Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

Margot Friedlnder is one of the worlds oldest survivors of the Holocaust and becomes the second oldest cover star of the magazine. In the issue, she shares that she was appalled by the growth of right-wing populism, as well as the rise of antisemitic attacks amid the Israel-Hamas war.

A 102-year-old Holocaust survivor has been revealed as the cover star for the July / August edition of Vogue Germany.

Kerstin Weng, head of editorial content at the magazine, said that the theme of the issue was love, featuring their favourite pieces, favourite people.

The front of the collectors issue includes the word love written by Friedlnder, as well as her signature.

Weng noted: The most positive person I know is on this issues cover: Margot Friedlnder. To many she is known as a Holocaust survivor. But she not only survived the Nazis, she also overcame betrayal and loss."

"She would have all reason to be bitter, but remains open-minded and refuses to take sides, Weng added. She stands up against forgetting and for humanity and togetherness.At 102, she seeks to engage with the younger generation and proves that dialogue is still possible.

Margot Friedlnder, ne Bendheim, was born in Berlin in 1921.

According to a bio on the website of Berlin's Jewish Museum, Friedlnder spent the early part of the war with her mother and younger brother Ralph after her parents separated. They tried to emigrate the US, unsuccessfully.

The family planned to flee the country but in 1943 her brother was arrested by the Gestapo. Her mother confronted the Gestapo, and was deported to Auschwitz with her son, where they were both murdered.

She left behind a message for her daughter, which Margot brought into hiding: Try to make your life.

The 21-year-old went underground, but was tracked down in 1944 and deported to Theresienstadt, in then-Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia.

She is the only member of her family to survive the camps.

Together with her husband Adolph Friedlnder, Margot eventually moved to the US in 1946. They lived in New York for more than six decades, and following her husbands death aged 88, Friedlnder moved back to Berlin and has been living there since 2010.

In her interview with Vogue Germany, Friedlnder said: I am grateful. Grateful that I made it. For being able to fulfil my mothers wish. That I have made my life.

Friedlnder has been campaigning as a Holocaust educator and she told Vogue Germany that she was appalled by the growth of right-wing populism, the rise of the far-right party AfD, as well as the rise of anti-Semitic attacks amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Do not look at what divides you, she said in the issue of the magazine. Look at what unites you. Be human, be reasonable.

You will carry my story onward. That this never comes to happen again.

Friedlnder is not Vogues oldest cover model.

Last year, Vogue Philippines chose a 106-year-old Indigenous tattoo artist called Apo Whang-Od to feature on the front of its April issue. She became the oldest person ever to appear on the front of Vogue.

Prior to Whang-Od's appearance in Vogue Philippines, the record for oldest Vogue cover model was held by actress Judi Dench, who appeared on the front of British Vogue in 2020, at the age of 85.

Additional sources Vogue Germany

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102-year-old Holocaust survivor becomes Vogue Germany cover star - Euronews

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

It was Julia von Heinzs mother who first gave her Too Many Men by Lily Brett, a book that left an indelible mark on the German director who has a personal connection to the Holocaust. Her grandfather, whose mother was Jewish, suffered greatly during the Holocaust. And like Lily Bretts father, who provided inspiration for the father in Too Many Men, and subsequently the father played by Stephen Fry in von Heinzs film adaptation called Treasure, he masked that suffering with jokes, with humor.

Treasure, the story of a father-daughter trip to Poland in the 1990s, starring Fry alongside Lena Dunham as journalist Ruth, a character much based on Brett herself, has been getting lukewarm reviews, but as someone who is third generation to the Holocaust, I was deeply moved by the different kind of Holocaust story that it tells, the way it shows both the trauma of survivors and their children, and the complex story of Polish Jewish identity and relations.

Its hard not to compare this movie to another Poland trip film coming out this year: Jesse Eisenbergs A Real Pain, a contemporary story about two cousins who travel to Poland to honor their survivor grandmother. That movie was made in collaboration with the Polish government, and with Polish funding, and even inspired Eisenberg, who directed and stars in the movie, to acquire Polish citizenship. By contrast, von Heinz couldnt get even one cent from the Polish government, which maintains that stories must show Poles purely as victims or as heroes.

