[wvns] Fired for mentioning Deir Yassin

Yad Vashem fires employee who dared to show the irony of Deir Yassin being in sight of Yad Vashem
Daniel McGowan - mcgowan@hws.edu
Deir Yassin Remembered

Yad Vashem, the most famous Holocaust Museum in the world, has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in the Naqba.

Itamar Shapira, 29, of Jerusalem, was fired from his job at Yad Vashem, where he had worked for the past three and a half years as a tour guide. Shapira confirmed that he had spoken to visitors about the 1948 massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin, which lies in clear sight 1,400 meters to the north of the Children's Museum at Yad Vashem.

While Yad Vashem visitors are taught to "Never Forget" the trauma suffered by Jews under the Nazis, they are encouraged to "Never Mind" the trauma suffered by Palestinians under Zionists building a Jewish state on lands where Palestinians had lived for centuries.

Shapira stated, "I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation."

Yad Vashem's position is that the Holocaust and Jewish suffering cannot be compared to any other event. While there are hundreds of memorials for Jews, there is not even a sign post at Deir Yassin, the emblem of Palestinian dispossession and ethnic cleansing.

Deir Yassin Remembered was founded in 1995 at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. DYR works toward building a truth and reconciliation center at Deir Yassin. We ask that you open your hearts and wallets and make a donation to Deir Yassin Remembered, a charitable and educational not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Deir Yassin Remembered
c/o Daniel McGowan or PayPal DYR1948@deiryassin.org
300 Pulteney Street
Geneva, New York 14456

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Yad Vashem fires employee who compared Holocaust to Nakba
By Yoav Stern

Yad Vashem has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in Israel's War of Independence.

Itamar Shapira, 29, of Jerusalem, was fired before Passover from his job as a docent at the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, after a teacher with a group of yeshiva students from Efrat made a complaint. Shapira had worked at Yad Vashem for three and a half years.

This is the first time that Yad Vashem has fired a guide over political differences, an institution official said Wednesday.

Shapira confirmed, in a telephone conversation with Haaretz, that he had spoken to visitors about the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin.

He said he did so because the ruins of the Arab village, today a part of Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood, can be seen as one leaves Yad Vashem.

"Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors' arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world's Jews. I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation," Shapira said.

"The Holocaust moved us to establish a Jewish state and the Palestinian nation's trauma is moving it to seek self-determination, identity, land and dignity, just as Zionism sought these things," he said.

A Yad Vashem official said the institution objects to any political use of the Holocaust, especially by a docent working for it.

The institution's position is that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other event and that every visitor can draw his own political conclusions.

Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg said that after holding a hearing for Shapira, at which he refused to accept his superiors' instructions and change his teaching methods, it was decided to terminate his job as a guide in the institute's school for Holocaust studies.

"Yad Vashem would have acted unprofessionally had Itamar Shapira continued his educational work for the institute," Rosenberg said.

Yad Vashem employs workers and volunteers from the entire political and social spectrum, who know how to separate their personal position from their work, she said.

Shapira said Yad Vashem chooses to examine only some of the events that took place in the War of Indpendence. "It is being hypocritical. I only tried to expose the visitors to the facts, not to political conclusions. If Yad Vashem chooses to ignore the facts, for example the massacre at Dir Yassin, or the Nakba ["The Catastrophe," the Palestinians' term for what happened to them after 1948], it means that it's afraid of something and that its historic approach is flawed," Shapira said.

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