By Meryl Feld
Editor
The now deleted cartoon published July 3 on The Anderson County Review’s Facebook page, criticized Kansas Governor Laura Kelly’s recent COVID-19 mask order. Kelly was depicted in a mask with a large Star of David on it, against the backdrop of a Holocaust train. Below the image read “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask ... and step onto the cattle car.”
The train depicted in the cartoon is reminiscent of the train that Rabbi Zalman Tiechtel’s great-grandfather was murdered on. His grandfather, a child at the time, spent World War II running from one hiding place to another. “For any Jewish person it’s a shocking image to see, but especially if your own family is connected to the Holocaust… seeing that imagery of such a painful moment in our history, in our past, used in any context is disrespectful,” Rabbi Tiechtel of the University of Kansas Chabad, told The Chronicle.
Rabbi Tiechtel feels that comparisons like this diminish the pain and suffering that the Jewish people went through. “There’s absolutely no justification for that kind of parallel,” he said.
Anderson County is a little over an hour southwest of Kansas City.
The owner of the paper and creator of the cartoon, Dane Hicks, is the chairman of the Anderson County Republican Party. He initially refused to back down or apologize, emailing an Associated Press reporter that, “Political editorial cartoons are gross over-caricatures designed to provoke debate and response — that’s why newspapers publish them — fodder or the marketplace of ideas. The topic here is the governmental overreach which has been the hallmark of Governor Kelly’s administration.”
Rabbi Mark Levin, founding rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah, told The Chronicle, “The message is government control and that comparison is literally obscene. This person… is making a crude attempt to call Laura Kelly a Nazi. Now there’s no doubt that fascists control their constituents’ behavior. But they don’t do it in order to save their lives, they do it in order to kill them.”
In his initial message to the AP, Hicks noted that he would apologize to Holocaust survivors, their families or Jews “who take offense to the image… But then again they better than anyone should appreciate the harbingers of governmental overreach and the present but tender seedlings of tyranny.”
After criticism poured in from across the country over the weekend, Hicks decided not to include the cartoon as planned in his independent weekly newspaper’s Tuesday publication.
Hicks declined to answer specific questions from The Chronicle, but emailed Sunday, “Well I’ve had a pretty educational evening and morning discussing the cartoon with some leaders and members of your faith who were very illustrative, very direct, yet very understanding. It’s clear in trying to make my point about the mess in Kansas government I tread on real hurt.
“I’ve removed the cartoon and posted my apologies and gratitude for the demeanor with which I was treated. Feel free to use this as my statement as this is all I’ll have to say.”
Analysis
“Putting a Jewish star on a figure that you are trying to demonize or villainize or when you’re Judaizing or making a figure that you don’t like Jewish, that would be an anti-Semitic step,” Gavriella Geller the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau|AJC Kansas City told The Chronicle. She also noted that anti-Semitism is not always intentional.
Anti-Semitism can take various forms. Geller said, “One way that anti-Semitism can manifest is through Holocaust denial and Holocaust revisionism. Comparing what’s going on right now to the planned genocide of six million Jews is a form of Holocaust revisionism. That can be very dangerous to diminish the reality of what happened.”
The danger of circulating an image like this can go far beyond what it was originally intended for. According to Geller, the publisher’s views do not prevent the image from being taken up and appropriated by anti-Semites. It could also make people feel stronger about stereotypes and misconception surrounding Jews.
This incident highlights the value of the work the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education does, specifically in more rural areas. Jessica Rockhold, the executive director of the MCHE, told The Chronicle, “While it was incredibly disappointing to see in our backyard, I was also really encouraged by the fact that we were alerted to it initially by a teacher from their community who has been to our training. And because of that knew what she was seeing and knew that it should be reported.”
Rockhold added, “There is almost never a reasonable comparison of the Holocaust to American politics. There is always a distortion and it minimizes the truth and the magnitude of what the Holocaust was.”
The COVID-19 era has seen an increase in such imagery. “It’s pretty apparent that it’s a grossly offensive and anti-Semitic image. It is not by any means the first time I have seen similar imagery over the past few months. We have been seeing all around the country a significant amount of Holocaust and anti-Semitic imagery being used at protests against mask mandates, so it is aligned with a pattern we have been seeing nationwide,” Geller said.
