Backlash as Holocaust Museum Features George Floyd Exhibit

The inscription Holocaust is seen at the Holocaust Memorial Center, first central Europe's
ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty
Joshua Klein

In a shocking parallel, a Florida-based Holocaust museum now features an exhibit commemorating George Floyd, a black man who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers in May and whose death set off a series of violent riots throughout the US.

In a tribute to Floyd, the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center introduced a new exhibit earlier this month titled “Uprooting Prejudice: Faces of Change.”

The exhibit is intended to “showcase significant events in history and how they are relevant to us today.” 

“In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we felt it was important to bring the meaning of the aftermath to our museum,” the museum’s site states.

“Come face-to-face with stunning images and powerful words captured in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, at the scene, by renowned photographer and storyteller John Noltner,” the site continues.

“Historical wounds are deep. In all the heated rhetoric of the day, we forget to listen,” said Noltner in a press statement.

“I hope that through these stories and these faces, you can understand the events of our day in a new way. I hope you can challenge some of your own preconceptions and I hope you can see the humanity of each and every person.”

The museum’s site presents an image of a black woman with a caption that uses terminology which evokes Holocaust-era fears. 

“I don’t want to be filled with fear every time me or my brothers go outside,” reads the caption. “I don’t want to worry about whether our lives are at risk just for doing things that everyone else does.”

Another image, which appears in the exhibit, depicts a young black girl with a tear streaming down her cheek with the caption: “Am I next?”

Backlash at the parallels and the very notion of hosting such an exhibit at a Holocaust memorial museum soon followed.

“George Floyd is added to a Holocaust museum?” asked Ezra Levant of Rebel News. “That trivializes and distorts the Holocaust and its six million Jewish victims. And it grotesquely implies that American police are Nazis.”

“A Holocaust museum added a George Floyd exhibit because we live in a world of idiots where words no longer have meaning,” wrote radio host Dan O’Donnell.

“Unbelievable: the Holocaust Museum in Maitland, Florida has added a George Floyd section,” wrote Unlocked Chief Editorial Director Martin Daubney. 

“To align Floyd’s tragic death with the massacre of 6 million Jews is hugely insensitive,” he added. “But it’s also political: it positions police as Nazis. Awful decision.”

“Does someone wish to explain what the death of George Floyd has to do with over 6 million jews who were horrifically murdered on the Holocaust?” asked a Twitter user. “This is an absolute disgusting evil attack and atrocity against the Jewish community ..absolutely sick !!!”

“Can someone explain why a Holocaust museum has an exhibit for anything other than the Holocaust?” asked yet another user. “An atrocity like that doesn’t need distractions or additional exhibits with other subject matter. And to liken the death of George Floyd to the Holocaust is mind numbingly stupid.”

“This is disgusting,” wrote another. “Equating what happened to George Floyd with the Holocaust is Holocaust minimization which is akin to Holocaust denial.”

“This is angering and offensive,” another user tweeted. “George Floyd’s death and The Holocaust have NOTHING in common.”

Others called attention to Floyd’s criminal past in painting the parallel as adding insult to injury.

“What a stupid idea,” replied one Twitter user. “A criminal on dope is treated the same as Jews in Nazi Germany????”

“In other news. George Floyd has been added to a holocaust museum,” wrote yet another user. “So the death of a violent, junkie career criminal is now the same as the death of at least 6 million in the world’s worst atrocity.”

One user called, sarcastically, to go even further.

“Why stop there?” asked the user, before imploring the Auschwitz Memorial to offer its opinion. “They should put George Floyd memorial ads in Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau so the whole world can see.” 

The exhibit shows 45 strangers, each displaying a message in both English and Spanish.

The museum’s assistant director Lisa Bachman said Noltner initially wanted to share the photos with the museum on social media but her team decided to do more than just that.

“You don’t just see this exhibit. You feel it,” Bachman said in a news release. “The expressions and thoughts of each person photographed tells a story that has a very universal message. It is one that can heal and bring us together. It shows us we are not alone in our thinking.”

One portrait even shows the father of Michael Brown, who was fatally shot by a police officer in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.

A later autopsy report revealed that Brown attempted to take the officer’s gun, was shot by him in the hand, and then proceeded to violently charge at the officer.

“Our people here in Central Florida, they want to be a part of this,” Bachman said. “They need to feel the emotion and passion.”

The exhibit is free to the public but visitors must have a reservation.

Leftist rhetoric equating police officers to Nazis and depicting the United States of the 21st century to Nazi Germany has skyrocketed in recent months. 

Just this month, Breitbart News reported that CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour recalled Kristallnacht — the infamous anti-Jewish pogrom carried out throughout Nazi Germany — by likening it to a Trump presidency which she described as having similarly waged a “modern day assault” attacking the “same values” the Nazi regime did.

Earlier this month, far-left Hollywood actor John Cusack slammed millions of Americans as he painted thirty percent of them as Nazi “enemies.”

“I know why Biden is preaching reconciliation But 30 % of country that Are nazi – are enemies,” the tweet read.

Associations between the Holocaust — the state-sponsored, organized persecution, torture and murder of six million Jews by Hitler’s Nazi regime, its allies and collaborators — and today’s America, as well as figures such as Floyd, have real, alarming ramifications.

As one Twitter user highlighted: “Attaching George Floyd to the Holocaust lays the groundwork for responding to cops/white people with levels of violence that would normally be reserved by real Nazis.” 

“It’s far more than inappropriate,” the user added. “It’s mentally preparing people to become exterminators.”

Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

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