Good long read on the lessons of the Holocaust as told by Jason Staley whose parents escaped. Nicely nuanced:

My parents explained to me that these pasts meant that they were not Holocaust survivors. My mother told me that in her labor camp, they were hungry, they were put to work, but no one was shooting or gassing them. When they went back to Poland, it was hard, and Jews were hated. But this, she explained, was the fate of Jews. Anti-Semitism was a permanent feature of the world, not special to the Holocaust.

My father’s reaction to describing him as a Holocaust survivor was more severe. He angrily questioned my motivations. Was I seeking a special status as a victim? He urged me to reflect about how offensive this is to those who have to actually live under oppression. He argued powerfully against the stance of the victim. It was morally dangerous, he said, using the actions of Israelis and Palestinians toward one another as an example. He was scornful when he saw signs that I was taking the Holocaust to mean that Jews were special. “If the Germans had chosen someone else,” he often said, “we would have been the very best Nazis.”

Most frequently and passionately, he would reprimand me for taking the Holocaust to be about me, or about my family. The Holocaust was about humanity. It was about what we are capable of doing to one another. It could happen again, it could happen here. The Holocaust was about everyone. Helping to prevent such events from occurring required agency and good moral sense, and good moral sense was not consistent with preferring one’s own people.

My mother’s most frequent advice was about knowing when to get out of a dangerous situation. The moment where one must accept that a situation is genuinely dangerous is usually well past the time when one can exit it. Her advice would come out especially during any patriotic moment. She was afraid I would develop an attachment to a country and would not flee early enough.

My mother and father both believed that normal people could do unimaginably terrible things. As a court stenographer in criminal court, my mother witnessed the racial injustice of the American legal system up close. I remember her sometime in the late 1980s saying to me with a rather flat affect, “They are targeting black people in this country.” That didn’t mean she was about to march out on the street in protest of injustice. That would be a completely incorrect interpretation of my mother. My mother believes that injustice is the normal, unchangeable state of things. My mother believes trust is foolishness. She thinks it is not only naïve to live as if justice were an attainable ideal; it is self-destructive. My mother believes they will kill you if they can.

My father was always critical of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians, convinced that the establishment of the state of Israel was implicated in the horrors of colonialism. He was equally abhorrent of Palestinian violence toward Israeli citizens. I grew up hearing other American Jews speak of Palestinians in pre-genocidal ways; that Palestinians have always wanted to kill the Jews, and must therefore be kept locked away and controlled. Regular exposure to such talk has made me permanently afraid for the safety of the Palestinian people. Comparisons between Israeli treatment of Palestinians and Nazi treatment of Jews are absurd. But my background has made me sensitive to the grimmest of even remote future possibilities. I have exactly the same reactions when I hear such rhetoric directed against Israeli citizens.

I am a philosopher. My calling, at its very basic level, obligates me to question the beliefs with which I was raised. But on this topic — how to live — I was given two answers. Which view do evidence and reason command?

I accept the legacy of my father. But it is impossible for me to shut out my mother’s concerns. Maybe the reality is that all groups are at war for power, and that to adopt an ethic of common humanity is a grave disadvantage. Maybe we should do what we can, but prioritize the safety of our families.

History speaks strongly on my mother’s side. So does my anecdotal evidence. I am white Jewish-American; my sons and wife are black Americans. I cannot retreat from my commitment to these groups. Being interested in the equal dignity of other groups is an additional burden.

It takes work to feel the suffering of Palestinians when I hear of the anger they bear toward my fellow Jews, even though I recognize its clearly justifiable source. It takes much more work to feel the suffering of poor white Americans when I hear it coupled with a thoroughly unjustifiable racism directed against my children. Is it work that I should be doing? Or should I be doing the work of attending primarily to the flourishing of mychildren?

A world in which this ideal is realized is no doubt far-off. The temptation to surrender it is strong. But history has provided us with too many events that show how important it is not to be complicit in making it unattainable.