In 2018, I wrote a column for the Badger Herald, one of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student newspapers. Determined to correct the narrative on the now-infamous nazi salute in Baraboo, Wisconsin, I discussed how some symbols, despite their contexts, cannot be sanitized. They cannot be isolated from their history, despite our best — or worst — attempts.
Six years later, I woke up to a social media feed overflowing with swastikas. Just over a mile away from my apartment in Milwaukee, a mural had been put up. Not only was a symbol of Nazi oppression staring back at me once again — this time, the symbol of the Jewish people was intertwined with it. A blue Star of David, the star of our people, was melted into the thick, black bars of the infamous swastika, overlaid by a damning sentence:
“The Irony of Becoming What You Once Hated.”
Like many Jews, I was filled with horror. That horror grew, tenfold, when I saw the comments underneath various news articles covering the mural’s creation. Good, many commenters said, They should know how it feels.
They, a singular, damning label. Just like the mural itself, many commenters made no distinction between Israel and the Jewish people. One group bled into another, neatly packaged antisemitism labeled as righteous anti-Zionism.
The irony of the irony, however, was the stinging lack of knowledge about the Holocaust and modern antisemitism. The Jews did not hate the Nazis in the way this mural purports; the Jews were hated by the Nazis, from every level of the Reich down. Jews were the victims in a Holocaust designed, from start to end, to be the destruction of global Jewry.
I am greatly disappointed by the lack of immediate condemnation of such a dangerous conflation of symbolism. Many Milwaukeeans, and even some anti-Zionist Jews, have insisted that the mural should stand. That it is legitimate criticism of Israel, and that not only is that criticism apparent – any Jew who mistakes it is adopting ill-fitting victimhood.
There is no world in which a Nazi swastika, proudly displayed in public, is anything other than a deliberate message to the Jewish community. Even tempered by retrospective anti-Zionism, there is a point where a symbol becomes inextricable from context. There is no world where a swastika will mean anything to me other than the hatred of Jews.
Those who use a swastika to intimidate Jews are exactly what was once “hateful.” The irony of becoming, in that sense, is not borne on the backs of the Jewish community. It is the responsibility of those who freely use hateful symbols, knowing their context, and disregard the real-life danger of doing so.
As a Jewish woman, I am fearful of a Milwaukee that allows symbols of Jewish hatred to stand unchecked. And I am deeply ashamed of a city that has not, or will not, learn from the history of its vibrant Jewish community.
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