Treasure paints a more complicated and, at times, a less palatable image. Edek himself is undeniably Polish he speaks either a Polish-tinged English or Polish in the movie but its also clear that he doesnt want to return to the land of his youth. He brings up the post-war Kielce massacre of 42 Jews who tried to return home as he quakes with fear and tries to get his daughter not to go back to the building he once called his home. He falls back on his humor and charm, which in turn surrounds him with an adoring and marvelous cast of Polish characters: a driver named Stefan (perhaps a more subtle version of Alex in Everything Is Illuminated) who brings them goodies from his wife, and two beautiful older women who seem to follow Ruth and Edek in all of their stops. Theres a sweet hotel worker named Tadeusz who helps Ruth on her journey as a guide, trying to get her familys belongings back from the Polish family now settled in Edeks old family home in Lodz. Its that family that made the movie ineligible for Polish funding. They only allow Ruth and Edek in after they are bribed; they lie about having any belongings of the former owners; and they then do their best to extort Ruth of everything they can when it is discovered, at first by Edek when he is served tea out of his own grandmothers china, that they still have possessions of her murdered relations.

Von Heinz did actually temper the portrayal of Polish people in the original text. Lily wrote her book with a lot of anger, she told Kveller in an interview over Zoom. And we couldnt bring all that anger to the screen, because we moved on since that. I think that art needs to build bridges and not destroy them. So we really tried to build complex human beings.

A lot of [the Polish characters] are just wonderful, she continued. But of course, the family, they did something wrong. They are difficult people but they are complex human beings. Who wouldnt take the chance to earn money, if you have that opportunity once in your lifetime and youre very poor? I think thats quite human. The movie also goes out of its way to show the profound poverty of post-Soviet Poland of the 90s.

The inability to get any financial support from Poland made making the film more complicated, von Heinz says. It needed to be a film made out of Poland, she firmly believed, and yet they only had a few short days of shooting in the country and shot the rest of the movie in Germany, which funded the film.

But we had the most beautiful Polish cast and crew members. So their perspective was very strong. They helped me with the script, helped me with everything, she added. The films premiere in Krakow was an incredible moment for the filmmaker with 350 young people in the Academy of Arts watching the film and a long Q&A that made von Heinz feel that their film was 100% embraced and accepted.

Yet despite being a German-made movie, the movie did remove the books most prominent German character the ghost of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Hss. It was a painful but needed choice, von Heinz says. We kept him for some drafts, but it just didnt work. It was only dialogue, which is so boring to watch. We decided to lose that element and to focus on the very core of the novel. Its the father-daughter love story.

As a German director, von Heinz said she knew that she cant come to Poland, point my finger and say you did wrong, when Germany did everything wrong. Thats why it was so important for me to really have the Polish perspective, and the Polish Jewish perspective. She added, On the other hand, you cant get this film financed [from any country but] Germany. Because we have memory culture, its in our law. We have the guilt complex. You know, people have to pay for these stories which is good.

Though von Heinz worries about how that tide is shifting.

In Germany, its really in the law that money from the government should go to culture about memory, and this is mainly connected to the Holocaust, von Heinz said. Now, there is a new government, and they say, lets not only focus on the Holocaust, lets also have the fall of the [Berlin] wall and the immigrant story, which is totally right. But also, it gives me a little bit of fear that the singularity of this specific historic event is questioned, von Heinz professed. And also, of course, there are now voices who say, do we still need memory culture? Or does it justify other cruelties? Shouldnt we get over it? And all of this scares me because: I have that grandfather I know from all the letters and papers that were left, how much suffering there was only in my family. I want to use my work to work against that use my art against that.

Von Heinz does indeed bring the pain of the Holocaust to the fore, with Edek in Poland fighting hard to protect his daughter amid his rising fear and trauma. In a scene in Auschwitz (partly shot in visual effects for technical constraints, but that as a viewer seems seamless), Edek relives his harrowing time in the death camp. Yet perhaps the most haunting moment is a heart-to-heart between the father and daughter in a hotel restaurant, in which Ruth talks about what it was like to live with her late mother who survived the camps with Edek her sternness, emotional unpredictability, the way she would wake up in the night screaming, the loneliness of a childhood in Auschwitzs shadow. You see how growing up in a house where the specter of the Holocaust is always present shaped Ruth, leaving her with the echoes of an unbearable pain, day in and day out. Its a portrayal of second generation trauma the likes of which I dont think Ive seen.

I did research, and I cant think of another movie about the second generation, von Heinz surmised, because its easily overseen. Because of course we know the first generation, the survivors, we have to honor them. Its their trauma, their pain. And we didnt know that transferring generational trauma even existed because thats such a new term. When I read Lily Bretts book and she didnt know about [generational trauma] in the mid-90s I felt such a deep connection to that complex female character, with all her thoughts and inner monologue. And I felt, I want to try to bring that to a movie, because it just didnt exist.

