In Florida, a Holocaust museum’s George Floyd inspired exhibit spurs debate about its mission
George Floyd Image by Getty
By David Ian Klein November 23, 2020
A Florida Holocaust museum that also explores modern social problems as part of its mission is attracting criticism for a new exhibit inspired by the police killing of George Floyd, and the unrest that followed.
The Holocaust Memorial and Education Resource Center of Florida’s Uprooting Prejudice: Faces of Change Exhibit, features portraits taken by a Chicago photographer, John Noltner, on the site of his death of Floyd’s killing, in the aftermath of his death.
Along with the black and white pictures, each portrait includes a quote about prejudice and bigotry from those Noltner photographed. However, there are no photographs of Floyd himself.
The state of Florida has more Holocaust survivors than anywhere except Israel.
Some have said a Holocaust museum is not the proper place for such an exhibit, in part because they believe it creates a comparison between the police who killed Floyd and the Nazis.
Unbelievable: the Holocaust Museum in Maitland, Florida has added a George Floyd section
To align Floyd’s tragic death with the massacre of 6million Jews is hugely insensitive
But it’s also political: it positions police as Nazis. Awful decision
— Martin Daubney (@MartinDaubney) November 22, 2020
George Floyd is added to a Holocaust museum? That trivializes and distorts the Holocaust and its six million Jewish victims. And it grotesquely implies that American police are Nazis. pic.twitter.com/zNsG0bqyEe
— Ezra Levant ? (@ezralevant) November 22, 2020
However, according to the museum’s website, its founder, Holocaust survivor Tess Wise, designed it both as a memorial to the Nazi genocide of Jews and as a vehicle to look at current events, from genocides in Rwanda and Darfur to the human rights crisis in Syria and “the long list of ‘phobias’ and ‘isms.’”
“She believed that the lessons of the Holocaust provided a lens through which we could understand contemporary social and human rights issues,” says the site.
Clarification, Nov. 25, 11:43 p.m.: While the exhibit was inspired by the events around the death of George Floyd it did not include pictures of him or the protests which followed, rather it featured portraits of visitors to a memorial at the site of his death.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
