Sometimes such lacunae are a function of conscious neglect, other times it is totally unintentional. Incomplete storytelling in regard to Jewish Heritage sites is not unique and it occurs frequently. Second, it is abundantly clear that the narrative in Harbin is incomplete, conveniently ignoring the precipitating factors for its demise.

Spain, for example, which was one the first countries to jump on the Jewish heritage tourism bandwagon has been accused of both – and at the same time! If you invest in marketing these kinds of sites, you can be accused of overcompensating for past indiscretions, and if you don’t invest, you can still be charged with heritage neglect. Cynical accusations impugning the motives of developers of Jewish Heritage sites in Europe are not new. Here, the optics can be very fuzzy and deceiving. So if it is not true about North America then surely there must be some truth to these assertions in Europe, home to two of the most cataclysmic events in the history of Judaism, the Inquisition and the Holocaust. In America, the numerous Jewish heritage sites preserved in the National Historic Trust (like the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island) attract many tourists interested in the Sephardic and Ashkenazic roots of American history. Jewish heritage tourism is one big con game! Right? Wrong!įirst, not all heritage sites in North America, Europe and China are a function of appropriation or expropriation. The biblical phrase “ Not only did you murder but you inherited as well‘ resonates strongly here.” Case closed. In short, they killed us, robbed us and now want to profit from their misdeeds (using tourism). Horn’s main objection to this seemingly genuine endeavor is its true underlying “deception.” The Harbin narrative glosses over the fact that at a certain point Jews either left, got driven out, or were killed. The memorialization involved restoring synagogues, creating exhibits, and recreating downtown Harbin as it existed in 1920. In 1920 Jews established the city as a key transit point of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In 1984, The Chinese invested 30 million dollars towards a project seeking to memorialize the pioneering Jews of Harbin. Her accusations and innuendos are not novel and only serve to perpetuate harmful myths surrounding this burgeoning field.Ĭhina’s extraordinary and, yes, flawed investment in Harbin What I would like to do here is just deal with her claims about Jewish heritage tourism, a field in which I have been working for the past several years. I will leave it to professionals in the fields of comparative literature, Jewish heritage, museums and the Holocaust to deal with the validity of her respective assertions. Even imaginary dead jews like Shylock the Merchant of Venice cannot escape her widely cast nets. Dara Horn’s main thesis leaves a lot to be desired in regard to the ‘twisted’ adulation of dead jews.

Dara horn dead jews