Holocaust Museum LA stated that it removed what it called a “pre-planned social media campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community,” because the post was “easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East.”
“That was not our intent,” the museum said. “It has been removed to avoid any further confusion. We promise to do better, and we will ensure that posts in the future are more thoughtfully designed and thoroughly vetted.”
Other users shared screen captures of the since-deleted post, which stated that “‘Never again’ can’t only mean never again for Jews.”
Holocaust museums, many of which have decried claims that Israel is guilty of “genocide,” have been criticized for attempting to universalize the Holocaust.
“The urge to ‘universalize’—that is, to hitch Jewish experience to the wagon of ‘tikkun olam,’ or healing the world, is a glaring reality in Jewish museums generally and in museums on the Holocaust in particular,” wrote Walter Reich, Yitzhak Rabin memorial professor of international affairs, ethics and human behavior and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at George Washington University professor, in Mosaic magazine in 2016.
“But intolerance isn’t what animated Hitler to murder the Jews,” added Reich, a former U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum director. “What animated him was a vicious form of antisemitism.”
