Thank You, Sean Spicer, for “Holocaust Centers”

Like many Americans, I loathe Sean Spicer. He lies, obfuscates, and often berates reporters who ask fair but tough questions.

Unlike many Americans, I lost family in Hitler’s gas chambers.

This post is not intended to be persuasive. I’m simply processing what has happened from my perspective as a son of a Holocaust survivor.

First and foremost, Spicer’s apology is real. His ignorance is profound, right down to calling concentration camps “Holocaust centers.”

But even that term is revealing, which is why I thank Spicer.

Spicer has demonstrated the power and elegance of renaming things. If I say concentration camp, you immediately visualize barbed wire, gaunt prisoners, striped uniforms, and maybe armed guards.

A Holocaust Center is not denialism. It is renaming. And it is sanitizing.

Well, that’s what Spicer is paid to do—he is paid to convince Americans that our nation is filled with “carnage,” that many Chicagoans are likely to be murdered, that Devin Nunes rightly accused Susan Rice of committing a felony, that 3-5 million illegal voters inflated Hillary’s numbers, that 130 million Muslims in Somalia and other travel-banned nations are a danger to Americans— the list of distortions is too long to cite.

Returning to Holocaust Centers. Perhaps that’s a place where prisoners received refreshments on their “long journey.” Maybe these were places to hook up Jews and other undesirables with friendly tour guides.

But Sean Spicer did something new for me. I lost an 8 year-old aunt, Gabriella, and a 9 year-old uncle, Mickey (my namesake) to gassing in Auschwitz. Because of Sean Spicer’s unintended equation of Assad and Hitler—and because I have no evidence of exactly how Gabby and Mickey died— I’ll look at photos of Syrian children who died in gas attacks.

Syrian children or my aunt and uncle— and other children caught in wars— it doesn’t help to differentiate their nationalities or backgrounds, or how they were murdered.

Tomorrow, I have an opportunity to teach a class of Fifth Graders about my family’s Holocaust experience.

Thank you, Sean Spicer, for giving more purpose and urgency to this class, their parents, their teacher, and me.