Its not only the Holocaust, von Heinz added. Its every trans-generational trauma. Its about [how] we can heal if we share, if parents and grandparents are able to share. Otherwise, it will continue and travel to the next generation, and the next, and the next.

Lior Zaltzman is the deputy managing editor of Kveller.

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'Treasure' Brings Second Generation Holocaust Trauma to the Screen Kveller - Kveller.com

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

Published in partnership with the World Jewish Congress, the UNESCO report explains that as learners increasingly use Generative AI to complete assignments and find information online, they risk exposure to distorted information about the Holocaust, which has found new ways to spread through AI-generated content.With four in five (80%) of young people between the ages of 10 and 24 now using AI several times a day for education, entertainment and other purposes, action to ethically guide these new technologies must be taken quickly.

Generative AI must be trained using vast amounts of data. This data is often mined from the Internet and may include misleading or harmful content. AI systems therefore inherit human biases, potentially misrepresenting information about specific events, reinforcing prejudices. This is particularly true in the context of Holocaust, because of the prevalence disinformation about this event. The report notes that due to lack of supervision, guidance and moderation by AI developers, generative AI tools may also be trained on data from Holocaust denial websites.

AI has also been documented to enable bad actors to distort Holocaust-related content, creating fabricated testimonies, and even altering historical records. Deepfake images and audio content created using Generative AI are particularly convincing for young people, who may encounter them on social media platforms. The Historical Figures App allowed users to chat with prominent Nazis such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, and falsely claimed that individuals such as Goebbels were not intentionally involved in the Holocaust and had tried to prevent violence against Jews.

Generative AI models are prone to inventing or hallucinating events, personalities and even historical phenomena when they do not have access to sufficient data. The report underscores that ChatGPT and Googles Bard, have both produced content detailing Holocaust-related events which never took place.ChatGPT entirely fabricated the concept of Holocaust by drowning campaigns in which the Nazis drowned Jews in rivers and lakes, and Bard generated fake quotes from witnesses to support distorted narratives of Holocaust massacres.

In addition to the risk of manipulations and hallucinations undermining established facts and trust in experts, the report also underscores the dangers of AIs tendency to oversimplify complex history, privileging a narrow range of sources and a small selection of events. On search engines, which are powered by AI, 60-80 % of the top image results are of a single Holocaust site, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

UNESCO calls on governments to accelerate the implementation of the OrganizationsRecommendation on the Ethics of AI, the first and only global standard in this area, unanimously adopted by its Member States in 2021. This Recommendation is already being integrated into the legislation of over fifty countries.

UNESCO urges tech companies too to implement its standards, and to shoulder their responsibilities and ensure that principles such as fairness, transparency, human rights and due diligence are built into applications at the design stage. In February 2024,eight tech companies were the first to sign a commitment to the Director General of UNESCO to apply an ethical approach to the development of new AI tools.

Tech companies must work closely with the Jewish community, Holocaust survivors and their descendants, educators, experts in antisemitism and historians when developing new AI tools.

UNESCO also appeals to education systems to help safeguard the facts of the Holocaust by equipping young people with digital literacy and critical thinking skills, as well as a sound understanding of the history of this genocide.

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

In their debut graphic memoir, Heavyweight (William Morrow, June), cartoonist Solomon J. Brager mines family history to draw lines between the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples by German colonial forces in South West Africa in the early 1900s and the Holocaust. A historian and educator, Brager spoke with PW about their hopes for using memory and narrative to create a more inclusive cultureone with ample humor and creativity.

You poke gentle fun at the standard Holocaust education that Jewish kids receive, as in the scene where your Hebrew school teacher thinks youre crying about the Holocaust, but its actually because you have a toenail in your eye. Did it ever feel like stepping on a live wire?

Part of it is poking fun at myself. I know I can come across as very seriousI have a PhD and study trauma and genocidebut I am also a doofus who draws cartoons. Im really beholden to and in love with the history of Jewish comedy. Mel Brooks always said, You cant make fun of the Holocaust, but you can make fun of Nazis. I feel like Im making fun of the container and the power structures.

Also, Im very critical of the way that Holocaust education is being implemented and being used in Jewish communities today and outside of Jewish communities today. Punching up to that is important.

Your partner, Charles, plays a grounding presence when your character is deeply immersed. How did you develop their role in the book?

