Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.
In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.
No, quite the contrary.
You’ve probably read that in the early days of the State there was a lot of resentment towards Holocaust survivors. They were counter to the national narrative of the “New Jew” who was strong, hard-working, and living off the land. Shoah survivors represented Jews as victims, who did not fight back against the Nazis, instead going like “lambs to the slaughter.”
This all changed after the Eichmann trial (1961), which is when most of the world first came to understand the true nature of how the Nazis operated. Many people did fight back, and many couldn’t.
Holocaust survivors are revered and honored in Israel, although the country suffers from poor social services with a lot of gaps. Shoah survivors often fall through those gaps, along with other elders.