Many are questioning whether the cartoon was anti-Semitic. “When it comes to anti-Semitism or any kind of hate, you listen to the group who is being targeted… If the Jewish community decides that something is anti-Semitic, there should be no argument,” Geller said.
Community Response
MCHE and the JCRB|AJC reached out to the publisher to request a meeting. As of Monday, they had not heard back.
MCHE’s Rockhold said that her first reaction to seeing the cartoon was “clearly anti-Semitic, trading on a lot of the tropes that we educate about and try to make sure that people understand and recognize.”
Rabbi Tiechtel received a number of calls about the cartoon. “Rabbis are like a safe zone,” he said. Some called seeking support and encouragement. Others called for his opinion. “My response is the same response I have when anything happens that comes across as insensitive or hurtful or sometimes even hateful. And that is the importance of education. I truly believe that this is a perfect example of how important it is for us, the Jewish people, to educate.” He added that condemning situations like this is vital, too.
Rabbi Levin is proud of how the community responded to this incident. He said, “The fact that there’s an anti-Semite that has control of a newspaper page is not new. And I read the reactions on Facebook and I was very, very proud of the articulate nature of the people who commented…. People in a reasonable fashion, without panicking, stepped up and said this anti-Semitism is just not allowed. It’s beyond the pale.”
Rabbi Tiechtel thinks that many people are simply ignorant and need to be educated about what the Holocaust was, what it represents and what it means for the Jewish people today. “I’m not going to respond to darkness with more darkness,” Rabbi Tiechtel said.
Next steps
Where does the Kansas City Jewish community go from here?
Rockhold said that MCHE will be reaching out to educators in Anderson County to offer educational support. They already have a rural-outreach program in the works. “We want to make sure that people in these communities not only have the sensitivity about literally what happened in the Holocaust, but how it’s relevant today and to recognize these kinds of incidents when they see them,” she said.
The work does not end here. “That diligence in the community whether it is Jewish or non-Jewish, recognizing these things for what they are, and bringing them to the attention of people who can address them, whether it’s through education or advocacy is what we hope the community is able to continue to contribute to this,” Rockhold said.
The JCRB|AJC is working on implementing a new educational plan, with a focus on combating the rising anti-Semitism in local schools. Their Leaders for Tomorrow Program helps high school students learn to be advocates against anti-Semitism, for Israel and for the Jewish people as a whole. Developing relationships in the community is also a focus of their work — to help all communities feel connected to and understand the Jewish community.
Geller encourages the community to help combat anti-Semitism by supporting organizations like JCRB|AJC and MCHE who have the infrastructure to make a big impact.
The impact starts small though. “Every relationship we have is an opportunity to combat anti-Semitism and stereotypes and prejudices,” Geller said. She encourages the community to stay up to date on the complexities and manifestations of anti-Semitism, so they can call it out when they see it. She also asks people to be willing to talk about anti-Semitism. She wants people to report the anti-Semitism they see online, too. AJC has great resources on their website for identifying anti-Semitism and understanding it better, such as a glossary of memes and social media posts that show different anti-Semitic tropes.
“Make sure you show up for justice for all minority communities, and that you do so as a Jew. That is an incredibly powerful way of combating anti-Semitism,” Geller added, “To have a friend you have to be a friend.”
Rabbi Levin agrees. He hopes the Jewish community in Kansas City will now shift their efforts to other causes. “This is not the main topic, or an important topic, in terms of racism or interreligious hatred or bias today. It’s a distraction. It’s an ugly distraction. It needs to be countered… And then let’s go back to the real enterprise now… I’m not saying that anti-Semitism is not there. It’s just that there are much more important experiences of hatred, animosity, exclusion, othering than this cartoon or this example of anti-Semitism,” he said.
“We need to donate our funds not just to Jewish groups that are defending against anti-Semitism, but to groups that protect that part of society actually being excluded,” Rabbi Levin said, “We have to stop accepting systemic hatred of groups within our society and that could eventually come back on us.”
Rabbi Tiechtel hopes the community will recognize its ability to make an impact and stand proud. “One person posted something on some small newspaper webpage that has such a small readership, and look how it’s affected so many people… No one is too small to make a huge impact,” Rabbi Tiechtel said.
“Judaism encourages us to stand taller and prouder whenever such a thing happens… Our response needs to be: the more we are attacked, the more we are hated; the more we face darkness the louder, stronger, prouder we need to become.”