Animal rights groups use Shoah images in Madison
It was “a law enforcement officer in the community” who in early June alerted Steven H. Morrison, executive director of the Madison Jewish Community Council, that some animal rights groups are using Holocaust imagery to further their cause again.
But this time, the organization is not the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, whose “Holocaust on Your Plate” exhibit, created in 2003, sparked so much protest that PETA officials apologized for it last May.
Now, the groups are the Alliance for Animals and the Primate Freedom Project. At issue are plans the groups announced to create a National Primate Research Exhibition Hall in Madison, to be located between two University of Wisconsin-Madison buildings in which experimentation on monkeys and apes takes or has taken place.
The law enforcement officer came upon literature from the groups, in which they contend that having this museum there would be “like having the Holocaust memorial at the gates of Auschwitz in 1944.”
The project’s organizers have also produced a pamphlet that juxtaposes photos of chimpanzees and monkeys during experiments with photos of Holocaust victims.
Morrison found this to be appalling. “Whether it is good or bad to build the exhibit hall is debatable,” Morrison told The Chronicle in a telephone interview. “It is not debatable that the use of Holocaust imagery is offensive and disgusting.”
Human rights also
Morrison informed the Anti-Defamation League’s Upper Midwest Regional Office, headquartered in Chicago.
According to Adam Schupack, associate director of the Chicago ADL office, the national ADL had already been alerted to the project, as some of its researchers in New York had encountered the literature.
To link Holocaust victims’ suffering with that of animals in medical experiments “is an inappropriate comparison,” said Schupack. Animal rights groups’ arguments should “stand on their own merits; they don’t need comparisons to the Holocaust. That is just meant to upset people.”
Schupack added that he could wish “the leaders of this project would take the time to speak with Holocaust survivors and gather a little perspective on how this comparison can hurt those individuals. [The survivors] don’t want to see it misused, don’t want to see everything under the sun compared to the Holocaust. We’re seeing more and more of those comparisons made in public discourse.”
The ADL sent a letter on June 28 to the two organizations, protesting the project’s use of Holocaust imagery. Last month, ADL received a return letter dated July 8 and signed by Rick Bogle, founder of the Primate Freedom Project, and Lori Nitzel, executive director of Alliance for Animals, though written primarily by Bogle.
In telephone interviews, Bogle and Nitzel, who both live in Madison, defended their use of Holocaust analogies. “To me, the fundamental message of the Holocaust is that if people stay quiet in the face of atrocities, atrocities will continue and escalate,” said Bogle, a retired sixth grade teacher who said he had brought a Holocaust survivor to speak to one of his classes.
“I don’t think there’s a question” that what goes on in animal research laboratories amounts to atrocities, he said, especially in the face of scientific discoveries “that monkeys and apes have profound cognitive and emotional similarities to us. The question I ask is: How like us need they be?”
Nitzel for her part said, “It’s very hard for us to be in a situation where we feel that the ADL is coming after us, because everybody who is an animal rights activist is a human rights activist also.”
“We’re not trying to belittle or take away from what happened to anybody,” she said. “We’re trying to explain a parallel where we think one exists.”
To date there has been no further communication between the animal rights groups and ADL, though Bogle said he would be glad to continue the discussion.
But the subject may become moot. According to articles in Madison newspapers last week, UW is seeking to purchase the land that the animal rights’ groups want for the museum.
Though the land’s owner, Roger Charly, had signed a contract with the animal rights groups, he apparently is inclining to sell the land to UW, which is offering a higher price, according to the Aug. 11 Capital Times.
Both Bogle and Nitzel are confident that their prior contract with Charly will be found binding should the matter be brought to court. However, a court case would delay their original goal to have the museum open by the beginning of next year, Nitzel said.
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