What he meant was that if the Shoah was thought of as merely a Jewish or even a Jewish-German story, it would no longer serve as a touchstone for current events. While I do not believe Weiss' fears are reflected in the exhibits at the museum, which do not shortchange the Jewish tragedy of the Shoah, I understand his concern. The museum's legacy and that of similar institutions will be carried forward by a new generation of scholars who are often caught up in the intellectual and political fads of the moment. In that case, the symbolism of the institution was hijacked for a political purpose. Elsewhere in the academic world, Holocaust scholarship has similarly been diverted into the trendy territory of gender studies and other historiographical indulgences, as was described in a widely read article in Commentary by its senior editor, Gabriel Schoenfeld.
Memory is a powerful force.
The memory of the Holocaust motivated, in large part, the rise of the Soviet Jewry movement in this country as well as pro-Israel activism. The world has changed. Where once writers like Wiesel who broke the silence about the Shoah were marginalized, it is now hard to avoid him. Not everything is or was a Holocaust. The constant use of Holocaust imagery to describe the crimes of the combatants in the Balkan wars over Bosnia and Kosovo is problematic.