Pernicious propaganda

Sadly, we have become all too accustomed to outrageous claims about the Holocaust made by Holocaust deniers, Neo-Nazis, and other anti-Semites, despite the overwhelming evidence of this historical fact. Never before the Holocaust and World War II had war and genocide been so thoroughly documented. This documentation continues with new discoveries of forensic evidence and also diaries, letters, and photos from both perpetrators and victims. Nevertheless, those intent on Holocaust denial or revisionism, which includes linking Zionism with Nazism, will do so to further their own agendas.

For a Holocaust survivor to accuse Zionists of turning the Shoa into a religion is the height of absurdity (“Survivor: Zionists turn Holocaust into ‘religion’”, Feb. 3). Furthermore, to compare the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis to that of Jews in Nazi-run concentration camps is utterly ridiculous and beyond contempt. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The speakers at the Rutgers event showed themselves to be malicious and ignorant. For Osama Abu-Irshaid to say “Hitler deserved the punishment he got…” simply underscores his own ignorance of history. Hitler was never punished. In an act of supreme cowardice, he killed himself to avoid the kind of tortures and deaths he urged his followers to perpetrate on millions of innocent men, women, and children.

For any university to provide a forum for falsehoods and the kind of pernicious propaganda spouted by those speakers is an incitement to evil.

Lois Lautenberg
West Orange
Gina Lanceter
Upper Montclair
Cochairs, Holocaust Council of MetroWest