Israel, or rather some corporate pageant/scam operation in Israel, has just crowned “Miss Holocaust Survivor”. Here’s a story about it. Ok, this isn’t exactly a holocaust, and I debated with myself for nearly a second about putting this in MPSIMS, but I decided since I was in fact going to express an opinion about it rather than putting it up for everyone to bat around (which will happen in any case) to put it here.
First, I agree with an Israeli blogger, who is quoted saying, “This is one step short of ‘Survivor-Holocaust’ or ‘Big Brother Auschwitz.’ It leaves a bad taste…”
Second, I hope to Og there was no swimsuit competition.
It seems like a really odd idea to me, in the article you linked to, I noted a complete lack of any actual Holocaust survivors who have a problem with the pageant. On the other hand, there were about three hundred of them who liked the idea well enough to want to participate. Seems inappropriate to me to dictate to these people how they should react to unimaginable atrocity they lived through.
““I have the privilege to show the world that Hitler wanted to exterminate us and we are alive. We are also enjoying life. Thank God it’s that way,” said Esther Libber, a 74-year-old runner-up who fled her home in Poland as a child, hid in a forest and was rescued by a Polish woman. She said she lost her entire immediate family.”
OK, if this was an American pageant, with a bikini competition and sexual objectification, then I would be horrified. But it’s not, it’s a “Beauty” pageant, looking for the loveliest among a group of elderly women.
Reminding 300 women who have survived unbelievable horrors that there is beauty in the world, and it is them? I’m cool with that.
It might seems a little odd here. But it happened in Israel where there a lot of older women who survived the Holocaust and are proud of it. No harm done IMHO.
Hey, I’m not saying it shouldn’t be allowed, or even that it’s “wrong”, just that it’s tacky.
Also, the article says there are 200,000 survivors in Israel – the fact that there are 100-200 survivors involved doesn’t tell me much about how most survivors feel about it.
She’s not complaining that the pageant was tacky in light of the Holocaust, she’s saying it was tacky in light of the insufficient support the elderly (particularly Holocaust survivors) receive from the government. She’s saying the pageant organizers were brushing real *monetary *issues under the rug.
I wouldn’t dispute that she makes this claim elsewhere (I have no idea, but I believe you’re not just making stuff up), but I can’t see how you can draw that inference from the quote in the article.
I’d be happy for those who survived. I’m a part of a small branch of what was once a much larger family. My grandmother and her two sisters who came to the US before Hitler came to power were the only ones who remained alive after WWII.
