By james art 
Rabbi in South Carolina uses the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial ceremony to make parallels with the federal and state policy of the modern day for refugees, LGBTQ problems, and bans on books to cut an event.
Rabbi Sam Rose went to social media to blow up the station to cut his speech, calling it a “state sanctioned censorship”.
Those behind the broadcast stated that the decision to download the segment actually comes from the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, a state initiative for the Holocaust of Holocaust, which hosted the event and hired the television station to make a recording.
“We do not believe that the political statements made during the blessing were suitable for a standard educational resource, and therefore we wanted a part to be removed from the final proceedings,” the State Council said.
The Council is defined as an “apolitical government”, which seeks to help teachers in the state “instruct their students for the facts and historical significance of the Holocaust.”
The incident plays a long -time debate about this when, if at all, it is appropriate to compare current Holocaust events. Some Jewish groups historically condemn politicians and activists who attract parallels to the Holocaust Age Similar objections dropped out to the end of Trump’s first term as the Nazi analogies have become more common in politicsS
The requests for the comment to the Council were not returned immediately. Rose said a member of the Council of the Council belonging to his synagogue, a temple of Israel in Greenville, prepared a resignation letter after the speech was drawn because “she did not want to sit on a council that would serve as a moral license Participate in the state -sanctioned hatred. “(The letter has not yet been sent, he said.)
Speaking to the Jewish telegraph agency, Rose denied both South Carolina ETV, throughout the country, PBS branch as cowardly. He also defended his decision to use the Holocaust ceremony to sound on modern problems.
“I could not allow these civil servants to be self -governing and use this event as a platform for moral licensing, where they would justify their discriminatory behavior to other groups of people, while congratulating themselves and writing state proclamations on Holocaust education.” He said.
The rabbi added that he had written his rabbinian school thesis on how the movement of reform was concerned with “controversial political issues” in the past. The denomination has a long history of participation in the movements of American social justice.
He added that he felt an obligation, especially to Trans members of his congregation to speak on their behalf.
“I think they are legal parallels,” he said. “The Holocaust did not start with the death camps. The Holocaust began with the censorship of the media, with the censorship of religious figures, and censoring books and burns them. The Holocaust began when you started calling people that they were different and as a source of diseases of society. “
A representative of the public operator Scetv directed JTA to a statement that he applied to his archived broadcast video, claiming that he was constantly live The way that is best reached in line with the goals of the Council for future accessibility and educational use. “
The statement of the station adds: “As a public media entity, we do not participate in the form of censorship with our content.”
The event, charged as “The 80th Remembrance of the Liberation of Auschwitz”, hosted the Council on January 27, International Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, on the campus of the University of South Carolina in Colombia. It included Chuck Todd, the former Jewish longtime host of NBC’s Meet the Press as a major speaker days before He announced he was leaving NBCS The Republican Governor, Lieutenant Governor and State School supervisor also attended and spoke from the Holocaust.
Rose, a longtime organizer of the community, who said he grew up with a relative of the Holocaust survival and a gay father has lived in Greenville for six years. He was invited to recite the Kadishka of the blades and to convey a blessing during the conclusion of the ceremony and decided to use the possibility of directly coping with the leadership of the state. He declined to share his remarks with the organizers of events, fearing censorship.
Rose’s speech came days after Bishop Marian Bude, a bishop’s leader, delivered a sermon from the pulpit challenging President Donald Trump to “have mercy” for the vulnerable population. The liberal clergy across the country said they were inspired by her choice.
After the prayer, Rose instructed the crowd to sit down and fired into his speech, during which he seeks to bind the Holocaust to “attacks against human rights and human life, which sound dangerous refrain.”
“Nowadays, we are witnessing the revival of hatred, anti -Semitism, prejudice, discrimination,” the rabbi said, “said: In a video he later publishes on YouTube himselfS “Our country, which has served as often as a beacon of the hope of sufferers around the world, is now refusing help from all kinds of refugees.”
He then recalled the attendees to visit the HIAS website, the Jewish immigrants and refugee support group, which was open to their fight to continue its mission after the recent frost of Trump’s federal funds for refugees.
“If the Holocaust happened and ended yesterday, whether the same Jews who were released in this country would be released today?” Rose continued. He then switched to LGBTQ questions, citing Trump’s latest executive orders, who recognize only two official genders and a bar transsexual health care for minors: “My friends, my neighbors, my colleagues, who are members of the LGBTQ+ Community, are horrified right now. “
Rose then briefly focused on the issue of book prohibitions, especially powerful in South Carolina as one of the leading countries for book challenges. “When we talk about education and censorship of the things we need to learn and legitimize the experience of other people’s suffering, books are removed from libraries and our children do not learn the full spectrum of experience in this country,” he said.
South Carolina has been restricted in the classroom in recent years to some books on Holocaust and anti -Semitism. The areas in the country have Briefly pulled the novel “The Fixer” from a single area before review and Remove a book about the local survivors of the Holocaust from the middle -class curriculumS The state is currently faced with civil rights case Over a new law limiting the teaching of entities, including race and gender; The state chief, who was presented the speaker of the event in Auschwitz, is the name of a party in the suit.
“I was so nervous when I spent speech that I was shaking,” Rose recalls on Friday about his speech. “But I was immediately surrounded by people who wanted to hug me.”
Only one man told him that he had objected to speech, he said, because “he does not believe that religion, and in particular, prayer was once the platform for the introduction of politics. To which I answered, then you can get rid of the Jewish Bible. “
Injection of contemporary policy in the events of the commemoration of the Holocaust, which are often present political figures, has been the subject of dispute for years. Similar ceremonies this year are also magnets for political grandiose, such as The Jews were removed from a remembrance in Dublin to protest the Irish president, complaining about the death issue in Gaza during his remarksS No world leaders were invited to talk at an event this week in Auschwitz to celebrate the 80th anniversary of their Liberation, a date that the United Nations has identified as an International Holocaust Remembrance Day 20 years ago.
South Carolina’s speech was not the only dispute over the Holocaust Memorial, which is played this week in the United States. A note from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s wing, expired this week, Instructs staff to stop all activities related to the recalcitration of Holocaust Remembrance Day And other activities that the Agency considers a representative of the initiatives of diversity, justice and inclusion or DEI, now banned by the Federal Government through a Trump enforcement order.
Rose has difficult words about the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, which the state created in 1989, as it exists in parallel with other educational policies of the state that suppresses the teaching of racial history and the recognition of the sexual identities of children.
“They believe that by talking about the Holocaust education, this gives them a license to ignore any other political issue of suffering in their educational processes,” he said.
This week and Trump chairman of the Federal Communication Commission Announces a widespread NPR and PBS investigation This can lead to the cancellation of their funding, which puts public television operators.
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