Charles will joke about how I use them in the book. They say, I would never wear that shirt. I did not say that. But this project evolved during lockdown in 2020, and we were both working from home on book projects. Their book is about disco and gay culture and its really fun. Theres a scene where Im reading about death marches and deportations and they were like, Come hang out. And Im like, [sobbing noise].

You quote Aim Csaire saying, Before they were its victims, they were its accomplices. What are your theories on why German colonization of Africa is rarely connected to the Holocaust?

Particularly after the 1960s, the Holocaust takes on a big lights place in cultural memory in Germany, in Jewish memory, and in the United States. And it knocks out other memory projects. That included the way that, for example, anti-Blackness, anti-Roma sentiment, homophobia, all these other -isms continued to function unabated in German society after World War II.

The Holocaust doesnt come out of nowhere. Theres something that precedes and leads into it and structures it. Some of the key Nazi figures, their parents worked in the colonies. Eugen Fischer was doing all this eugenic research in Africa and then created Nazi sterilization programs.

This is a book about intersections of class, race, and religion. Does, or how does, your own experience with gender transition inform the way you see history?

Being queer or any alternative identity that takes you outside of the normative family structure or creates an early division between you and your community has the possibility of opening you up to other ways of thinking and questioning. I think thats why a lot of queer and trans people are in progressive organizing or are doing critical history or are in comics.

Its almost impossible to read this book and not think about whats happening in Gaza. What kinds of conversations have come up about the present-day world?

The reason I had time to write this book is because I was fired from my high school teaching job for tweeting that I didnt support ethnonationalist projects. Im trying to expand the idea of what Holocaust memory contains and what Jewish identity means in the present, because I see it being very limited. I hope Im providing a narrative structure or set of tools for people to tell their own stories and make connections, and to create another Jewish culture.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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The Holocaust Doesn't Come Out of Nowhere: PW Talks with Solomon J. Brager - Publishers Weekly

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

Amsterdams Stedelijk Museumsaid on Tuesday that it will return a Henri Matisse painting from the 1920s to the heirs of its former Jewish owner, who was forced to sell the artwork in the Netherlands during the Holocaust before being deported to a Nazi camp where he eventually died.

The painting Odalisque has been in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, which is owned by the Municipality of Amsterdam, since July 1941. The painting was sold to the museum by the late Albert Stern, a successful textile manufacturer and art collector in Germany who was born in 1861. He led one of Germanys leading ladies clothing manufacturers that had branches in New York, London, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam. The companys former headquarters in Berlin is now the building used by the German Federal Ministry of Justice.

Following research into the paintings provenance, the Dutch Restitutions Committee concluded that it is sufficiently plausible that the sale of the painting was connected to the measures taken by the occupying forces against Jewish members of the population and arose from a desire for self-preservation, the Stedelijk Museum said. The committee has advised that the museum return the painting to Sterns legal successors and the Amsterdam City Council, which owns the painting, will adhere to that advisement.

After Nazi leader Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in Jan. 1933, Stern and his family faced persecution for being Jewish and were stripped of their possessions and livelihood. The Nazis had expropriated [Sterns] business, its building, the familys home and its possessions together with most of their assets, and the family had gone into exile, where they continued to be subject to physical threat by the Nazis, said the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which represents the Stern heirs.

The Stern family emigrated to the Netherlands in 1937 but, following the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, they faced additional persecution and made several, unsuccessful attempts to escape. The once wealthy family was forced to sell their remaining possessions to try to survive.

The familys circumstances deteriorated to such an extent that it was forced to sell its belongings, the museum said. Since the Stern family needed the money to flee, the Restitutions Committee ruled that this was an involuntary loss of possession due to circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime.

Stern sold the Matisse in one of his last efforts to escape Europe with his family, including his children and grandchildren. However, he was unsuccessful in obtaining visas to other countries, including the United States, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic, according to the Commission for Looted Art in Europe. Sterns family were all arrested and deported to different Nazi concentration camps, where most of them died except his wife and two of his grandchildren. Stern died in the Laufen internment camp in January 1945.

The return of the Matisse is a moving and overwhelming moment for us all, Sterns heirs said in a statement. Our grandparents loved art and music and theater, it was the center of their lives. In the few years we had our grandmother after the war, she transmitted that love to us, and it has enriched our lives ever since.

