Holocaust in 2003

[Guest guest]

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a

slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals. "

—Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German Jewish philosopher

forced into exile by the Nazis

 

“In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for

[them] it is an eternal Treblinka.”

— Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), Yiddish writer

and vegetarian

Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer first

noted the disturbing similarity between the treatment

of Jews during the Holocaust and that of animals

raised for food when he noticed that the techniques of

mass slaughter developed for use on animals had also

been used on human beings. In several of his stories,

he draws an analogy between the slaughter of animals

and the slaughter of Jews at the hands of Nazis.

Having realized that all oppression stems from the

same branch, Singer became a vegetarian. He understood

that the quality of mercy is not—must not be—limited

and that people cannot talk about peace with their

mouths full of the victims of violence.

 

If we are revolted by comparisons between the plight

of animals and the plight of human victims of

oppression, it can only be because we are not yet

prepared to accept our own role in the animals’ fate.

It is easy to condemn barbarity when it is separated

from us by distance and time. But what about violence

that we are a part of, that we support financially

every time we sit down to eat? If we accept that it is

unnecessary and wrong, then we must do something about

it. Fortunately, doing something about it isn’t nearly

as hard as concocting elaborate excuses not to.

 

Decades from now, what will you tell your

grandchildren when they ask you whose side you were on

during the “animals’ holocaust”? Will you be able to

say that you stood up against oppression, even when

doing so was considered “radical” or “unpopular”? Will

you be able to say that you could visualize a world

without violence and realized that it began at

breakfast?

 

PETA's thought-provoking display " Holocaust on Your

Plate " spotlights this disturbing parallel by

juxtaposing on freestanding 8-foot panels

stomach-churning images of the torturous experiences

of both Jews and animals. The exhibit was funded by a

Jewish philanthropist who has spent the past 25 years

affiliated with the world's foremost Holocaust

organizations and who recognized the moral and ethical

imperative of making the public aware of the parallels

between the Jewish genocide of WWII and the horrific

and inhumane treatment of animals raised and

slaughtered for food. As observers walk around the

display, they will gain an understanding of the common

roots of victimization and violence and how they can

help fight these injustices through decisions that

they make every time they eat.

 

 

If you are offended by the visual comparison of

factory farms to concentration camps or if you find

the analogy to the Holocaust inappropriate, you are

not alone. This exhibit has been condemned by a number

of prominent individuals and institutions:

“To equate what is truly one of the most monumental

crimes in the history of mankind to the abusive

treatment of animals is totally unconscionable.”

—Manuel Prutschi, national director of community

relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress

 

“[Yad Vashem] views with repulsion the tasteless use

of the Holocaust in such campaigns, however justified

they may be.”

—Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial Museum in Israel)

 

“The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate,

systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of

animal rights is abhorrent. … Abusive treatment of

animals should be opposed, but cannot and must not be

compared to the Holocaust.”

—Anti-Defamation League

Perhaps the opposition to this exhibit could be summed

up in a headline from the news service JTA: “Meat May

Be Murder, But It’s Not a Holocaust, Jewish Groups

Fume.”

These critics admit to serious problems in our

treatment of animals but believe that the arguments

supporting animals are already convincing without

having to resort to analogies. They argue that the

comparison to the Holocaust diverts attention from the

goals of the exhibit. This was expressed in a

statement issued by the Simon Wiesenthal Center

opposing the exhibit but affirming the goals of

extending moral consideration to animals: “A campaign

against cruelty to animals is legitimate and should

stand on its own merits.”

 

Borrowing one type of suffering to explain another

risks obscuring issues particular to each. In

“Holocaust Imaging Disturbing,” in the Canadian Jewish

News, Irwin Cotler uses the example of the

appropriation of Holocaust imagery to understand

atrocities in Kosovo:

[T]o suggest that Kosovo is another Holocaust, runs

the risk of trivializing the Holocaust, while

minimizing the evil of Kosovo. For if Kosovo is a

Holocaust, then the Holocaust was like Kosovo, which

means that in the Holocaust there were no gas

chambers, no death camps, no “final solution” to kill

every Jew anywhere simply because they were Jews.

