What the Holocaust Does Not Teach

“World Jewry has a special responsibility.” This hectoring call blared forth from the midst of a New York Times op-ed piece by Flora Lewis entitled “Save Lives in Bosnia” (November 9, 1992). Jews, she argued, have acquired their special responsibility because of the Holocaust; having experienced so much persecution, now they have both the opportunity and the obligation “to show that concentration camps provoke the solidarity of victims of persecution.” She went on to give specific instructions to Jews to offer refuge in Israel to Bosnian Muslims, in order to demonstrate “that the Jewish state does indeed want to get on in peace with its Muslim neighbors.”