The Matisse underwent the same journey from Berlin to Amsterdam as our grandparents. But it stopped there in the Stedelijk, with almost no acknowledgement from whence it came for 80 years, they added. The family has carried the scars of its unbearable and tragic history alone. Now finally, thanks to the Dutch Restitutions Committee, this is being acknowledged. The decision has provided symbolic justice to our grandfather.

Rein Wolfs, director of the Stedelijk Museum, said the museum welcomes the Dutch Restitutions Committees conclusion about Odalisque.

It is a step forward that, together with the heirs, represented by the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, we have been able to jointly submit this case to the Dutch Restitutions Committee, he added. This artwork represents a very sad history and is connected to the unspeakable suffering inflicted on this family. The ruling of the Restitutions Committee does justice to this history, and we naturally follow their binding advice.

Touria Meliani, the alderman of culture at the municipality of Amsterdam, called the suffering that Jews experienced during World War II unprecedented and irreversible.

Jewish citizens have had their property, rights, dignity, and in many cases their lives taken away, Meliani added. To the extent that anything can be repaired from the great injustice done to them, we as a society have a moral obligation to act accordingly. The return of works of art, such as the Odalisque painting, can mean a lot to the victims and is of great importance for the recognition of the injustice done to them. As a city we have a role and responsibility in this.

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

The holocaust stands as one of the most tragic and shameful events in human history. A new report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization warns that generative AI could be used to spread false claims and denialism about these atrocities.

UNESCOs report warns that 80% of young people use AI for education and entertainment, urging action be taken to prevent AI from spreading falsehoods about the tragic events of the Holocaust to younger generations.

If we allow the horrific facts of the Holocaust to be diluted, distorted or falsified through the irresponsible use of AI, we risk the explosive spread of antisemitism and the gradual diminution of our understanding about the causes and consequences of these atrocities, said Audrey Azoulay, UNESCOs director general.

The UNESCO report indicates that misinformation about the Holocaust, including denial claims, has been incorporated into AI models as a result of developers carelessly scraping websites for training data.

One example is a chatbot app called Historical Figures, launched in January 2023, which allows users to interact with prominent people throughout history. However, the app's list of conversational partners included prominent Nazis such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. When users interacted with these historical figures, the app generated responses indicating that they were not involved in the events and even tried to prevent violence against Jews.

Related:WEF: AI-fueled Misinformation is Chief Global Risk

Language models powering chatbot solutions commonly generate incorrect information through hallucinations.

The report details that ChatGPT once falsely stated that the Nazis sought to drown Jews in the Holocaust, while Googles Bard (now known as Gemini) generated false quotes from eyewitnesses.

UNESCOs report even claims that bad actors have also sought to distort some generative AI models views on the Holocaust.

The organization claims some individuals have sought to use generative AI to create deepfake images and audio that feature misinformation on the Holocaust, including forged testimonies.

Targeted campaigns by violent extremist online groups can exploit AI flaws to promote hate speech and antisemitic content about the Holocaust, the report reads. Chatbots and search engines have been hacked or manipulated by bad actors to spread Nazi ideology.

UNESCO urges AI developers to embrace its ethics standards, promoting transparency, fairness and human oversight of AI systems.

Though member states unanimously agreed to adopt its AI ethics standards, UNESCO called on global governments to accelerate the implementation.

Related:AI Poses Threat to Presidential Election Warns FBI, Department of Justice

Implementing UNESCOs Recommendation on the Ethics of AI is urgent so that younger generations grow up with facts, not fabrications, Azoulay said.

The report also encourages companies developing generative AI to work with Jewish communities and Holocaust survivors to ensure their systems dont spread Holocaust misinformation.

The role of those developing and deploying AI systems and tools must be central to considerations on how to govern the technology in the service of historical preservation and truth, the report reads.

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: In about 20 minutes from now, a state Senate committee will hold a hearing at the Capitol on what they call a pattern of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incidents at the University of Minnesota since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war as well as the administration's handling of these incidents. Included is accounts from Jewish students and community members about what they feel is an anti-Jewish atmosphere on campus. Also up for discussion, the university's decision to rescind an offer to Israeli historian Ros Segal to lead the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Joining us on the phone is DFL State Senator Ron Latz, the chair of the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety. Senator, welcome.

RON LATZ: Hi, Cathy. Nice to be with you.

CATHY WURZER: Thanks for taking the time. Well, as you know, the protests seen on campus are protected by the First Amendment and many would argue are part of a freedom of expression on campus. Why do you think the legislature needs to get involved in this situation?

