The “stars and bars” standard flown by the army of the Confederate States of America, as they battled to preserve slavery during the Civil War, was found tied to the front door of Battery Park City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage (MJH) on Friday morning.
While this connection between the Civil War and the Holocaust may not be obvious, the Anti-Defamation League, which has as its mission, “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” classifies the Confederate flag as, “a potent symbol of slavery and white supremacy, which has caused it to be very popular among white supremacists in the 20th and 21st centuries.” Such groups (among them, factions as old the Ku Klux Klan and as new as the Proud Boys) are known to revile Jews with nearly as much venom as they reserve for African-Americans.
This overlap became explicit during last week’s riot at the United States Capitol, during which far-right extremists carried Confederate flags, while also wearing hats and sweatshirts emblazoned with the words, “Camp Auschwitz.” Others wore shirts bearing the abbreviation, “6MWE,” which telegraphs the message, “6 Million Weren’t Enough.”
In this context, the decision to affix a Confederate flag to the front door of the Museum of Jewish Heritage (a memorial to the Holocaust, which Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes denies ever happened) can be understood to fall somewhere between a deliberate attempt to inflict grave offense and an overt threat of violence.
In response, MJH president and chief executive officer Jack Kliger said, “early this morning a Confederate flag was tied to the front door of the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. We have filed a police report and are working with authorities to identify the individual or individuals responsible for this crime.”
“This is an atrocious attack on our community and on our institution,” he continued, “and must be met with the swift and forceful response by law enforcement. The Confederate flag is a potent symbol of white supremacy, as evidenced by the events at the U.S. Capitol this week.”
“Such hate has now arrived at our doorstep, just steps away from a train car which once transported Jews to the Auschwitz death camp,” he continued, in a reference to the freight wagon, used during World War Two to convey Jews to their deaths, and now on loan from the Auschwitz Museum in Poland, as part of the current MJH exhibit, “Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away.”
