Wednesday evening, supporters of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum projected photographs and slides on the exterior walls calling on the world to “Never Again” tolerate genocide for anyone. The photographs showed scenes of atrocities in Gaza with the words “Stop the Genocide in Gaza,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “Silence=Death.” See photo as well as video.
“We are here to help fulfill the mission of the Holocaust Museum which is to ensure that ethnic cleansing and genocide never happens again for all people, not just Jews,” said organizer, Michael Beer, Director of Nonviolence International, himself a descendent of Holocaust victims. “As an institution created by Congress,” he said, “the Museum has a special responsibility to speak up against genocide in Gaza, in part, because U.S. weapons and support are involved.”
The projection on two western walls of the Museum follows a tradition of anti-genocide images on the Museum with regards to Darfur and internal exhibits regarding the Rohingya.
Helping with the projection was Marianne Ehrlich Ross, a Holocaust survivor, and long time supporter of the Museum, who spoke about her experience being expelled from Vienna, then Prague, and then being stranded in England during the war. She is shocked that Israel, with U.S. support, is engaging in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and asked the Museum to not be silent on the present war on the Palestinian people — or anyone else.
Explaining the pictures of destruction and suffering in Gaza, Jonathan Kuttab, Director of Friends of Sabeel North America, spoke about his experience of Palestinians suffering from expulsion, occupation and murder on a vast scale. He spoke to the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe. Kuttab, a renowned International human rights lawyer, said “the Genocide Convention is clearly being openly violated by Israel and the U.S. I call on the Museum to live up to its stated mission which is to prevent and oppose genocide across the whole world.”
In 1993, Beer and Starhawk organized a large alternative opening ceremony for the Museum urging the inclusion of the persecution and extermination of homosexual and bisexual men, which the Museum promptly did. Beer and Starhawk sent an open letter in November, 2023 calling on the Museum replicate its 1993 inclusive response and to again fulfill its mission to end genocide against all people. Beer said “we stated on this Museum plaza then and today, ‘Silence=Death.’”
This action was endorsed by Nonviolence International, Jewish Voice for Peace-DC Metro, and Friends of Sabeel North America.
Contact:
Michael Beer, info@nonviolenceinternational.
Beer is executive director of Nonviolence International and author of Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century.
