(RNS) — In his statement about International Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, Vice President JD Vance omitted any mention of Jews. He said on X: 

Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we’re also capable of unspeakable brutality. And we promise never again to go down the darkest path.

His statement is just one example of how many less-than-friendly actors have distorted the meaning of the Holocaust. Here’s my taxonomy of ways its memory has been distorted:

• Holocaust minimization: “The Holocaust happened, but the Jews have exaggerated the numbers.”
• Holocaust trivialization: “The Holocaust happened, and Jews have used it to play the victim card.”
• Holocaust inversion: “The Holocaust happened, but the genocide [sic] in Gaza is worse.”
• Holocaust universalization, part 1: “The Holocaust happened, but it was not just about the Jews.” (This is where the Vance statement falls.)
• Holocaust universalization, part 2: “The Holocaust happened, but other groups have had huge losses as well.”
• Holocaust denial: “The Holocaust did not happen.”
• And the paradoxical: “The Holocaust did not happen, but I wish that it would happen again.” 

Drilling down on the universalization/Vance version, he is still far from alone in making this type of remark. In fact, I have encountered many Jews who rush to universalize the Holocaust. It is as if our own extended family’s pain — the murder of 6 million Jews — was not bad enough for us to endure, as if we are afraid to name our own particular pain. Some have even accused me and other Jews of playing the game of comparative victimization. 

Is there any justification for the universalization of the Holocaust?

In one sense, yes. When it came to the concentration camps, Jews shared those wretched, subhuman quarters with Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men, labor leaders, people with disabilities, political dissidents, Slavs, Poles and others. 

But that limits the Holocaust only to the concentration camps. For the Jews, the horror began with the Holocaust by bullets, or mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen. That’s because the Nazi obsession was to hunt down every Jew — man, woman and child — everywhere. Nowhere in Europe did Jews find safety simply by staying put. No other group faced that total, relentless, continent-wide pursuit. It was about destroying the entire Jewish people and the Jewish religion. How else does one account for the savage glee with which Nazis desecrated Torah scrolls and other sacred objects?

Knowing that, how should we think about those other groups who suffered?

In Dante’s “Inferno,” he described many circles of hell. In Hitler’s inferno, the Jews were in the innermost circle. But there were outer circles, and you cannot tell the story of World War II without including them.

When you walk into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the first things that you will see is an exhibit on the killings of people with physical and mental disabilities. The Nazis labeled them “life unworthy of life.” The Nazis perfected the grim science of execution by carbon monoxide on them. An estimated 250,000 people with disabilities were killed, according to the museum. 

Why did those killings stop? Because the churches protested. There were no such protests for the Jews.

The Nazis crushed Poland’s leadership class; they murdered teachers, clergy, lawyers and intellectuals to break the nation’s spine. They jailed and killed labor organizers and political opponents and imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses — killing about 1,500 — who refused to swear loyalty.

The Nazi regime persecuted gay men as enemies of the racial state. Many wound up in concentration camps, with pink triangles on their uniforms. Thousands died from abuse, exhaustion, disease and execution.

The Nazis deported Roma, or Europeans whose ancestry can be traced to modern-day India and Pakistan, performed medical experiments on their children and murdered entire settlements. Roma survivors use the word Porajmos, or “the devouring,” to name their catastrophe. Across Europe today, Roma communities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment and health care. Politicians still win votes by stoking fear of Roma neighbors. Hate crimes still occur.

We can say this clearly and honestly: Many groups suffered under Nazism. But only one group was condemned to total, global eradication — the Jews.

To quote my friend Peter Himmelman in his Substack:

Hitler (may his name be erased) himself was explicit about what the war was for. In his speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, he declared that if war came, its result would be “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” This was not metaphor. It was demonic prophecy, a warped but deeply held theology, the articulation of a destiny he believed necessary to redeem the world.

And while Jews were the main and central victims of the destruction, and as others were also victims, the Holocaust is a dark story with universal lessons and implications.

Consider the Exodus from Egypt — the central event of Jewish historical memory, which contains specific ethical lessons for the Jewish people. As philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in “Exodus and Revolution,” the Exodus story has featured prominently for many liberation leaders, movements and revolutions — for example, Oliver Cromwell, Leninism, liberation theology, the German peasants’ revolt, John Calvin, John Knox, both Boer and Black nationalists in South Africa and, of course, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Each of them drew inspiration from a Jewish story. 

So, too, does the Holocaust have larger lessons, and it is up to Jews to name them. Those lessons include that human life has dignity, meaningfulness and worth; that all nations must safeguard the human rights of their citizens; that when people use science and technology unethically, it can lead to great evil; that highly educated professionals are capable of great evil; that anything that can be denied will be denied; and that societies require early warning systems when democratic ideals are in peril. 

People wonder aloud: Is America in 2026 just like Germany in 1936?

No. Why? 

In Berlin, as part of the Rosenstrasse Women’s Memorial for the Holocaust, a sculpture shows a man sitting on a park bench, blithely looking away, representing “the indifference of those who, passively, have expressed their indignation or approval.” In 2026, Americans are choosing not to be the Germans of 1936. We are not looking away.