RON LATZ: Well, I don't know that we need to get involved. But we do have a priority we place on the value of the University of Minnesota as our premier public institute of higher education in Minnesota. There are not only an economic engine for the state, but they are national and international leaders in research on a whole variety of topics. And we have a diverse and very interesting student and faculty body there.

So issues relating to campus speech, safety, comfort are all important to the people of Minnesota. The legislature represents the people, so we have an interest in what happens there. We also fund the legislature quite substantially. So we want to make sure our tax dollars are used well.

CATHY WURZER: Right. What will you be looking for specifically? What in among the testimony will you be looking for as it relates to, say, issues related to the state Human Rights Act, as I mentioned, First Amendment, freedom of speech protections, academic freedom? What do you believe the university has violated if anything at all?

RON LATZ: Well, we're going to learn more about that. I'd like to hear what President Ettinger has to say about these topics. Certainly, freedom of speech is important under our Constitution, but it's not unlimited under our Constitution. We have lots of ways in which conduct, as it's reflected often in speech, can be restricted constitutionally. And we can put time, place, and manner restrictions as well on speech itself, all within the framework of the Constitution.

So some of the speech has certainly crossed over into hate speech on campus by some of the protesting groups. And I would characterize some of the faculty statements have perhaps crossed that line as well. So I think that has a damaging effect on the feeling of safety of students as they're walking around campus on their freedom to attend classes or choose to sign up for classes in certain departments and on faculty ability to not only perform their jobs effectively, but to work with other faculty at the university. So central administration has an important role in setting the tone and in setting the limits of what's acceptable or not acceptable on campus conduct and behavior. And that's what we're going to learn more about today.

CATHY WURZER: As you know, there have been some Jewish students who have participated in the pro-Palestinian protests. How might you weigh that information in the hearing?

RON LATZ: Well, look, everyone has a right to choose how they're going to approach issues. And what I would say is that those Jewish students who have participated and indeed some in the broader Jewish community who have expressed views don't necessarily represent the broad cross-section of the Jewish community. In fact, many of those Jewish voices would be considered outliers within the mainstream Jewish community. They've been amplified, and they are certainly media attentive amplifications that are involved there.

But I think It'd be a mistake to say that they are representative of Jewish voices. They certainly represent themselves and perhaps the organizations that they are a part of. But they've got a right to say what they want to say. But it does affect the campus atmosphere. And that's important to identify as well.

CATHY WURZER: And who from the Jewish community will be-- who will be on the docket here in terms of testimony?

RON LATZ: The Jewish Community Relations Council will be testifying-- Steve Hunegs, the executive director there. We will have the executive director of the Hillel on campus, which is a Jewish student organization on campus. We will also have representatives from Jewish community action from the Jewish Voices for Peace. I think there'll be some other testifiers under other umbrellas that are also Jewish. So there'll be ample input from, I think, the cross-section of the Jewish community.

CATHY WURZER: And anyone from the pro-Palestinian side of things?

RON LATZ: You know, we have reached out to the Students for Justice in Palestine and the Students for Climate Justice. We sent invitations when we could find contact information. We didn't hear back from any of those organizations. So I don't anticipate we'll have any testifiers from them.

CATHY WURZER: You mentioned that interim U of M President Ettinger will be there. Let's talk a little bit about the U's decision to rescind that office-- that offer, excuse me-- job offer to the Israeli historian to lead the U's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Many think that that was overreach, that decision was an overreach. What do you think about the situation?

RON LATZ: You know, actually, I agree with the editorial in the Star Tribune this morning that the decision was not an overreach. Professor Segal, even though he's Jewish and Israeli, is a far left ideologue on these issues. Certainly from his academic standpoint, that's where he lands in the stream of academia.

And he's very controversial. Within six days of October 7, he had already concluded that Israel was engaging in genocide or was going to engage in genocide. And someone who takes that kind of a position has the academic freedom to do that. And I will note the university did not rescind his offer to join the history department as a faculty member.

But as a director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, that's a different kind of an institution. It's not only a creature of the university, but it also has a very important role to play in the Jewish community at large here in Minnesota and a lot of outreach, a lot of interaction with constituencies external to the University of Minnesota. And for the kind of mission that that center has or the kind of role it plays in the community, having someone who's an outlier within the viewpoints of the Jewish community, I think, would do a disservice to the role and its mission that it's supposed to play. So I think it was appropriate not to have a person with that controversial a position to be the director of that center, which has a long and very positive and productive history with the university and will going into the future.

