Miss Holocaust Survivor? What in the world were the organizers thinking? And what do they know of the Shoah (“Making A Beautiful Statement,” Lens, July 13)?
As the director of The Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest, I find this quite appalling.
I was in Israel for a Yad Vashem conference on “Teaching the Core” when news of this appeared. A Holocaust beauty pageant is precisely the kind of trivialization of this seminal event in history that we who work to educate the world about the Holocaust abhor.
With all due respect to the elderly winner and other entrants, it is infuriating to see this sort of nonsense because it demeans all Hitler’s victims, many of whom were beautiful and brilliant. Moreover, this is an affront to Holocaust scholars who approach their work with the utmost gravitas. As for deniers and other anti-Semites, this provides a golden opportunity rant about the “Hoaxacuast” and “Shoahbiz.”
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