A local resident, Ravi Sarma, voices his concerns about recent anti-vaccine actions taking place throughout the state. One can’t help but see the most obvious mirroring of the empty shoe sculptures that provide visual remembrances for the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust. We feel it necessary to further amplify this message since these works, the poems and the sculptures, convey an overwhelming message of universal grief. They are sacred and profound reminders that the horrors of the Holocaust should never happen again. Equating or drawing parallels to genocide and a public health issue is both tone deaf and appalling. We need to be better.~The Monmouth Voice
“Below is a letter from a local parent to the public school administration regarding a recent plan by some Middletown residents to place shoes on the Middletown Township High School ( MHSN ) lawn as a form of protest against potential vaccine mandates for children. (A similar action is being held at Holmdel High School and throughout the state) This plan, misappropriating and misusing a tragic memory from the Holocaust, is both illogical as well as alarmingly grotesque. It is deeply flawed and just plain wrong.
It is illogical because it is an inversion of effect: the proponents are, essentially, protesting the saving of lives. That much should be clear from the facts. Vaccination, especially against a mutating virus, is effective in saving lives insofar as it is widely adopted. It does not merely protect the person who takes the shot, but by reducing spread, it protects other members of society as well. All Covid vaccines currently approved for children have been shown to be highly effective and highly safe. In contrast, there has been a steady and worrying increase in incidents of Covid in children that lead to hospitalisation and in some tragic cases, death. To refuse vaccination is, in effect, an act of jeopardising one’s life and the lives of others. It is the cause, not the effect, of the death of innocents.
No empty shoes (generally speaking) will befall us if we are all vaccinated (by mandate or by common sense and compassion), whereas the opposite is true if the reluctance to vaccination continues. Simply put: the missing shoes represent lives lost. Vaccination saves lives. Opposition to vaccines (whether mandatory or not) costs lives.
The planned action is grotesque because it flippantly and fallaciously borrows a horrific image representing a great tragedy to advance a position that is the diametric opposite of sympathy towards victims of that or any tragedy. It is also grotesque in its equation of those acting in the public interest with the perpetrators or perpetration of genocide, when in fact, it is opposition to vaccination that is today the leading cause of hospitalisation and death due to Covid.
The organisers and participants should reflect on the implications of their analogy and their misuse, and cancel this truly ill-conceived and abhorrent action.”
Ravi Sarma, Middletown resident.
Below: Images circulating on Facebook.
The Letter sent to school administration:
Good morning and I hope you are well. I write this letter from home quarantined and quite sick with Covid. I do not participate in social media banter on Covid but I felt this should be brought to your attention. There is a plan to protest a potential mandate for children by acquiring shoes and placing them on the lawn of Middletown High School North.
My Covid probably came from a recent family trip to DC over break. On our agenda was the Holocaust museum as I felt it imperative our twins see first hand the atrocities our ancestors faced. My grandparents were first generation immigrants fleeing the pogroms in Russia. My papa had to save the wax of the sabbath candles to make new candles to study by (he was ultimately a chemist).
My father said he regretted never taking me BUT felt the museum was for the next generation to bear witness as it is too much for his soul. One of the most heartbreaking exhibits was the shoes … all that was left of 6 million Jews…
This is what absolutely infuriates me! My father is a linguist and he taught me to use my words CORRECTLY and mindfully. This is America and to dissent is as normal as apple pie. To disagree and to call these potential measures draconian is their right. However to attempt to draw a parallel between genocide and public health measures is inaccurate and dangerous!
As a Jewish woman, Jewish mother, and Jewish member of this township I take personal offence to this anti-Semitic protest! This kind of rhetoric undermines Holocaust remembrance! My children should absolutely NOT have to live in a town where we permit anti Semitic stunts that water down our people’s history! I expect to hear from the BOE and the administration that there is a zero tolerance policy for this on school grounds!
Thank you for your time and I appreciate your support in this matter.
For Reference:
The Empty Shoes Exhibit at The Holocaust Museum
First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
