Is ‘never again’ now? The Ukraine war ignites a recurring debate

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL | JTA

Seventy-nine years ago this month, crowds twice filled Madison Square Garden for a pageant, “We Will Never Die,” meant to draw attention to the slaughter of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis. Screenwriter Ben Hecht organized the spectacle and wrote the script; German refugee composer Kurt Weill wrote the score. A young Marlon Brando had a leading role.

Two million Jews had already been killed. The performance included the lines, “No voice is heard to cry halt to the slaughter, no government speaks to bid the murder of human millions end. But we here tonight have a voice. Let us raise it.”

In the self-congratulatory amnesia called hindsight, American Jews often look back on “We Will Never Die” as a watershed in raising awareness about the Holocaust – and a condemnation of America’s failure at that point to stop the genocide. What’s often forgotten is that

Hecht had trouble getting major Jewish organizations to sign on as sponsors. “A meeting of representatives of 32 Jewish groups, hosted by Hecht, dissolved in shouting matches as ideological and personal rivalries left the Jewish organizations unable to cooperate,” according to the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

This was 1943, mind you, so the debate over whether the United States should commit blood and treasure to the defense of its Allies was already settled. But the “ideological and personal rivalries” are reminders that Americans were never of one mind about entering World War II, and certainly not about whether and how to save the Jews.

America and its allies are embroiled in a similar debate now, and World War II and its lessons are being invoked by those urging a fierce Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chief among these are Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has specifically cited the Holocaust in asking