The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Wednesday that blacks and Jews must work together for social justice as they did during the 1960s civil rights movement.
The two spoke at a Kristallnacht commemoration at the Union of American Hebrew Congregation’s Religious Action Center here.
“This occasion, 50 years after Hitler . . . gives those of us who fought for justice in this nation and peace in this world, blacks and Jews, a unique opportunity to come together, to share together,” Jackson said.
“Neither blacks nor Jews lit the flames — we have been burned by them,” he said.
Speaking to reporters after the ceremony, Hooks said that what we have to do is get it out that not all blacks are anti-Semitic and that not all Jews are anti-black, but that the large body of blacks and Jews have a reason to work together.”
Hooks, Jackson, Delegate Walter Fauntroy (D-D.C.) and three rabbis spoke and lit six candles during a 25-minute ceremony, with each candle representing 1 million Jews who died during the Holocaust.
The six lit a seventh candle as a “flame of hope” and interlocked arms.
Jackson said the Holocaust is “one of the punctuation marks of human existence.” He said it “challenges us to slow down” and reflect.
Painting a picture of key symbols of the Holocaust, Jackson cited a threat, a train, an oven and an incinerator.
He said the Holocaust is unique “because it was engineered by an industrial state in modern times as official government policy.”
Jackson also spoke about human rights and the need to obliterate both anti-Semitism and anti-Arabism.
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