Elisha Wiesel urged the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday to speak up against what he called the false accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, arguing that the institution his father helped create has a “unique responsibility” to address the issue.

Wiesel, the son of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, made the appeal while delivering special remarks at “Honoring the Life, Lessons and Legacy of Elie Wiesel.” The event, held on what would have been his father’s 98th birthday, marked a decade since the elder Wiesel’s death. It was organized with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, the Embassy of Romania and Moment magazine.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has not endorsed accusations of “genocide” regarding Israel’s military actions in Gaza, but neither has the organization issued formal institutional statements to address or quell the label. Instead, the museum has maintained its core organizational focus: educating the public about the Holocaust, condemning the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks and raising awareness about the subsequent rise in global antisemitism. 

This neutral stance has not shielded the museum from intense political crossfire. Pro-Israel advocates and some Jewish community leaders argue that Holocaust institutions have a moral obligation to explicitly reject the “genocide” accusation, calling it a form of Holocaust inversion and a weaponization of Jewish history against Jewish people. Some have pointed to the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which distributed internal guides clarifying that the Gaza conflict lacks genocidal intent, as a model the national museum should follow.

“But on one question, this museum has a unique responsibility, and it is one we must face together,” Wiesel said. “Since October 7, the word genocide has been used as a weapon against Israel on campuses, at the United Nations, and even by a member of your own governing council. The charge is false.”

Wiesel pointed to the museum’s past work documenting atrocities in Darfur and against the Yazidis and Rohingya, arguing that the institution has the expertise and authority to properly address genocide accusations against Israel in a credible format.

“You made your own findings for Darfur, the Yazidis, Rohingya,” he said. “You have the scholars, the credibility and the mandate to do the same here to explain with the rigor you applied to Burma why the genocide label does not fit Gaza and what the misuse of Holocaust language does to Jews around the world.”

“Declining to join the accusation is not the same as dismantling it. You can do that. You have that power,” Wiesel added. “All of these other Holocaust and genocide museums around the country, I think, would respond to that leadership…That was my father’s vision: a place that remembers and then acts.”

Wiesel also referenced several voices within the museum’s broader community who have spoken out on the issue.

“Stu Eisenstadt, a dear friend of my parents, who helped birth this museum, has written about how the terms “genocide,” “Holocaust,” and “Nazi” are being weaponized to attack the legitimacy of the Jewish state,” Wiesel said. “In July, Chairman [Jeff] Miller invited [New York City] Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani here to learn what genocide actually looks like. These are brave voices, and they speak from within your family. I am grateful to them both. What I am asking for you to consider is that the institution itself find its voice alongside theirs.”

Wiesel also placed his appeal in the context of what he sees as a broader misuse of Holocaust terminology against Israel and Jews, something he says is fomenting global antisemitism.

“The genocide charge turns the Jewish state into the new Nazis. It turns the Jewish people back into a threat to be removed from the family of nations. It inverts the Holocaust,” he said. “Those who start the accusation know exactly what they are doing. They know that the uninformed will spread hatred like wildfire.”

Wiesel acknowledged that the museum faces constraints as a federal institution that private citizens do not, and expressed a deep admiration for its work and efforts in honoring his father’s legacy. He said his appeal was rooted in his deep connection to the institution through his father.

The elder Wiesel was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 to chair the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, and later served as founding chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, helping drive the museum’s creation. The museum opened in Washington in 1993 after years of work by Wiesel and others.

“The [U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum] is an actual child of my father,” Wiesel said. “He had it in his mind before anybody else did. He convinced a president. He convinced a country. He fought through the bureaucracy, which is something he hated to do.”

Wiesel described the museum as a “little sibling” his father left him and said he remains “grateful to everyone who works here and to everyone who walks through these doors for carrying on this vision, for showing the truth every day.”

In an interview with Jewish Insider following the event, Wiesel said that special relationship made the appeal particularly difficult.

“It wasn’t easy to tell the [U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum] tonight that I think they’re missing an opportunity,” Wiesel told JI. “I had to really think hard on how do you do that diplomatically and with love, and with all of the good intentions, and make people feel it?”

“It’s not a criticism, it’s not an attack, it’s how can you have a Holocaust museum that bears my father’s etchings all over its place, all over its soul, and Israel is under attack?” he continued. “And one of the biggest lies affecting the Jewish people is that Israel is committing genocide. [The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum] has the expertise and the power and the standing to weigh in, and what a difference it would make!”

In making the case, Wiesel said he was inspired by what he learned from his father about speaking truthfully even when doing so could come at the expense of political access or personal relationships. 

The younger Wiesel pointed to footage of his father urging President Ronald Reagan, as a friend, not to visit the Bitburg cemetery in 1985. The visit, planned during Reagan’s trip to West Germany with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, drew criticism because members of the Waffen-SS were buried there. Wiesel recalled his father sweating as he made his case.

