Animal rights and the Holocaust
Encyclopedia
Several writers, including Jewish Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer
, and animal rights
groups have drawn a comparison between the treatment of animals and the Holocaust. The comparison is regarded as controversial, and has been criticized by organizations that campaign against antisemitism, including the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL) and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
.
Singer described the treatment of animals by humans as "an eternal Treblinka
." J.M. Coetzee
, also a Nobel laureate in literature, compared the Nazis' treatment of Jews to methods used by the meat industry to herd and slaughter cattle. The comparison began immediately after the end of World War II
, when Jewish writers recounted the lack of resistance by European Jewish victims of the Holocaust, who were led to their death as "sheep to slaughter." The ADL argues, however, that the subsequent use of Holocaust imagery by animal rights activists is a "disturbing development."
Roberta Kalechofsky
of Jews for Animal Rights, in her essay Animal Suffering and the Holocaust: The Problem with Comparisons, argues that, although there is "connective tissue" between animal suffering and the Holocaust, they "fall into different historical frameworks, and comparison between them aborts the ... force of anti-Semitism." She has also written that she "agree[s] with I.B. Singer's statement, that 'every day is Treblinka for the animals'," but concludes that "some agonies are too total to be compared with other agonies."
in 1978, made the comparison in several of his stories, including Enemies, A Love Story, The Penitent, and The Letter Writer. In the latter the protagonist says, "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka."
In The Penitent the protagonist says "when it comes to animals, every man is a Nazi."
J.M. Coetzee, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 2003, invoked the image of the slaughterhouse
in describing the Nazi's treatment of Jews: "... in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter — or what they preferred to call the processing — of human beings."
The ADL lists a number of animal rights groups that have made the comparison. The magazine No Compromise introduced the Animal Liberation Front
with the words: "If we are trespassing, so were the soldiers who broke down the gates of Hitler's death camps; If we are thieves, so were the members of the Underground Railroad who freed the slaves of the South; And if we are vandals, so were those who destroyed Forever the gas chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz."
In 2001, Meat.org included an "Animal Holocaust" section containing photographs of animals with captions such as "Holocaust Victim," arguing that it's "easy to see the resemblance of the systematic destruction and slaughter of over six million Jews by the Nazis before and during World War II and the over 20 million animals that are executed every day in America alone. Many of the Jews of the Holocaust were transported to concentration camps in cattle cars to their death. The concentration camps very much resemble the common slaughterhouses of today."
The Consistency in Compassion Campaign (CCC), a project of the Northwest Animal Rights Network of Seattle, Washington, argues that "the Holocaust stands for much more than the one event. It represents a place and time when supremacist thinking was so embedded in a culture that they were blind or apathetic to the evil that existed in their everyday world. This kind of thinking is not exclusive to just that time and place. The great blind spot of our country and Western Civilization for that matter is the mistreatment and disregard for non-human animals in nearly every capacity."
, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA), has herself made the comparison unambiguously, saying: "Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses."
PETA has twice used Holocaust imagery in its campaigns. In July 2003, a PETA television public service announcement called "They came for us at night," aired on U.S. cable networks, narrated by a man describing what it felt like to be transported without food or water.
In the same year, PETA's "Holocaust on your Plate" exhibition consisted of eight 60 square feet (5.6 m²) panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory-farmed animals
. Photographs of concentration camp inmates were displayed next to photographs of battery chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. Captions alleged that "like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps
."
The exhibition was funded by an anonymous Jewish philanthropist
, and created by Matt Prescott, who lost several relatives in the Holocaust. Prescott said: "The very same mindset that made the Holocaust possible – that we can do anything we want to those we decide are 'different or inferior' – is what allows us to commit atrocities against animals every single day. ... The fact is, all animals feel pain, fear and loneliness. We're asking people to recognize that what Jews and others went through in the Holocaust is what animals go through every day in factory farms."
