The National Jewish Democratic Council is calling on top Republicans to condemn the Holocaust imagery and anti-Semitism on signs seen at Thursday’s "Tea Party" protest in Washington.
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) were among the GOP leaders who spoke in front of the more than 5,000 activists protesting Democratic-sponsored health-care reform legislation. The crowd, according to media reports, included attendess holding a pair of banners picturing Holocaust victims with the words "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945" and a smaller sign stating that "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds."
NJDC president David Harris said the signs were "vile and disgusting" and it was "morally incumbent" for any speaker at the rally to condemn them.
Asked how a speaker at a rally could be expected to know the content of all signs in the crowd, Harris said that, according to media reports, the Dachau sign — with its familiar image of stacked bodies — was front and center and very visible to anyone at the podium.
"It might be uncomfortable and awkward" for a speaker to interrupt their speech to talk about signs in the crowd, but they should have done it, Harris said. "It’s inconceivable that they were unaware" of the signs, he added.
A spokesman for Boehner told Politico: "Leader Boehner did not see any such sign. Obviously, it would be grossly inappropriate."
Meanwhile, Elie Wiesel has spoken out on his Twitter feed. He posted Friday afternoon: "This kind of political hatred is indecent and disgusting."
After the jump, statements fromm the NJDC and the Simon Wiesenthal Center decrying the signs at yesterday’s rally:[[READMORE]]
First, the SWC:
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is calling on the organizers of today’s grassroots rally in Washington D.C. to publicly repudiate the use of Nazi and Holocaust imagery, sometimes gruesome, in the protest against government policies. This comparison has continued to be invoked despite numerous protests from the Wiesenthal Center and others.
Numerous websites have posted a photo of protesters hold a sign showing slain concentration camp victims with the caption: “National Socialist Health Care Dachau Germany 1945”. Another sign declares that the White House and its alleged “government takeover” of the economy, banks, the media and healthcare, is “Just Like Nazi Germany!”.
“Using the victims of the Holocaust in the debate over health care is a cheap and disgusting abuse of history,” said Mark Weitzman, the Wiesenthal Center’s Director of Government Affairs. “It reflects only the ignorance and callousness of those who cannot debate an issue on its merits and should be immediately repudiated by all responsible parties,” he continued. “Both the memory of the victims of the Nazis and the American public deserve better,” he concluded.
Earlier this year, when the logo for the White House healthcare proposal was compared to the Nazi’s eagle symbol, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center said, “Americans have every right to be critical of the President’s health care plan but we demean ourselves and everything that America stands for when we compare either Democrats or Republicans to the Nazi Third Reich. Some of us may be too liberal and others too conservative, but none of us are Nazis.”
And the NJDC:
Today’s G.O.P. "Tea Party" on Capitol Hill opposing health insurance reform invoked disgusting Holocaust imagery and outright anti-Semitism. Top Republican Party leaders including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN) stood before a crowd that included a banner protesting health care reform and displaying corpses from the Holocaust. Yet another sign charged that "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds" [sic]. Such vile invocations of Nazi and Holocaust rhetoric have been condemned in recent weeks by rabbinic movements, The Interfaith Alliance, and The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
The time has come for Boehner, Cantor, Pence and other G.O.P. leaders — especially those who were present today — to condemn these disgusting comparisons and anti-Semitism. They must tell their base once and for all to cut out this despicable pattern of Holocaust imagery and rhetoric.
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