A general view shows part of an exhibition at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, before beginning of Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, as the centre is closed following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions around the country, April 20, 2020 REUTERS/ Ronen Zvulun

The newly-appointed head of Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust has identified the “trivialization” and “distortion” of the Nazi persecution of the Jews as the most urgent challenge facing the faithful commemoration of Jewish history’s nadir.

Speaking to The Algemeiner on a recent visit to New York, Dani Dayan — a former Israeli Consul-General to the city who was appointed as chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, in August — said that the exploitation and appropriation of the Holocaust for political ends was a growing problem across both civil societies and governments.

“We have two different problems, trivialization and distortion of the Holocaust,” Dayan said. Demonstrations around the world against COVID-19 public health protocols and mass vaccinations have been littered with protestors displaying Holocaust -era symbols, in a bid to depict social contact restrictions on those who freely refuse the vaccine as analogous to the Nazi genocide of six million Jews. “With the coronavirus, you see the trivialization,” said Dayan.

Holocaust distortion, he continued, “is so problematic because in many cases we are dealing with governments.”

As Dayan explained it, “the nature of today’s distortion is to recognize that the Holocaust occurred, but to say as well, ‘my fellow countrymen were okay.’ We hear this from the Poles, from the Ukrainians, the French, the Dutch — but they were not okay. This is the kind of distortion that we are determined to combat.”

Over the last four years, legislation passed in Poland has chilled historical research into the Holocaust by imposing potential legal penalties on those scholars who examine the issue of Polish civilian collaboration with the Nazis. Poland’s nationalist government has also led a narrative offensive that rejects any talk of collusion with the occupying Germans while asserting that the Holocaust was primarily a Polish tragedy.

“The picture is not so straightforward,” Dayan commented. “Poles suffered at the hands of the Germans. Poles collaborated with the Nazis. Poles are included in the ‘Righteous Among Nations’. All these things are true. So it’s not black and white, there are many shades to Polish behavior during World War II and we have to recognize all of them.”

Similar challenges exist in Ukraine too, said Dayan. Recalling a visit to Kiev in September to attend 80th anniversary commemorations of the Nazi massacre of 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar, he said he had told a seminar that “we warmly welcome Ukraine into the family of democratic nations, and Ukraine acknowledges the Holocaust perpetrated against the Jews. But I also said that in a democracy, you have to look at your past with open eyes.”

Ukraine had yet to admit that “there was extensive collaboration with the Nazis,” Dayan said. He also pointed to the honoring in Ukraine of historical figures that railed against the Jews, among them Bogdan Chmielnicki, the Cossack leader who murdered thousands of Jews during an anti-Polish uprising in 1648. “In Kiev, you leave your hotel and cross the street, and you are facing a statue of Chmielnicki,” Dayan said. “Until the Holocaust, he was the most deplorable symbol of antisemitism. Yet he’s a national hero in Ukraine.”

Born in Argentina, Dayan hails from a Ukrainian Jewish family that emigrated during the 1920s, meaning that most of his relatives were safe from the Nazis. “What saved my family was antisemitism in Ukraine,” he said with a wry smile, pointing out that their escape from the pogroms that followed the Bolshevik revolution in Russia meant that “most of my family were either in South America or Eretz Israel by the time the Nazis took power. Nevertheless, the awareness of the Holocaust was always very strong throughout my life.”

Dayan said that his vision for Yad Vashem was to turn its focus to educational opportunities outside of its impressive, sprawling campus on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.

“I want to create a situation in which you don’t necessarily have to come to Jerusalem to experience Yad Vashem,” he said. “You shouldn’t need to come to Jerusalem in order to browse our archives, our collections of artifacts, art and books.”

Technology, and specifically the interactive aspects of the next generation of internet applications, was “one component” of the strategy, Dayan said. “There are as well educational programs and exhibitions that we can bring to towns all over Israel, as well as New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Moscow.”

In that regard, he spoke enthusiastically about Yad Vashem’s newly-formed ties with institutions in Bahrain and Morocco, following Israel’s historic peace agreements with those two Arab nations.

“That cooperation is an encouraging sign that there is realm interest in those countries in understanding the Holocaust,” remarked Dayan. “Because they know that without this understanding, you cannot understand Israel.”