I recently heard that Professor Roth will be lecturing on the Holocaust and Kristallnacht at University Synagogue. The title of the talk will be, "Ethics After Auschwitz," and it will take place fully seventy years after the horror of Kristallnacht.
(Ethics, might be something his predecessor at the Holocaust Center, Jonathan Petropoulos might be more qualified to speak on, given that he had to resign his position there in disgrace after extorting a Holocaust survivor.)
One wonders just what he'll say this anniversary, given his past tendencies to say some outlandish things on the evening.
Mr. Roth, you'll remember, had to step down from a post at the Holocaust Museum after it came to light that he had compared the treatment of the Palestinians in Israel to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany. He made that statement fully 20 years ago, also on the evening of Kristallnacht. In the past, he had compared the election of Ronald Reagan to that of Hitler.
Here's what he wrote about Kristallnacht, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“Kristallnacht,” he wrote, “happened because a political state decided to be rid of people unwanted within its borders. It seems increasingly clear that Israel would prefer to rid itself of Palestinians if it could do so. Their presence in Gaza and the West Bank is a liability and a threat to many Israeli intentions… . It seems equally clear that not many other nations in the world want the Palestinians either. As much as any other people today, they are being forced into a tragic part too much like the one played by the European Jews 50 years ago.”
For Mr. Roth's sake, I hope he decides not to compare the election of a certain black orator to another German orator, but then again, I've been wrong before. Good luck, Mr. Roth.
