Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in
Jerusalem, is taking the heat for the removal by the museum, of a large,
floor-to-ceiling photo of the well-known meeting between the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem Haj Amin El Husseini and Adolph Hitler. That the photo has disappeared from view is not in doubt. But what does the disappearance of the photo signify?
Was its removal from public eye motivated by politics and political correctness, or was it more about museum function and management?
More to the point: Was the photo removed in the first place?
Several important voices, for example Lyn Julius, Ellie Cohanim, and Daniel Greenfield, have alluded to the removal of the
photo as politically motivated. And in fact, the disappearance of
the photo does seem political, even shockingly so.
For one thing, the Bennett
government coalition includes Ra’am, the Arab list. This is one of the larger
factions of the coalition, and it is in Bennett’s best interests to avoid
offending Arab sensibilities. Dani Dayan, meanwhile, is a Bennett appointee.
Could Dayan be behind the removal of the photo in order to satisfy some
injunction from above?
If so, preserving the government would have come at the
expense of the public’s understanding of this grievous chapter in Holocaust history.
Those who saw the photo while it was still on display, speak of its stark
impact. There was Shalom Pollack, who
said, “As a tour guide since 1980, I have visited the old museum numerous times
and remember clearly how my tourists were shocked by the duo in the photo.”
Pollack described his efforts to get the photo reinstated:
When I wrote to Yad Vashem and asked why they removed the
photo from the new museum, I was told that the new museum "concentrates on
the victims and less on the perpetrators". However just a few feet from
the small Husseini - Himmler photo is an entire wall of perpetrators - the
architects of the "Wannsee Conference" that drew up the plans for the
Holocaust.
I asked a number of local official Yad Vashem guides about
the photo. They either did not know of it or said it was political and they did
not discuss it with visitors. They were uncomfortable with my inquiry.
I wondered if associating Palestinian Arabs with Nazis was
no longer politically correct since the Oslo accords with Arafat in 1993.
Undeterred, Pollack looked for a more sympathetic ear. Dani Dayan was a son of the
right. For six years, Dayan had chaired the Yesha Council, which represents
Judea and Samaria, settlements and settlers. Pollack thought he might have finally found an ally in Dayan:
Today there is a new chairman of Yad Vashem,
Mr. Dani Dayan came to the position with "right wing"
credentials, so I renewed my efforts. I wrote to him asking that he return the
photo and asked for a meeting with him about the subject. I was refused a
meeting and told that there will be no changes made.
I then encouraged people to write to Yad Vashem and request
that the photo be returned. The letter writers were made to understand that
there never was such a photo. Emails began bouncing back to the senders. I
enquired with Yad Vashem and was told that they changed the email address. I
was told the new one and the letter campaign resumed.
Knowing of Pollack’s determination to reach Dayan, his brother found a way to
put the two in touch:
In mid-November 2021, Mr. Dayan addressed a well-known and
affluent synagogue in Westhampton, NY. My brother, a member of the community,
approached Mr. Dayan and told him of my concern. He said he was aware of it and
assured him it is not political. My brother asked if he would meet me. He
agreed and so I received a call from his office for a meeting.
At the meeting Dayan told me he did not meet with me earlier
because he did not like the tone of the letters written to him. He told me that
"no one will lecture him on Zionism and love of Israel. His credentials
speak for themselves." That is true, which is why I had expectations.
He claimed that I was interested not in historical record but
the politics of the Jewish - Arab conflict. I said it was both, which he did
not accept. He added that Yad Vashem is not a museum of the Arab - Jewish
conflict, that Husseini played only a tiny part in the Holocaust and did not warrant more space than he has in the museum.
Next came a denial that the photo was ever displayed to
begin with (emphasis added):
[Dayan] told me that he is in charge and won't bring the photo back, if there
ever was one. His advisor chimed in:
“There was never such a photo." She asked me if I had photographic proof
and I reminded her that it is forbidden to bring cameras into the museum. I
asked her if the many signed testimonies of veteran guides that I have gathered
is proof enough and she said it was a possibility.
Mr. Dayan was frustrated that I continued to hold firm to my
position. I told him that there are growing numbers of people, Jews and
non-Jews, who want the truth not be hidden at Yad Vashem and the photo
returned. He asked that I leave his office.
