Jacki Alexander: De-Jewifying the Holocaust: Why Naming Jews Matters

"De-Jewifying" the Holocaust is the concerning trend our host Rabbi Jeff Salkin talks about in this episode of TO BE CONTINUED... with Jacki Alexander, CEO and President of HonestReporting. We are witnessing the media, politicians, religious institutions, and others talk about "6 million who died" while erasing the Jews.  This episode explores this trend of Holocaust distortion including minimalization, inversion and denial, and examines how it threatens both accurate historical memory and contemporary Jewish safety. Is this a form of antisemitism? Listen to find out.  🎧Listen now on your podcast streaming service of choice, and watch on YouTube. Here is a related article by Rabbi Jeff Salkin: The Many Forms of Holocaust Distortion: https://religionnews.com/2026/02/03/the-many-forms-of-holocaust-distortion-and-why-jd-vances-remarks-matter/   TRANSCRIPT:  Usually on this podcast, we sit with the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. We listen carefully as they reflect on memory, legacy, intergenerational trauma, resilience, and what it means to carry stories and experiences that were never meant to survive, but did. This is Sheryl Hoffman, podcast founder and co-director, and this episode of TO BE CONTINUED… Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors is a little different. Not a departure from our mission, but in many ways a descent into its deepest urgency, because in recent years, the Holocaust is increasingly being remembered without Jews. Please listen and share on social media and with your family and friends.   This is "To Be Continued." We discuss the implications of trauma and resilience for second and third generation Holocaust survivors.    And where we are in the calendar right now is very important. We are now following up on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and we're talking about what it means to remember the Holocaust, to remember the Shoah, and what that memory entails, and how sometimes bad actors abuse and distort that memory. I'm Rabbi Jeff Salkin, I'm your host. And we're talking today to Jacki Alexander. She is the CEO and president of HonestReporting. I've been a big fan of HonestReporting for quite some time. So Jacki, this is really a treat for me. And so thank you for joining us today.   Thank you so much for having me to talk about this incredible, important topic, and one that's really personal to my heart, giving my background.   Well, I want to talk about why that is in fact the case, but I want to go right to something you wrote. I want to talk about something that I wrote. I want to talk about your background as well. You know, what you did this past week was, you used a term and I love it. In fact, I've been quoting you over the last several days to friends of mine. The “De-Jewifying” of the Holocaust. In simple terms, what that really means is that when people discuss Holocaust today, and specifically in the media, within religious institutions, political realm, what happens is that there has been a diminishing of what is central to our understanding of the Holocaust and that is its Jewish component. You cannot understand this without its Jewish component, without the Jewish component, we wouldn't be having a conversation. So let me ask you a simple question, a pointed question. Is this a new phenomenon or is history simply repeating itself?   History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes, right? That was Mark Twain, however many years ago. And I think for our entire history, we have always been targets of, the Jewish people have always been targets of bad people and then we have always been identified with then the bad people, right? So how does that rhyme today? Israel and the IDF are the new Nazis. Jews were the victims and now we are the oppressors. Yossi Klein Halevi had a great speech about this a couple of years ago, going through history and saying, when the communists were the bad guys, the Jews were the communists. When the capitalists are the bad guys, the Jews are the capitalists, right? Today, Jews are the oppressors, Jews are the colonialists, Jews are, you know, white people has become a four letter term now, Jews are the white people. So I think that this is just erasing Jews from something that can bring sympathy or an understanding is just the next step in a long history.   So your article