In an interview with \’The Independent\’, she questions the precedent of putting Holocaust education before all other national tragedies.
Film star Natalie Portman addressed the Holocaust and the protracted and deep impact it has on the international Jewish community in an interview she gave to the British daily, The Independent.
Portman, born to Israeli parents in Jerusalem, moved to the US at the age of three. She continued a Jewish curriculum in the US, learning about the foundation of her birth country as well as the Holocaust.
In her interview, Portman explained that it was this very education that caused her to realize how ensconced the Jewish community is in the lessons of the Holocaust and to ultimately take issue with the emphasis the community placed on the genocide of their own people, in contrast to other similar tragedies happening around the world.
Portman explained in the interview that because learning the history of the Holocaust took precedence in her classes, no attention was paid to similar atrocities involving other groups of people, resulting in an unfortunate lack of education about these crises.
"I think a really big question the Jewish community needs to ask itself, is how much at the forefront we put Holocaust education. Which is, of course, an important question to remember and to respect, but not over other things," she said during her interview.
Portman said that she first realized her ignorance regarding other conflicts when she visited a museum about the Rwandan Genocide, a genocide that took place decades after the Holocaust, while she was a student. She was shocked that never once had they learned about it in school.
Portman elaborated that she thinks that education should focus on understanding hatred, that it exists everywhere and against anyone, not only toward the Jews.