CATHY WURZER: So you're going to hear from a number of different individuals. And I'm curious. As you know, Jeff Ettinger is done as interim president in less than a week. How might the university be held accountable perhaps for any follow up action that you think needs to be made?

RON LATZ: Well, this is an informational hearing. So our point is to pull together a variety of these voices in one forum, give an opportunity to hear them in juxtaposition to each other, and perhaps to dig a little bit more deeply into some of these questions of the Constitution and academic freedom, campus safety, and so on as they all interact with each other. President Ettinger I'm sure didn't anticipate that he had to deal with these (LAUGHING) kinds of issues when he agreed to be interim president.

And I think it's a good opportunity as he is preparing to conclude his service to the people of Minnesota and to the University of Minnesota to have a bit of an accounting, a bit of an explication of his observations, how things were handled, and also to thank him for the positive steps that he's taken to protect the university and also the somewhat controversial and what I would view as positive steps he's taken to address some of these issues on campus. Some of the steps he's taken, I have not been as comfortable with personally. And I know that the Jewish community has not been comfortable with it. And so we'll have an opportunity to have a conversation about that as well.

CATHY WURZER: Will the incoming president be at the committee hearing?

RON LATZ: I do not know.

CATHY WURZER: All right. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

RON LATZ: My pleasure. Thanks, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: We've been talking to DFL State Senator Ron Latz. He is the chair for the Committee for Judiciary and Public Safety.

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Hearing on anti-Israel, Jewish incidents at UMN following Holocaust and Genocide department debacle - MPR News

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

When Lily Nahmias was liberated from Ravensbrck concentration camp in 1945, she weighed only 44 pounds. Five years earlier, the Greek Jew from Thessaloniki was working in the Resistance movement in Belgium with her parents. (The family emigrated there in 1930.) But in 1944, she was caught by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz. For 13 months she survived the horrific conditions of the camp and as Allied forces closed in, a death march.

Upon liberation, 22 year-old Lily was able to reunite with her parents and her fianc, Leon Halfin, to begin the process of healing. But doctors told Lily she would never have children. Nine months later, Lily gave birth to a daughter named Diane Simone Michele Halfin. You probably know her better as fashion designer, style icon and inventor of the wrap dress Diane von Frstenberg.

Just the fact that I was born was a victory, von Frstenberg says in a new documentary about her life.She used to say, God saved me so that I can give you life. By giving you life, you gave me my life back. You are my torch of freedom.

A little while later she adds, My roots are Jewish. My mother paid for that, she paid for that. But I was her revenge.

This is the crux of Diane von Frstenberg: Woman in Charge.

The 97-minute documentary, which releases on Disney+ and Hulu tomorrow, explores how Diane von Frstenberg, also known as DVF, became the household name that she is today. It covers the rise of her fashion brand; her marriage to Swiss-German socialite and aristocrat Prince Egon von Frstenberg; her entrance into European high society; her life as a mother and her many love affairs.

My mother was very tough when I was a little girl. She wanted me to be independent, no matter what, DVF explains early on in the film. She wanted to equip me in case I ever needed to live what she lived.

Clearly, Lilys message of independence was received. In 1974, von Frstenberg invented her brightly colored wrap dress and became an overnight success in the fashion world. The wrap dress quickly became a favorite of the growing number of women in the workplace and DVF was cemented as an icon of liberated womanhood. The documentary shows how von Frstenberg has continued advocating for women to this day through the DVF Awards and her platform InCharge.

Not only that, but DVFs strong will also enabled her to handle the antisemitism she felt from her father-in-law and from the 60s and 70s jet set in Europe. I dont know why Egon is marrying this dark little Jewish girl, Egons father reportedly said to a friend of Dianes before the wedding. Later, when DVFs children Tatiana and Alexander were born, he called them little Jews in front of Lily.

I was named after my great-grandfather, who was an Austrian aristocrat. And my great-grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. So its always been talked about in my family that weve had this dynamic, Alexanders son Tassilo points out in the film. Weve had both the suffering and the oppressing.

Of course, Woman in Charge also covers the low points in DVFs life: her divorce from Egon and his subsequent AIDS-related death, the confluence of a period of stagnancy in her career and her mothers mental health breakdown in the 1980s and DVFs cancer diagnosis. But throughout it all, Diane von Frstenbergs Jewishness is the connecting thread. In essence, filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is (rightly) saying: DVFs Jewishness and her mothers experience in the Holocaust are what made her the independent, pioneering woman she is. It would be impossible to tell her story and not include them.