Abraham Foxman
, chairman of the ADL, said the exhibition was "outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah
to new heights ... The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent." Stuart Bender, legal counsel for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote to PETA asking them to "cease and desist this reprehensible misuse of Holocaust materials." There were also differing opinions within the animal rights movement. Roberta Kalechofsky wrote: "While I sympathize with PETA's aim—and am a member of PETA—I objected to this use of the Holocaust... The agony of animals arises from different causes from those of the Holocaust. Human beings do not hate animals. They do not eat them because they hate them. They do not experiment on them because they hate them, they do not hunt them because they hate them. These were the motives for the Holocaust. Human beings have no ideological or theological conflict with animals."
In 2005, Newkirk apologized for the pain the campaign had caused some people, while defending the goals of the campaign, writing:
The Guardian subsequently reported, however, that "the appeal has done little to calm the fury of Jewish groups." The campaign was also banned in Germany for making the Holocaust seem "insignificant and banal", to which Peter Singer
, the noted animal rights
advocate and writer, and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, replied by noting that "... if Peta is not allowed to state its case against our abuse of animals in the way that they judge best ... then criticism of religion could also be prohibited on the same grounds."
In July 2010, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that PETA's campaign was not protected by free speech laws, and banned it within Germany as an offense against human dignity.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
, and animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
groups have drawn a comparison between the treatment of animals and the Holocaust. The comparison is regarded as controversial, and has been criticized by organizations that campaign against antisemitism, including the Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
(ADL) and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
.
Singer described the treatment of animals by humans as "an eternal Treblinka
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
." J.M. Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee ; is an author and academic from South Africa. He is now an Australian citizen and lives in Adelaide, South Australia...
, also a Nobel laureate in literature, compared the Nazis' treatment of Jews to methods used by the meat industry to herd and slaughter cattle. The comparison began immediately after the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when Jewish writers recounted the lack of resistance by European Jewish victims of the Holocaust, who were led to their death as "sheep to slaughter." The ADL argues, however, that the subsequent use of Holocaust imagery by animal rights activists is a "disturbing development."
Roberta Kalechofsky
Roberta Kalechofsky
Roberta Kalechofsky is an American writer, feminist and animal rights activist, focusing on the issue of animal rights within Judaism and the promotion of vegetarianism within the Jewish community...
of Jews for Animal Rights, in her essay Animal Suffering and the Holocaust: The Problem with Comparisons, argues that, although there is "connective tissue" between animal suffering and the Holocaust, they "fall into different historical frameworks, and comparison between them aborts the ... force of anti-Semitism." She has also written that she "agree[s] with I.B. Singer's statement, that 'every day is Treblinka for the animals'," but concludes that "some agonies are too total to be compared with other agonies."
Comparisons
Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who received the Nobel Prize in LiteratureNobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 1978, made the comparison in several of his stories, including Enemies, A Love Story, The Penitent, and The Letter Writer. In the latter the protagonist says, "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka."
In The Penitent the protagonist says "when it comes to animals, every man is a Nazi."
J.M. Coetzee, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 2003, invoked the image of the slaughterhouse
Slaughterhouse
A slaughterhouse or abattoir is a facility where animals are killed for consumption as food products.Approximately 45-50% of the animal can be turned into edible products...
in describing the Nazi's treatment of Jews: "... in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter — or what they preferred to call the processing — of human beings."
The ADL lists a number of animal rights groups that have made the comparison. The magazine No Compromise introduced the Animal Liberation Front
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...
with the words: "If we are trespassing, so were the soldiers who broke down the gates of Hitler's death camps; If we are thieves, so were the members of the Underground Railroad who freed the slaves of the South; And if we are vandals, so were those who destroyed Forever the gas chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz."
In 2001, Meat.org included an "Animal Holocaust" section containing photographs of animals with captions such as "Holocaust Victim," arguing that it's "easy to see the resemblance of the systematic destruction and slaughter of over six million Jews by the Nazis before and during World War II and the over 20 million animals that are executed every day in America alone. Many of the Jews of the Holocaust were transported to concentration camps in cattle cars to their death. The concentration camps very much resemble the common slaughterhouses of today."