He also referenced his father turning to President Bill Clinton at the museum’s 1993 dedication to plead for an end to the bloodshed in Bosnia. In both instances, Wiesel presented remembrance not as a reason to stay silent, but as an obligation to speak

“My father stood always with truth and the concept that you have to fight lies,” Wiesel said. “We have to fight the lies wherever we are, and with whatever platform we have. We can’t wait for somebody else to do it. We can’t hope some other leader is going to do it for us. Whatever our circle is, whatever our platform is, we have to use it.”

Still, Wiesel made clear that his remarks came from his own convictions. 

“I felt the need that if I’m going to come here, I want to come and not say what my father would have said, but speak the words that I’m inspired by my father to say,” Wiesel said. “And tonight, that message was about what I think the museum can really do to make a difference in antisemitism: by being clear that Israel is not committing genocide.”

Several Trump appointees to the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are pushing for the ouster of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), alleging that he has rarely attended meetings and that his accusations of genocide against Israel run counter to the museum’s mission.

Sanders has served on the council for nearly two decades.

The board, formally known as the Holocaust Memorial Council, is mostly made up of presidential appointees who serve for five-year terms, joined by a handful of members from the House and Senate chosen by congressional leadership. Sanders was appointed in 2007. Lawmakers are technically subject to the same five-year term limits but in practice have often served until a successor is appointed or they leave office.

Jonathan Burkan, who was appointed to the council twice by President Donald Trump, said he’s never seen Sanders at any meetings of the council — which he said has not been the case for other lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans.

“Everything that’s happened after Oct. 7, everything that has been going on with antisemitism, with the Holocaust — I do feel that if someone is a Jewish elected official, they should at least attend one meeting in over a 20-year period of time,” Burkan said. “They should find someone else besides Bernie just to be on the council.”

Each of the council members who spoke to Jewish Insider spoke in their personal capacities, not as representatives of the council as a whole.

Burkan added that “Bernie Sanders accusing Israel of genocide downplays the Holocaust, which actually hurts the museum which he serves.”

Stuart Eizenstat, the chair of the council, has pushed back on accusations of genocide against Israel and has argued that extreme anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling violent antisemitism. The museum’s director has also condemned comparisons between the war in Gaza and the Holocaust.

Daniel Huff, who was appointed to the board during Trump’s first administration, said that it’s “important that the museum be a bipartisan effort,” emphasizing that other Democratic lawmakers on the council have been frequent and active participants in its meetings.

“That’s the type of representation that we want,” Huff said. “My observation, simply, is that Sanders has not shown up to any meeting, as far as I can tell.”

“The problem is that he’s publicly out there advocating positions that are really at odds with some of the fundamental things that the museum does, and one of them is making sure that the word ‘genocide’ is carefully safeguarded, and deployed only when necessary, so as not to diminish the memory of those who died in the Holocaust,” Huff said.

Huff argued that, in a time of rising antisemitism, the Holocaust Museum has an important role to play, and it’s “important that everybody who’s in a leadership position there is focused on the importance of the moment, the urgency of the moment.”

“We’re living in a dangerous moment and everyone ought to be paying attention,” Huff said. “We need people who understand the fierce urgency of the moment we’re in, and the need to act wisely and decisively.”

He said that there are many Democrats who would be strong candidates and members of the board, but that Sanders does not fit that bill.

“It’s not a political statement … the ask is just, find someone who’s aligned and involved — that’s it, very simple,” Huff said.

Rob Garson, the president of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, who was recently appointed to the board for the first time, said that he was surprised to find out that Sanders was a member.

“It’s not as if they have that many [meetings] in any given year, and it’s not as if it’s in an inconvenient place for him to come to. He clearly just either doesn’t care or doesn’t want to care,” Garson said.

He added that Sanders’ public rhetoric is “diametrically opposed to the message of the Holocaust Memorial Council.”

“It should be people that actually are aligned with what the Holocaust Museum stands for, and Sanders just isn’t that,” Garson said. 

Tila Falic, another recent Trump appointee, said that people selected for the board “represent Holocaust education, and it represents combating antisemitism for Jews and for non-Jews in the United States … people that are appointed should take their job seriously by, first of all, showing up.”

If Sanders is unable to attend or is not aligned with the Museum’s mission, “then he should be removed and give that seat to somebody who wants to take an active role and make a difference.”

Sanders did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did Eizenstat, the chair of the council. The museum also did not provide comment on the effort to remove Sanders or confirm how many meetings the senator has attended during his tenure.

Trump stirred controversy early this year when he removed a slew of Biden appointees from the board, replacing them with several of his own picks.