Animal rights and the Holocaust

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PETA shows an image of children behind bars in a concentration camp next to a pen filled with pigs.
PETA shows an image of children behind bars in a concentration camp next to a pen filled with pigs.

Several writers and animal rights groups have drawn a comparison between the treatment of animals and the Holocaust.[1] The comparison is regarded as controversial, and has been criticized by organizations that campaign against antisemitism, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[2]

The ADL argues that the increasing use of Holocaust imagery by animal rights activists is a "disturbing development."[3] Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights argues that, although there is "connective tissue" between animal suffering and the Holocaust, they "fall into different historical frameworks, and comparison between them aborts the ... force of anti-Semitism."[4]

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[edit] Comparisons

Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, made the comparison in several of his stories, including Enemies, A Love Story, The Penitent, and The Letter Writer. In The Letter Writer the protagonist says: "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka."[5] In The Penitent the protagonist says "when it comes to animals, every man is a Nazi."[6]

J.M. Coetzee, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, invoked the image of the slaughterhouse in describing the Nazi's treatment of Jews: "... in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter — or what they preferred to call the processing — of human beings."[7]

The ADL lists a number of animal rights groups that have made the comparison. The magazine No Compromise introduced the Animal Liberation Front with the words: "If we are trespassing, so were the soldiers who broke down the gates of Hitler's death camps; If we are thieves, so were the members of the Underground Railroad who freed the slaves of the South; And if we are vandals, so were those who destroyed Forever the gas chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz."[3]

In 2001, Meat.org included an "Animal Holocaust" section containing photographs of animals with captions such as "Holocaust Victim," arguing that it's "easy to see the resemblance of the systematic destruction and slaughter of over six million Jews by the Nazis before and during World War II and the over 20 million animals that are executed every day in America alone. Many of the Jews of the Holocaust were transported to concentration camps in cattle cars to their death. The concentration camps very much resemble the common slaughterhouses of today."[3]

The Consistency in Compassion Campaign (CCC), a project of the Northwest Animal Rights Network of Seattle, Washington, argues that "the Holocaust stands for much more than the one event. It represents a place and time when supremacist thinking was so embedded in a culture that they were blind or apathetic to the evil that existed in their everyday world. This kind of thinking is not exclusive to just that time and place. The great blind spot of our country and Western Civilization for that matter is the mistreatment and disregard for non-human animals in nearly every capacity."[3]

[edit] PETA and the use of Holocaust imagery

Ingrid Newkirk, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has herself made the comparison unambiguously, saying: "Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses." [8]

PETA has twice used Holocaust imagery in its campaigns. In July 2003, a PETA television public service announcement called "They came for us at night," aired on U.S. cable networks, narrated by a man describing what it felt like to be transported without food or water. [9]

In the same year, PETA's "Holocaust on your Plate" exhibition consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory-farmed animals. Photographs of concentration camp inmates were displayed next to photographs of battery chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. Captions alleged that "like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps." [10]

The exhibition was funded by an anonymous Jewish philanthropist, [11] and created by Matt Prescott, who lost several relatives in the Holocaust. Prescott said: "The very same mindset that made the Holocaust possible - that we can do anything we want to those we decide are 'different or inferior' - is what allows us to commit atrocities against animals every single day. ... The fact is, all animals feel pain, fear and loneliness. We're asking people to recognize that what Jews and others went through in the Holocaust is what animals go through every day in factory farms." [11] Abraham Foxman, chairman of the ADL, said the exhibition, was "outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah to new heights ... The effort by Peta to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent." [11] Stuart Bender, legal counsel for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote to PETA asking them to "cease and desist this reprehensible misuse of Holocaust materials." [2]

In 2005, Newkirk apologized for the pain the campaign had caused some people, writing:

“ Hard as it may be to understand for those who were deeply upset by this campaign, I was bowled over by the negative reception by many in the Jewish community. It was both unintended and unexpected. The PETA staff who proposed that we do it were Jewish, and the patronage for the entire endeavor was Jewish. We were careful to use Jewish authors and scholars and quotes from Holocaust victims and survivors ... We believe that we humans can and should use our distinctive capacities to reduce suffering in the world ... Our mission is a profoundly human one at its heart, yet we know that we have caused pain. This was never our intention, and we are deeply sorry. We hope that you can understand that although we embarked on the "Holocaust on Your Plate" project with misconceptions about what its impact would be, we always try to act with integrity, with the goal of improving the lives of those who suffer. We hope those we upset will find it in their hearts to work toward the goal of a kinder world for all, regardless of species.[12][13] ”

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Patterson, Charles. Eternal Treblinka, Lantern Books, 2002.
  2. ^ a b Willoughby, Brian. "PETA Turns Holocaust into Pig Pen", Tolerance.org, a webproject of the Southern Poverty Law Center, March 7, 2003, retrieved August 17,2006.
  3. ^ a b c d "Holocaust Imagery and Animal Rights", Anti-Defamation League, August 2, 2005, retrieved August 17, 2006.
  4. ^ Kalechofsky, Roberta. Animal Suffering and the Holocaust: The Problem with Comparisons, Micah Publications, 2003.
  5. ^ Patterson, Charles (2002). Eternal Treblinka, Lantern Books, pp. 181-188.
  6. ^ Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1983). The Penitent, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, p. 39.
  7. ^ Coetzee, J.M. Exposing the beast: factory farming must be called to the slaughterhouse, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 22, 2007. Retrieved on February 25, 2007.
  8. ^ Shafran, Avi. "This time PETA's guilty of missing the point", j., May 20, 2005.
  9. ^ "They came for us at night", PETAtv.com, retrieved August 17, 2006.
  10. ^ Smith, Wesley J. "PETA to cannibals: Don't let them eat steak", San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 2003.
  11. ^ a b c Teather, David. "'Holocaust on a plate' angers US Jews", The Guardian, March 3, 2003.
  12. ^ Newkirk, Ingrid. "Apology for a tasteless comparison", Israelinsider, May 5, 2005.
  13. ^ Anti-Defamation League Press Release, "Holocaust Imagery and Animal Rights", ADL Website, August 2, 2005, retrieved August 17, 2006.