'Fake News,' '#MAGA' Sign Targets San Antonio Holocaust Museum

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — A yard sign emblazoned with a favored Donald Trump term, "Fake News" and the hashtag #MAGA was staked onto the grounds of the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio with an arrow pointing to the facility's marquee, was discovered by groundskeepers early Tuesday.

The clear inference of the offending sign, museum officials said, is a denial of the Holocaust doubling as an anti-Semitic sentiment. “It’s clearly a statement of Holocaust denial,” Ronit Sherwin, CEO of the Jewish Federation of San Antonio, which operates the museum, told the San Antonio Express-News. She said the sign had been obscured by morning fog before being spotted, upsetting a community still reeling from anti-Semitic vitriol following an October mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that claimed 11 lives.

The incident was reported as a threat at around 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday, officials said.

In a prepared statement, the federation's board chair, Harry Levy, labeled the sign as manifesting ignorance that is "...doubly harmful in that it laughs at the memory of all the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust, and is harmful to the precious few Holocaust survivors who witnessed the horrors of the Shoah first hand."

It is with light, not reciprocal darkness, with which such sentiments will be countered, he added: "The ignorance expressed by the perpetrators can only be countered by shining the light of truth upon our shared history,” Levy said.

Located at 12500 NW Military Hwy., the museum showcases the personal testimonials of Holocaust survivors living in San Antonio, luring busloads of students intent on hearing their stories. The campus is a community focal point in the northwest side of San Antonio, containing the Jewish Community Center and Jewish Family Services facility.

In a statement of solidarity, the Muslim Children Education and Civic Center condemned the action "...in the strongest terms,” categorizing it as an “...insulting, demeaning, and dehumanizing incident.”

Trump’s catch slogans, including “MAGA” for “Make America Great Again,” have been popularized as rallying cries by his supporters at rallies and on social media. But Aaron Delwiche, a professor of communication at Trinity University, said appropriating the slogans for Holocaust denial should disturb even the most ardent Trump supporters, he told the Express-News.

“The term ‘fake news’ originally referred to completely fabricated news stories appearing in phony publications that don’t actually exist,” he wrote the newspaper in an email. “During the past two years, President Trump has used this phrase as a name-calling device designed to discredit news coverage that he considers to be unfairly critical of his administration.”

The incident follows similar threats from 2015, when anti-Semitic graffiti targeted the Jewish community in San Antonio with spray-painted swastikas and slurs that vandalized homes, cars and other items in a Jewish neighborhood surrounding a synagogue on the city’s Northwest Side, the newspaper reported.

Sen. José Menéndez, the District 26 representative, condemned the act as cowardly.

"The people of San Antonio will not be cowed by hate or indifferent to bigotry," Menéndez wrote in an email sent to Patch. "We will stand together and condemn evil. We will prosecute those who vandalize, menace, harass or discriminate against any of our communities."

He referred to the museum as a venerated facility, urging others to show their support for its mission: "The Holocaust museum exists so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. I urge everyone to visit the museum, show your support and send the message to anyone who would target the Jewish community or any community of our city that they will not succeed."

>>> Read the full story at San Antonio Express-News

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