A Word From Our Director: Facing the COVID-19 Crisis
Center Director Dr. Pegelow Kaplan signing Muenster’s “Golden Book” in the historic town hall, where the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War (left: Mayor Wendela-Beate Vilhjalmsson, behind: Prof. Dan Michman, Yad Vashem)
Like the university and the country, the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies has been grappling with the massive COVID-19 crisis, always following the maxim to keep its staff, affiliated faculty, students, and the audiences of its programs safe. Like our peer institutions, we have postponed events, including our international March conference with the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung in Berlin and the summer symposium in July. At the same time, the Center has experimented with new on-line formats, beginning with four events in April.
The ongoing global pandemic has impacted and redirected our work in many ways. The most extensive persecutions of European Jews prior to the Shoah unfolded during another pandemic. In the middle of the fourteenth century, elites of Christendom along with ordinary Christians blamed Jews for the bubonic plague and slaughtered entire communities. In the US today, enough white supremacists have held “the Jews” responsible for the coronavirus and, drawing on classic anti-Semitic tropes, construed the virus as an instrument of an alleged Jewish conspiracy for global rule. Yet, the brunt of the discrimination and violence has been directed at men and women identified as “Chinese” or “Asian” along with refugees from other parts of the Global South.
As the rise of antisemitism has largely disappeared from the mainstream news, many extremists continue to use the current crises to escalate their antisemitic attacks. These dynamics are observable from coast to coast. University campuses, for instance, are no longer simply short-time targets of a few traveling members of white supremacist groups. Instead, specific institutions have moved into the crosshairs of local white nationalists, who use popular podcasts to spread their hatred. These developments coincide with the growth of the “red-pill movement” that no longer simply preaches Holocaust denial, but targets any form of Holocaust remembrance and education. Like too many other places, even our Center and the Temple have come under attack.
The Center is meeting the new challenges as it has always done by stepping up its programming and co-operations regionally, nationally and internationally. Before the lockdowns, I represented, for example, the Center at a Holocaust studies conference in Muenster, Germany, and participated in an initiative by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education to fight antisemitism.
The Center remains incredibly grateful to all of its supporters without whom we could not continue.
The ongoing global pandemic has impacted and redirected our work in many ways. The most extensive persecutions of European Jews prior to the Shoah unfolded during another pandemic. In the middle of the fourteenth century, elites of Christendom along with ordinary Christians blamed Jews for the bubonic plague and slaughtered entire communities. In the US today, enough white supremacists have held “the Jews” responsible for the coronavirus and, drawing on classic anti-Semitic tropes, construed the virus as an instrument of an alleged Jewish conspiracy for global rule. Yet, the brunt of the discrimination and violence has been directed at men and women identified as “Chinese” or “Asian” along with refugees from other parts of the Global South.
As the rise of antisemitism has largely disappeared from the mainstream news, many extremists continue to use the current crises to escalate their antisemitic attacks. These dynamics are observable from coast to coast. University campuses, for instance, are no longer simply short-time targets of a few traveling members of white supremacist groups. Instead, specific institutions have moved into the crosshairs of local white nationalists, who use popular podcasts to spread their hatred. These developments coincide with the growth of the “red-pill movement” that no longer simply preaches Holocaust denial, but targets any form of Holocaust remembrance and education. Like too many other places, even our Center and the Temple have come under attack.
The Center is meeting the new challenges as it has always done by stepping up its programming and co-operations regionally, nationally and internationally. Before the lockdowns, I represented, for example, the Center at a Holocaust studies conference in Muenster, Germany, and participated in an initiative by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education to fight antisemitism.
The Center remains incredibly grateful to all of its supporters without whom we could not continue.