The Consistency in Compassion Campaign (CCC), a project of the Northwest Animal Rights Network of Seattle, Washington, argues that "the Holocaust stands for much more than the one event. It represents a place and time when supremacist thinking was so embedded in a culture that they were blind or apathetic to the evil that existed in their everyday world. This kind of thinking is not exclusive to just that time and place. The great blind spot of our country and Western Civilization for that matter is the mistreatment and disregard for non-human animals in nearly every capacity."
PETA and the use of Holocaust imagery
Ingrid NewkirkIngrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk is a British-born animal rights activist and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , the world's largest animal rights organization...
, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights...
(PETA), has herself made the comparison unambiguously, saying: "Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses."
PETA has twice used Holocaust imagery in its campaigns. In July 2003, a PETA television public service announcement called "They came for us at night," aired on U.S. cable networks, narrated by a man describing what it felt like to be transported without food or water.
In the same year, PETA's "Holocaust on your Plate" exhibition consisted of eight 60 square feet (5.6 m²) panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory-farmed animals
Factory farming
Factory farming is a term referring to the process of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a factory — a practice typical in industrial farming by agribusinesses. The main products of this industry are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption...
. Photographs of concentration camp inmates were displayed next to photographs of battery chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. Captions alleged that "like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps
Extermination camps in the Holocaust
Extermination camps were camps built by Nazi Germany during the Second World War to systematically kill millions by gassing and extreme work under starvation conditions. While there were victims from many groups, Jews were the main targets. This genocide of the Jewish people was the Third...
."
The exhibition was funded by an anonymous Jewish philanthropist
Philanthropy
Philanthropy etymologically means "the love of humanity"—love in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, or enhancing; humanity in the sense of "what it is to be human," or "human potential." In modern practical terms, it is "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of...
, and created by Matt Prescott, who lost several relatives in the Holocaust. Prescott said: "The very same mindset that made the Holocaust possible – that we can do anything we want to those we decide are 'different or inferior' – is what allows us to commit atrocities against animals every single day. ... The fact is, all animals feel pain, fear and loneliness. We're asking people to recognize that what Jews and others went through in the Holocaust is what animals go through every day in factory farms."
Abraham Foxman
Abraham Foxman
Abraham H. Foxman is the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.-Early life:Foxman, an only son, was born in Baranovichi, just months after the USSR took the town from Poland in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and incorporated it into the BSSR. The town is now in Belarus...
, chairman of the ADL, said the exhibition was "outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah
Chutzpah
Chutzpah is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad, but it is generally used negatively. The Yiddish word derives from the Hebrew word , meaning "insolence", "audacity". The modern English usage of the word has taken on a broader meaning, having been popularized through vernacular use in...
to new heights ... The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent." Stuart Bender, legal counsel for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote to PETA asking them to "cease and desist this reprehensible misuse of Holocaust materials." There were also differing opinions within the animal rights movement. Roberta Kalechofsky wrote: "While I sympathize with PETA's aim—and am a member of PETA—I objected to this use of the Holocaust... The agony of animals arises from different causes from those of the Holocaust. Human beings do not hate animals. They do not eat them because they hate them. They do not experiment on them because they hate them, they do not hunt them because they hate them. These were the motives for the Holocaust. Human beings have no ideological or theological conflict with animals."
In 2005, Newkirk apologized for the pain the campaign had caused some people, while defending the goals of the campaign, writing:
The Guardian subsequently reported, however, that "the appeal has done little to calm the fury of Jewish groups." The campaign was also banned in Germany for making the Holocaust seem "insignificant and banal", to which Peter Singer
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
, the noted animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
advocate and writer, and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, replied by noting that "... if Peta is not allowed to state its case against our abuse of animals in the way that they judge best ... then criticism of religion could also be prohibited on the same grounds."
In July 2010, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that PETA's campaign was not protected by free speech laws, and banned it within Germany as an offense against human dignity.