Richard Cohen writes that what is frightening about anti-Semitism is not the beliefs held about Jews, but the willingness of many to accept those views:
To far more people than we would like to admit, the mystery of James W. von Brunn, the alleged shooter at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is not that he held such weird and depraved views about Jews and the Holocaust, but that those views are considered weird and depraved. In vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible.
[…]We have almost 2,000 years of experience with anti-Semitism and know by now its immense power. It lays the groundwork for the horror that inevitably follows. Obama acknowledged the most famous of these when the next day he went from Cairo to the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. It was a particularly appropriate stop, for Buchenwald is right down the road from Weimar, the city once renowned for its intellectual life (Goethe) and for the interwar republic to which is lent its name. The proximity of Buchenwald to Weimar tells you all you need to know about human nature.
But I would have preferred for the president to have gone to Kielce, the Polish city where 42 Jews were murdered after allegation of a blood libel. This did not happen in the Middle Ages, but in 1946—14 months after Germany surrendered. The victims were all Holocaust survivors. They were brutally murdered not by stereotypical Nazis but by ordinary Poles. The Holocaust, with its “never again” vow, seems over—a closed chapter. Kielce makes a different point. Anti-Semitism moves on.
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