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MAKING ENEMIES

Holocaust Memorial Chair Calls Elon Musk’s Recent Statements a ‘Clear Danger’

The world’s richest man said it was time for Germany to “move on” from its guilt over the Holocaust.

Former settler leader Dani Dayan talks during the Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth's anti-BDS conference in Jerusalem on March 28, 2016. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed down from his attempts to appoint the former settler leader as ambassador to Brazil, which has since August refused to accept the nomination. Netanyahu "decided to appoint Dani Dayan as consul general in New York. He will replace foreign ministry career official Ido Aharoni, who is completing his term," the prime minister's office said in a statement. (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP) (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

By Julia Ornedo

Elon Musk may be ready to move on from the Holocaust, but not everyone is on board.

Dani Dayan, chairman of the Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem, hit back at the divisive billionaire’s call for Germany to stop feeling guilty about its past.

“Contrary to Elon Musk’s advice, the remembrance and acknowledgement of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society,” Dayan wrote on X, which is owned by the billionaire.

“Failing to do so is an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany,” he added.

Speaking remotely at the rally of the right-wing German political party Alternative für Deutschland over the weekend, Musk told the cheering crowd that “it’s OK to be proud to be German.”

“I think there’s frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that,” Musk added. “Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents or their great-grandparents, even.”

It was the latest episode in an ongoing saga—one that included a provocative salute at President Donald Trump’s inauguration that many critics likened to the Nazi “Sieg Heil” and a string of Nazi jokes posted on X.

Musk supporters have used photos of his January 2024 visit to Auschwitz to shut down antisemitism allegations against him, which the tech mogul has dismissed as “pure propaganda.”

However, a Holocaust survivor who was at the highly publicized visit to the death camp said she got to chat with Musk and found that he was “utterly detached” and “unmoved by the experience.”

The antisemitism watchdog Anti-Defamation League also called out Musk for joking about the Holocaust, in a shift from its initial defense of the tech billionaire’s eyebrow-raising salute.

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Julia Ornedo
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