Time for a Rethink on Holocaust Memorials

Sometime in late 2026, commuters who enter and exit Park Street Station in downtown Boston will be confronted with a daily reminder of one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century — the Holocaust.

A few levels above Tremont Street, pedestrians will be confronted with a rail car that was used to transport Jews to death camps in Eastern Europe during World War II. The rail car, brought to Boston from Macedonia via Arizona, will serve as a visual centerpiece of the Boston Holocaust Museum, established by the Holocaust Legacy Foundation.

When I saw the banner above Tremont Street announcing the museum’s 2026 opening a few days ago, I said to myself, “Great, another gathering point for the anti-Israel lunatics in this city.” On this score, I’m fairly certain: activists from local chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and its affiliates will use the sidewalk in front of the museum as a stop for their rallies during which they will demonize Israel and its Jewish supporters in the US.

They’ll block traffic and use megaphones to tell everyone that they hate “genocide,” which is why they are protesting against Israel —  which they falsely accuse of mass murder every time it defends itself.

Then, these agitators, who can’t be bothered to protest intentional mass killings elsewhere in the word — the Middle East especially –will head to the ADL offices just down the street, cause more trouble there, and then finally top off their odyssey of contempt by protesting in front of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) a few blocks away.

Instead of serving as a bastion for empathy and justice, the sidewalk in front of the museum will become another platform for agitators intent on appropriating images of Jewish victimhood to demonize Israel, harass Jews, and promote propagandistic lies. A landmark used to highlight the suffering of the Jewish people will be hijacked to demonize them.

I hate to say it, but I’m fearful of another problem: Instead of arousing feelings of concern for Jews and empathy for humanity in general, it will arouse feelings of contempt for Jews and other minorities. The logic will go like this: “Oh, here they go again, trying to make us feel guilty over the Holocaust. When will it end? When can we move on?”

Let’s face it. Invoking the Holocaust no longer has the impact on people it once did. For a few decades after World War II, Holocaust memorials served as a powerful reminder of part of the reason why it was necessary for people’s fathers, uncles, and grandfathers to go overseas and to defeat the Nazis and their allies. It gave Americans a sense of pride in what their heroic ancestors had accomplished.

As Ruth Wisse wrote earlier this year: “America had come to the rescue of what was known as the Free World and, in simplest terms, had defeated evil and liberated the good. Jews were the emblem of those it had rescued, yet at the same time – here was the happy surprise – they were no longer in need of rescuing because they were doing it themselves in a spunky way reminiscent of the founding of the United States.”

Now that World War II is fading from memory, the Holocaust is no longer a reminder of American courage and Jewish resilience, but a victimization story that has been appropriated by Islamists and the far left to justify violence against Israel and Western democracies.

People, Americans especially, are tired of having the sins of Western civilization — like the Holocaust — shoved in their faces by a coalition of leftists and Islamists intent on perpetrating injustices of their own. This new museum, no matter how well-intentioned or operated, will become a prop in the campaign to demonize Western democracies and give Islamists a pass.

The museum’s organizers have said that their goal is to promote empathy in the minds of the people who visit the museum, but if the 2024 election, driven as it was by controversy over immigration, reveals anything it is this: empathy and compassion have their limits.

I offer this warning with great ambivalence. I have stood toe-to-toe with professional and amateur antisemites who periodically gather in Boston to demonize Israel and portray it as an enemy of all that is good in the world. I have walked through Yad Vashem in Jerusalem more times than I can count and have argued with an anti-Israel protestor outside the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC.

I’ve stood atop Masada lecturing my wife and children about Jewish toughness and resilience. But, God forgive me, I have concluded that we have hit the saturation point with Holocaust memorials. It’s time for a moratorium and a rethink.

Instead of building another Holocaust Museum, maybe it’s time to build a memorial for the victims of Islamist violence in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa or maybe a memorial to the victims of communism.

But don’t think for a second I won’t visit this museum once it’s built. Somebody has to keep an eye on the nutjobs who will try to hijack it.

Dexter Van Zile, the Middle East Forum’s Violin Family Research Fellow, serves as managing editor of Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).