Who was right about the photo? Pollack, or Dayan’s advisor? Dayan’s
official
statement appears to back assertions that the photo has never been on
display at the museum (emphasis added):
To anyone who mistakenly believes differently, the facts are that the picture of the meeting between Adolf
Hitler and the Mufti was never displayed in
the old historical museum at Yad Vashem (it does, however, appear on
the Yad Vashem website).
Here is where Dayan flubbed it. This was a denial of a fact and it made Dayan look
bad, as though he were lying. He was also insulting, as much as calling those who said they saw the photo, liars.
Dayan had an important platform that gave him the chance to make
things better, but he’d only made it worse. Hence the communal umbrage.
Mort Klein of the ZOA came to the fore to defend
Pollack:
The decision by Yad Vashem to remove the photo of the Mufti
tying him to Hitler did not go over well with Zionist Organization of America
(ZOA) President Morton Klein, who “slammed the museum and its head Dani Dayan
for an ‘appalling’ censorship of history.” Klein didn’t mince words, nor should
he have done so, since the decision by Yad Vashem has worrying implications,
particularly given the contemporary rise in Islamic antisemitism throughout
Europe and North America.
From Breitbart (emphasis added):
“I can vouch and state as a matter of fact that I, Morton
Klein, personally saw that picture on Yad Vashem’s wall when I was there,” he
asserted.
Though photography is
forbidden in the museum itself, the author of the recent op-ed attacking the
museum gathered twenty signed testimonies of veteran guides over the last month
attesting to the photo’s original presence, before it was allegedly removed and
never returned during renovations in 2005.
Other voices have testified to having seen the photo in the “old”
museum, prior to renovations, contradicting Dayan’s denial:
Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem David Cassuto, a
longtime member on the museum’s council, told Breitbart News on
Sunday that the photograph was absolutely part of the museum’s previous
exhibition.
“I remember it; I saw
it there,” Cassuto said, as he expressed his bafflement as to why it was ever
removed.
“They have to bring it back and out it in a prominent point
in the exhibition,” he added.
Cassuto, who met with Dayan over the issue last month, disregarded
Dayan’s denials.
“[Dayan] has no idea because he was not there at the time.”
Ephraim Kaye,
who served as the director of international seminars for educators
from abroad at the museum for over 25 years, also confirmed the prior display
of the photograph and its subsequent removal.
“Everyone remembers
the picture of the Mufti and Hitler, it was towards the end of the museum — it
was there,” Kaye told Breitbart News. “It was up until 2005 when we closed the
old museum and opened the new one.”
Dayan is certainly not culpable for the original decision
not to exhibit the Mufti/Hitler photo in the refurbished museum. That happened
in 2005, when Dayan was not on the scene, as Cassuto rightly states. Nonetheless, reading
Dayan’s statement is to understand why the subject blew up.
This could have been handled so much better. But Dayan is new to the job. And Israelis are notoriously bad at public
diplomacy.
In light of Dayan’s statement/denial, it was not
unreasonable for the public to presume that Arab sensibilities were at least a
partial factor in the disappearance of the photo of Hitler and the Mufti. If true, that's a shocking thing: a Jerusalem Holocaust museum putting history into hiding to keep Bennett’s government intact.
The disappearance of the photo is viewed as the museum downplaying or minimizing the
importance of the Mufti-Hitler meeting. The
museum looks culpable of purposely hiding history. Dani Dayan, who represents the
museum, looks as though he is capitulating to Arab and woke sensibilities by refusing to find a
way to restore the photo to public scrutiny.
But what if he isn’t?
I spoke to Dr. Elana Heideman, Holocaust scholar and
Executive Director of The
Israel Forever Foundation. Heideman suggests that the controversy may
not be a controversy at all. I reviewed with her what other writers are saying.
She reminded me that each of these parties has a
particular focus: “Mine is integrity of memory. If you want to make an issue,
then it should be for using this as an example of the danger of extracting
details that are uncomfortable to contemporary rhetoric. And that this should
raise questions not only in Jerusalem, but everywhere, as to the complete
exclusion of any reference to the Muslim/Nazi connection and shared ideology.”
Heideman described the exhibit, which I had not seen. It was
true that the photo of the Mufti and Hitler was floor-to-ceiling, but Dr.
