I was deeply moved by a recent article in The Forward about a documentary that questions the use of the term Righteous Among the Nations. But the issue is not artistic freedom; it is our moral responsibility in how we tell the story of the Holocaust.
Holocaust memory is not a theoretical debate. Survivor testimony is not there to be discredited, questioned, or reframed. It is not an intellectual exercise in who gets to be right. The Holocaust happened. It is not speculative, not metaphorical, and not a canvas for provocation. It is a lived, documented atrocity that reshaped families, communities, and history itself. And its consequences remain with us.
Why the Righteous Matter
The designation Righteous Among the Nations, administered by Yad Vashem, is not symbolic or merely honorary. It is granted with rigor and restraint. To be recognized, a non-Jew must have actively helped Jews survive during the Holocaust, at significant personal risk, without expectation of reward. Survivor testimony, verified documentation, and historical proof are all required.
The designation Righteous Among the Nations, administered by Yad Vashem, is not symbolic or merely honorary. It is granted with rigor and restraint. To be recognized, a non-Jew must have actively helped Jews survive during the Holocaust, at significant personal risk, without expectation of reward. Survivor testimony, verified documentation, and historical proof are all required.
Honoring the Righteous is not about sentimentality. It is about historical truth. It is a direct answer to Holocaust denial, then and now. It affirms that while most of the world turned away, a few chose courage over comfort, and truth over silence.
The Righteous did not seek recognition. They did not reshape Jewish suffering to elevate themselves or insulate their own peace of mind. They acted; quietly, decisively, and at immense personal cost.
That distinction matters, and it must be taken seriously.
Who Owns Holocaust Memory?
Criticism of institutions, including Holocaust memorial organizations, is not inherently wrong. But when critique treats Jewish memory as pliable material, when provocation takes precedence over precision, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes distortion. When Jewish objections are dismissed as inconvenient rather than informed, something essential is erased: the authority of those who lived, or died, within this history.
There is a persistent and troubling pattern: Jewish history is too often treated as open for reinterpretation by outsiders, while Jewish communities are expected to absorb those reinterpretations in silence. That expectation is not neutral. It reduces Jews to stewards of inherited trauma, while others assume the role of narrator and judge of that history.
Holocaust memory demands more than performance. It demands rigor. It demands humility. And it demands that we listen to the communities whose dead are being discussed.
The Responsibility of Allies
This is also where our non-Jewish partners matter profoundly. The legacy of the Righteous is not just historical: it is moral. Their actions created a standard that extends into the present: solidarity without self-centering, allyship without erasure, courage without spectacle. Many non-Jewish allies today understand this deeply. They do not require Jewish pain to be recast to stand against antisemitism. They know where the moral line is, and they do not ask Jews to cross it for the sake of “conversation.”
When Holocaust stories are retold in ways that dismiss or unsettle the very communities they represent, it is not brave; it is careless. Offending Jewish memory should not be written off as provocation or misunderstood as progress. If a narrative causes pain to those who carry this history, the first response should not be to defend the work: it should be to ask why.
Jewish institutions are not obstacles to truth. They are stewards of it. And sometimes, stewardship requires refusal, not out of fear, but out of respect: to those who did not survive, and to the facts that define their legacy.
The most significant harm comes when survivor testimony is reduced to a storytelling device; when liberation becomes a vague anecdote, and rescuers vanish from view. In such retellings, horror becomes hazy. Whether a Holocaust story is fact or fiction, the writer bears responsibility not only for its emotional truth, but for its historical integrity.
If Holocaust education is to remain meaningful, it must stay rooted in fact and guided by moral seriousness. Jewish trauma is not a backdrop for cultural commentary, nor a canvas for controversy. And not every challenge to an established narrative is an act of courage. Sometimes, it is a refusal to listen.
The Holocaust does not belong to everyone equally. Its moral lessons may be universal, but its memory is grounded in facts, in names, in bodies, and in families still living with the aftershocks of loss.
That, too, deserves respect.