Similarly, to require of Kosovo to be a Holocaust in

order to characterize it as radical evil, is to deny

its essential evil even when it is not a Holocaust.

For while Kosovo is not a Holocaust, what is happening

there—forced detentions, disappearances, expulsions,

rape, murder—is evil enough. (13 May 1999)

Critics of the PETA exhibit invariably agree that

animal rights issues do stand up on their own merits

and that the overall campaign is “legitimate” and

“justified”; however, having a legitimate argument is

no consolation to the animals who continue to be

exploited. The severity of animal suffering should be

compelling in and of itself. We should not have to

appropriate images of other horrors to make the case.

Unfortunately though, animals’ interests can only be

represented through humans—usually to the animals’

detriment. Unlike other oppressed groups whose voices

may be silenced, animals are not even conceptualized

as having a voice. We have no recourse but to compare

the barbarity inflicted on animals with similar and

more familiar extremes of human suffering in the hope

that it will finally become comprehensible to all and

inspire action.

 

Ironically, the reverse is also true. Animal analogies

are widely used today to mobilize people to respond to

the atrocities of the Holocaust. Victims are portrayed

as having been crammed into trains “like cattle” or

used as “human guinea pigs” in the laboratories at

Auschwitz. These comparisons are particularly

disturbing because implicit in the demand not to be

treated “like an animal” is the assumption that

animals can be treated “like an animal”; it is assumed

that it is acceptable, for example, for a guinea pig

to be the victim of lifelong painful experiments. The

demand not to be treated “like cattle” only asserts

that the denigration is misdirected. Why aren’t PETA’s

critics offended by these analogies as well? PETA’s

comparison, in contrast, targets the oppressors, not

the other victims. The goal of the exhibit is not to

raise the status of some victims at the expense of

others. The goal is to demonstrate logically that all

forms of exploitation should be rejected.

 

It is argued, though, that the Holocaust is “uniquely

unique,” rendering all analogies inadequate. Nobel

laureate Elie Wiesel, himself a vegetarian, in his

response to PETA’s exhibit, said that it is much

different having a state-sponsored, genocidal

philosophy of “killing, not to eat, but [to] murder.”

Would it have been more justified if Nazis had

consumed the flesh of their victims? A Jewish woman

from Toronto, Lisa Cameron, whose grandmother was

killed at Auschwitz, supports PETA’s exhibit and

challenges Wiesel’s distinction:

Though the meat industry does not seek the extinction

of its victims, it engages in serial extermination,

forcibly impregnating animals to produce the next

generation of victims. Is it better to have not

existed (which should have been my fate according to

the logic of Auschwitz) or be born only as a thing to

be exploited from birth to death—a product to be

consumed, over and over again, generation to

generation? It is this cycle of systematic, serial

extermination that Isaac Bashevis Singer called the

“eternal Treblinka” for animals.

Wiesel condemned the exhibit as the “trivialization”

and “banalization” of the Holocaust. This exhibit is

by no means intended to minimize the Holocaust. It

calls attention to the trivialization and banalization

of the murder of animals. Billions of animals are

killed every year for the most trivial of purposes.

Beautiful lives are reduced to truck stop Arby’s

sandwiches or fashionable shoes or lungs in a

laboratory to be pumped with cigarette smoke. The

banality of evil is evident in how routinely and

unconsciously animals’ lives have become disposable

products.

 

This callous indifference to billions of animals’

torment and slaughter each year is what really should

offend all who view the exhibit. Surely we must not be

more offended by the perceived liberties taken with a

single word than by the occurrence of death and

torture of billions of animals. Wiesel said that

instead of invoking the word ‘Holocaust,’ “[t]hey

could simply say they’re killing. What’s wrong with

the word ‘kill,’ that they are against killing

animals? All right, then I could support them.” The

animals need our support regardless of the semantics.

This exhibit is not an exercise in literary criticism.

Most critics of the campaign have acknowledged the

moral imperative to address the pervasive exploitation

and abuse of animals and support the goals of the

exhibit. If “meat is murder but not a Holocaust,”

should murder alone not be sufficient to provoke an

outcry?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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