Heideman told me that in the former exhibit, each photo had had a corresponding
same-sized photo on the opposite wall. That salient fact had been omitted from most
other accounts I had read. Reading the op-eds, I had been under the
impression that the photo of the Mufti and Hitler was the only large photo in
the exhibit, and perhaps the largest photo in the entire museum, or at least
one of the largest.
Discussing this with Heideman was confusing for me. She had
me contemplating the idea that I’d gotten hung up on the word “removal,” when
the photo had not been “removed” so much as not placed on exhibition in the new
museum. The refurbished museum had all new exhibitions. According to Heideman,
all the voices speaking of removal imply that the photo was displayed in the
museum and subsequently taken down for the sake of political correctness.
Heideman, who knows about these things, mentioned that it
takes a lot of thought to create new exhibitions, and how best to present the
museum’s holdings to the public. That the photo is not currently on display,
does not exclude the possibility that it will be on display in the future. A
new exhibition may even be in the works. It would take a lot of thought and planning to create an exhibit on the Muslim-Nazi connection with maximum impact on visitors
to the museum.
In other words, maybe shifting stock is just what museums,
do. And in fact, that’s exactly what this
museum did. They put up other things instead. Just not that thing.
What Heideman said made me pause and think
about how it would be a difficult and complicated conversation to have. How should we portray the Muslim-Nazi connection to museum goers? How might we best teach the subject in the classroom? How much space do we give to this part of Holocaust history? One chapter in a textbook? Ten?
Every chapter of Holocaust history, in fact, requires a difficult
conversation for educators and others who strive to engage the public on the
subject. As Dayan suggested in his statement, it may be legitimate
for a museum to consider how large a part the Muslim connection plays in the
greater scheme of the things:
Research shows that the meeting between the Mufti and Adolf Hitler had a negligible practical effect on Nazi
policy. Attempting to pressure Yad Vashem to expand the exhibit on
the Mufti in the Holocaust History Museum is tantamount
to forcing Yad Vashem to partake in a debate on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is alien to its mission.
But while it's legitimate for a museum to decide the best way to
utilize its inventory and space, it's also legitimate for museum accusers to want that
photo back up, not only because it is an important part of history, but because it still has relevance for us, today.
Pollack said so to Dayan's face:
He claimed that I was interested not in historical record but the politics of
the Jewish - Arab conflict. I said it was both.
We are supposed to learn from history, lest we repeat it. But wokism means that if we talk about the Muslim/Nazi ideology connection, we're accused of Islamophobia. This is similar to the way we are now not allowed to say that the vast majority of antisemitic
attacks in New York have been perpetrated by blacks. The facts may be facts, but bringing them to light is definitely construed as racist in the prevailing
zeitgeist.
Dov Hikind has spoken of the need to change this dynamic:
The Mufti-Hitler photo may or may not have been removed with conscious political intent, but on whichever side you fall in the debate, it is the way Dani Dayan handled things that drew public scrutiny, especially in regard to his response to the complaints. Dayan had a platform. Still does. His statement should have been seen as an opportunity to correct or at least redirect the narrative to avoid harm to the museum. That is his job.
Instead, he denied the photo had ever been there, when he should have refrained from mentioning this at all. There are lots of things he could have said. He could have made a forceful statement and said that the photo had not been hidden from view.
He could have said that the museum was
taking time to consider how best to use the photo in a future exhibit on Muslim-Nazi relations--true or not.
But he said none of these things. Dayan blew it. And that put winds in the sails of the idea of “removal”
as opposed to “not currently on display.”
Dayan should have registered how his behavior and statement would look and feel to the public. That
floor-to-ceiling photo had made a strong impact. People noticed its absence. They feel a loss. They feel as though we, as a people, scuttled an opportunity to confront the world with a shocking and important image that helps make our tragedy real to them.
As an inexperienced spokesman, Dani Dayan created a massive PR blunder. His statement is not as it
should be and stands to this day on the Yad Vashem website as a giant gaffe. It should not have gone down this way. Dayan's actions have only fueled public
outrage and lent it credibility.
This leads to the thought that Dani Dayan may have been good at minor politics, but he quite frankly sucks
at his new job. This issue is not going to die an easy death. It is only getting worse.
But there is still one thing the museum can do to fix things, with or without Dani Dayan:
Find a
place to display that photo on the walls of Yad Vashem.
Sunday, January 22, 2023
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