Penny Pritzker Says ‘Fear of the Other’ Rising in Holocaust Remembrance Message
WASHINGTON — A top Jewish Obama administration official decried the rise of “the fear of the other” in the United States, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah.
“I do not think a Holocaust is happening in America, but I do worry about what is happening when we betray the principle of inclusion,” Penny Pritzker, the U.S. commerce secretary, said in remarks Thursday in the Capitol building.
“Today in our beloved United States, we are witnessing a rising fear of the other,” she said. “We are better than the language of hate. America is not the tribe of folded arms,” Pritzker said, using a metaphor for the Germans who stood by while the Nazis rose to power and carried out the mass murder of Jews and Roma.
Pritzker, who is Jewish, did not name perpetrators of hate speech, but she noted rising feelings of insecurity among Hispanic and Muslim Americans, who have been the targets of broadsides by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.
“Do we sit with our arms folded while words are used to dehumanize other human beings?” she said.
Pritzker, the scion of a Chicago hotel family, was one of Obama’s first backers.
Also speaking was Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer, who identified some extremes of anti-Israel rhetoric in present-day Europe, including in some cases in governments, with the anti-Jewish rhetoric that preceded the rise of the Nazis.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO