Shliach Calls on Elon Musk to Use His Power for Good

By Rabbi Levi Shemtov for the Jerusalem Post

News reports were full of comments made this week by Elon Musk to the convention of the extremist AFD Conference, indicating that German children today should not feel guilt for the actions of their parents or grandparents or even great grandparents.

This comes only days after he was accused of making a Nazi salute at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC during the celebration of the Presidential Inaugural. Having seen photos of many officials from across the public spectrum who have made similar gestures, it is my personal belief he did not intend to Sieg Heil. He meant to share his heart. A Nazi salute is done differently.

Seems the Prime Minster of Israel also expressed this opinion and reminded the world of Mr. Musk’s support otherwise. And while many Jews boycotted the Prime Minister’s speech to Congress earlier this year, Mr. Musk did not. He sat there prominently in the VIP gallery and then met the Prime Minister privately afterward, things Heil Siegers don’t usually do…even if some comments by him might be better left unsaid.

This is the same Elon Musk who visited Auschwitz last year, with his offspring no less, and saw for himself what happened there. My own paternal great grandparents didn’t even “get” to go to Auschwitz, but were shot dead by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators, as the town’s synagogue was set blaze packed with Jews, their lives reduced to two mere entries on a list submitted by these evil monsters to the Nazis for compensation for their murderous deed. A small tablet in the town center is all that remains.

My maternal grandfather went off to fight the Nazis with the Allied Forces and never returned, reportedly having met his end in the great battle of Kerch. So, though I am a Jew of Russian descent, the losses of the Holocaust remain personally immediate to me.

A historic conference on Antisemitism in Berlin 2004
A historic conference on Antisemitism was held in Berlin in 2004 which garnered international headlines for days, and was intended so German society could finally face and come to terms with the atrocities of the Holocaust and their relationship and responsibility thereto. Many global leaders, including US Secretary of State Colin Powell who headed the US delegation. It was surreal to witness the President of Germany standing in the Welt Zahl – where the plans for the Holocaust were formed and developed – in the presence of many international Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors as he asked for forgiveness by the Jewish people on behalf of the German people, past present and future.

Later that evening, a dinner was held for the President of Israel hosted by the President of Germany, with leaders of both countries in attendance. The hotel was ringed by hundreds of armed German police with barking German shepherds, yelling security orders in German.

As I approached the entrance, with my dear colleague, Rabbi Yehuda Tiechtal, rabbi of the Berlin community and himself of German Jewish descent, and at whose urging I attended with the American delegation, I shared how difficult it was for me to bear all this and hear it.

“This time is different”, he replied, “they are here doing this for our protection.” Indeed, dozens of my colleagues in Germany today relate how current German government support for Jewish life there is strong, and security cooperation is as close to perfect as possible. Yes, this time their forces are there for our protection.

At the above dinner, I was seated next to the President’s spokesman, a man then in his thirties. At one point in our wonderful conversation, I asked him what all this meant to him. “Look”, he said, “the generation of the President (Johannes Rau) – they did it. The generation of the Foreign Minister (Joschka Fischer) bore the brunt of guilt for what happened, before their time and which they themselves did not cause. My generation hardly have any idea of what the previous two generations are even talking about and are are tiring of just paying the price.”

How long before remembering and important lessons become an inconvenience?

This lesson hit me hard. How long, I thought, before remembrance and more important the lessons of the Holocaust become just an inconvenience and wither?

To compound this problem, I was invited a few years later to speak to a Jewish event in Europe. Discussing the topic of my speech, the hosting rabbi said, “speak of whatever you wish, just don’t go on about the Holocaust. People here are tired of it already.” I still can’t get over that. We were only a few minutes away from the same train tracks Nazis used to transport Jews to the concentration and death camps only a generation before.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who himself so narrowly escaped the Nazis, once answered a question from a journalist about whether a Holocaust could ever happen again. “Tomorrow morning” was his reply. He cautioned that Holocaust remembrance on its own would not suffice. There must be strong reaffirmation of Jewish identity and knowledge and, for the larger world, as well a deeper understanding of how such a developed society like Germany could have descended into such unprecedented barbarism.

President Joe Biden, in a meeting with a group of Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis a few years back, expressed his frustration at how Jewish leaders have not always supported Jewish interests enough, and warned how a Holocaust could happen again if we weren’t careful and vigilant. As he left the room, he whispered to my father, a friend of his for nearly 50 years, “I’m tellin’ ya rabbi, it could happen again. I know it.”

So, with my limited influence, I would urge Mr. Musk – who currently has unparalleled influence and might just be the most powerful civilian on the planet today – to exercise more caution. He literally has the technical power and opportunity to transform the world for good in a way previously unseen in our times.

But since so many millions, perhaps billions, see and hear whatever he says, he might want to think about how the force of his words brings outsized reaction. Telling a party like AFD that is of such concern that they shouldn’t teach their children properly regarding the Holocaust is a real problem. They officially voice support for Israel, but have a number of leaders at present who are literally antisemitic. And in their platform there are veiled prohibitions against basic Jewish rituals – the seemingly innocuous start to attempted annihilation of Jews throughout history.

He might instead suggest that while today’s Germans did not commit the atrocities of the Holocaust, to be sure, they must (re)commit to never allow it to be forgotten, so that they will be significantly responsible more than any other nation for at least ensuring that it doesn’t happen again, even if nearly all Germany today did not actually participate in the atrocities of the Holocaust itself . Sinister operations often begin small and with seemingly small things. Hitler himself started with only about a dozen men. We must remember – and never forget – this point.

A German diplomat in Washington who became a dear friend and was once over to see me, fraught with guilt and sadness upon finding out his grandfather was indeed a Nazi. “Unfortunately, you cannot undo what your grandfather did”, I offered, “You were born many years after the Holocaust. But you can do everything about what your own grandchildren will know about what their grandfather did.” A while later, he shared with friends that he was able to sleep better after that advice, and did many things since to help support the Jewish community, here in the US, Germany and elsewhere.

Today’s Jewish leaders must work harder to ensure that Jewish children, too many of whom have scant knowledge or awareness of the Holocaust altogether, are not simply filled with anger but with increased Jewish knowledge and the positivity of a strong Jewish identity.

And German children must be able to see themselves as the above diplomatic friend. Remembering what can happen if we’re not cognizant of the past and how it came to be will ensure it doesn’t happen again. Not with mere guilt about things they didn’t do as much as responsibility for the present and the future which is up to them now. That clarity is paramount.

This is what Mr. Musk can quite easily help nurture in a way no one else can, and I hope he does.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov is the Executive Vice President of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) in Washington, DC. His book, From the Mountain to the Hill – Capital Sparks, is due out later this year. The views expressed here are his own.