Holocaust Museum Watch

5600 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 108
Chevy Chase, MD 20815

301-657-2072

www.hmwatch.org

 

November 2006

 

Mr. Fred S. Zeidman, Chairman                                                                                                                                    

US Holocaust Memorial Museum

100 Raoul Wallenberg Place S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20024-2126

 

Dear Mr. Zeidman:

 

In the last year, The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has taken some very halting steps to address the genocidal ideology of radical Islam and its threat to world Jewry. We note:

 

  1. The Museum’s website definition of anti-Semitism now includes a paragraph which discusses HAMAS’s and Hezbollah’s anti-Israel hate speech and that the HAMAS charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

 

  1. The Museum sponsored a lecture last June by a moderate Muslim to talk about Islamic anti-Semitism. The talk, however, was an embarrassment because the speaker focused almost exclusively on Israel’s alleged persecution of Palestinians as the source of anti-Israel hatred. Nevertheless, it was the first such lecture at the Museum on this topic.

 

  1. The Museum has scheduled a lecture on the subject of Islamic anti-Semitism by Prof. Dershowitz for January 2007 at a fund-raising dinner in Houston. We are disappointed that it is in Houston and not at the Museum and that it is not part of a national series of lectures, but we note it is a first.

 

  1. The revamped exhibit on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, even if it is in the basement away from the core exhibits, and is not up to the Museum’s usual standards of excellence, does have a section at the end which discusses the use of the Protocols in the Arab world. This is a first.

 

  1. The Museum’s website did for a time highlight the genocidal speeches of the president of Iran and the Museum has written to him decrying his statements. We note that the Museum has used this letter widely in its fund-raising, thus giving the erroneous impression that it is a leading voice in the fight against the genocidal hatred of radical Islam. It is, therefore, clear that the Museum believes its financial backers want it to be that leading voice.

 

  1. The Museum’s website now does have links to other sites like MEMRI which track Islamic anti-Semitism.

 

Have we missed anything? This is a serious question because in January 2007, a year after our first conference on the question of the Museum’s responsibility in educating the public about Islamic genocidal ideology, we plan to issue the first of an annual series of reports on what the Museum has done in this critical area of its responsibility.

 

Yehuda Bauer, speaking at the Museum on October 5, 2006, stated that there were three genocidal ideologies in the 20th century: National Socialism, Stalinist Communism, and radical Islam. The world’s pre-eminent Holocaust scholar labeling radical Islam as a genocidal ideology in a league with National Socialism in its goals and proposed methods- mass murder of the Jews- clearly puts it in the Museum’s scope of responsibility.

 

We at Holocaust Museum Watch would like nothing better than to disband because the Museum is fulfilling its important mandate. We would like to meet with you and senior staff of the Museum to discuss what your proposed plans are. We want to be fair and if there are plans under way for substantive new programs, we do not want to be unnecessarily critical.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

The Board of Holocaust Museum Watch

Carol Greenwald, chairman

Robert Samet

Barbara Leber

Karin McQuillan

 

cc. Sara J. Bloomfield