
Czesława Kwoka. Photograph: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The child that you see in the Facebook picture referred to above wasn’t born so she could be conveniently used as imagery that simplistically compares her suffering with someone else’s. She had a name – Czesława Kwoka – and she died in Auschwitz at the age of 14 in fear and terror. This photo of her speaks of her own lost life, one that was brutally cut short in a specific context. When we remove it from this historical frame, we are appropriating her death. As Catherine Bouris points out, the government’s “treatment of refugees is visibly awful already. Comparing it to the Holocaust is unnecessarily inflammatory.” It also generalises trauma that should not be generalised.
Perhaps because half my family was wiped by the Holocaust, I’m unable to sit back in silence and watch people casually drop it into sentences as if it is meaningless. Perhaps it’s also because I’ve interviewed Holocaust survivors and touched their trembling hands as they showed me photographs of family members and friends they had lost. You can’t see and experience that and assume that it’s okay to opportunistically use the Holocaust as an metaphorical concept.
It takes a certain lack of perspective to assume that the images, bodies and murdered silence of victims of historical war and genocide exist for our own consumption and use in contemporary ethical dilemmas. We should remember the victims for themselves – it’s the least we can do for them.