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the film is when von Frstenberg speaks about her mothers nervous breakdown. During a business trip in Germany in the 1980s, Lily was triggered into a panic by the sound of German men speaking loudly. DVF immediately flew to Geneva to be with her mother at a mental health facility and aid during her recovery. It was only during this time that DVF fully came to understand the horrors that her mother endured during the Holocaust. In between DVF and other talking heads speaking about the moment, we see shots of von Frstenberg visiting the Kazerne Dossin Holocaust museum in Belgium and reading a letter her mother wrote to her parents before being deported to Auschwitz.

When DVF arrived back in the United States, she was ready to do something she had never done before: publicly embrace her Jewish identity. Soon after, she was invited by the Anti-Defamation League to give a speech at the Pierre Hotel. She took the opportunity to speak about being the daughter of a survivor.

To hear myself saying that was so shocking to me, she recalled. I started to tremble. I couldnt believe that I said that. And I remember I walked back home. And I was in shock. I had realized who I was. And where I came from. And before that I had never done that.

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Diane von Frstenberg Was Her Holocaust Survivor Mother's Revenge - Alma

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal of a controversy between Hungary and Holocaust survivors over Hungarys confiscation of their property during World War II. This will be the second time the US Supreme Court is hearing this case.

Republic of Hungary v. Simon was initiated by fourteen Holocaust survivors in 2010. The plaintiffs sought compensation from Hungary, arguing that the countrys government stole their property before sending them to concentration camps. The case revolves around the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which generally provides foreign sovereign states immunity from being sued in the US, but an exception can apply when property confiscation violates international law.

In 2021, the case reached the US Supreme Court after Hungary appealed a lower appeals courts decision to grant the Holocaust survivors compensation on the basis that the FSIA exception did apply.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 2021 case Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp that the exception did not apply forced sales made to support genocide because the exception covers international law of expropriation instead of genocide. The court remanded Republic of Hungary v. Simon that year for further proceedings consistent with the decision [in Philipp].

Hungary petitioned the Supreme Court again in February 2024 because of conflicting precedents from appeals courts. Central to its appeal is are two requirements for the FISA exception to apply: a sufficient connection between a foreign state or its agencies and commercial activity in the US, or a commercial nexus with the US. Specifically, Hungary asked:

(1) Whether historical commingling of assets suffices to establish that proceeds of seized property have a commercial nexus with the [US] (2) Whether a plaintiff must make out a valid claim that an exception to the [FSIA] applies at the pleading stage, rather than merely raising a plausible inference [and] (3) Whether a sovereign defendant bears the burden of producing evidence to affirmatively disprove that the proceeds of property taken in violation of international law have a commercial nexus with the United States under the expropriation exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

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US Supreme Court grants rehearing of dispute over Hungary property confiscation of Holocaust survivors - JURIST

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Posted By admin on June 27, 2024

(June 25, 2024 / JNS)

A 102-year-old Holocaust survivor and Berlin native is the face of Vogue magazine in Germany.

Margot Friedlnder, one of the oldest and most prominent Holocaust survivors in the world, graces the cover of the July-August edition of the fashion and beauty magazine which has hit the newsstands in Europe.

Respect for life and the responsibility of being human are the core messages of #MargotFriedlnder, the magazine wrote on X promoting the story. She, who as a Holocaust survivor would have every reason to hate, stands up for love.

According to a biography on the website of Berlins Jewish Museum, Friedlnder, ne Bendheim, was born in the German capital in 1921, and apprenticed at a tailor shop after finishing school.

Her family tried unsuccessfully to emigrate to the United States before World War II broke out. While making plans to escape Germany, her brother was arrested by the Gestapo. Later, her mother and brother were deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Try to make your life,her mother wrote in a message she had left behind.

The 21-year-old went underground but was caught and deported to the Theresienstadt transit camp in German-occupied Sudetenland. She was the only member of her family to survive the camps.

After the war, she moved to New York in 1946 with her husband, Adolph Friedlnder, whom she met at the camp, only to return to Berlin six and half decades later in 2010 after his death.

The centenarian has given hundreds of talks about her life during the Holocaust under Nazi Germany.

Two years ago, she was honored with a lifetime achievement award by the German president as she hit the century mark.

We cannot change what happened, but it must never be allowed to happen again, she said at the award ceremony in Berlin.

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102-year-old Shoah survivor is the cover star of 'Vogue Germany' - JNS.org - JNS.org

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