Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

More than 100 Jewish community leaders and pro-Israel organization heads from across Europe gathered Monday in Amsterdam for an emergency meeting organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA).

The purpose of the meeting was to develop actionable strategies to combat the rising tide of antisemitic harassment and hate speech that has surged since the deadly Hamas terror attack on October 7.

EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin opened the meeting with a stark message. "We are in a fight for the continuation of Jewish life in Europe," he said. "Jews wearing traditional clothing or displaying mezuzahs on their doors are facing relentless harassment. Jewish students are receiving threats on their lives and being excluded from university courses, while hate graffiti defaces Jewish homes, synagogues and cemeteries without any deterrent."

"Over the next two days, we will formulate plans to combat antisemitism on all fronts: political, legal, public and by enhancing community and personal security," Rabbi Margolin added. "However, this may not be enough. Therefore, Israel urgently needs to develop a practical contingency plan to welcome European Jews. Unfortunately, this is no longer a hypothetical situation but a real existential threat that European governments are either failing to address or are unwilling to tackle with the necessary determination."

2 View gallery

European Jewish Association emergency meeting in Amsterdam

(Photo: Yair Nevot)

The Dutch government's National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism Eddo Verdoner also attended the meeting. "October 7 was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust," he said. "But we must examine the resurgence of antisemitism with a perspective that goes back more than a decade. Our office's primary goal is clear: we need to find the right solution to combat antisemitism."

Verdoner emphasized the need for policy changes to address modern problems, saying, "We must ensure that younger generations learn not only from the lessons of the Holocaust but also from the current anti-Semitism. Antisemitism is spreading faster than everon our childrens phones and social media. What starts online no longer stays online. Jews are an integral part of European history. Centuries of Jewish life cannot be erased, and we must do everything in our power to protect the dignity of our Jewish brothers and sisters."

See the original post here:

Leading rabbi warns mass exodus of Jews from Europe to Israel may be imminent - Ynetnews

Category: Rabbi | Comments Off on Leading rabbi warns mass exodus of Jews from Europe to Israel may be imminent – Ynetnews
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

Community leaders and laymen alike reached across social media platforms to express their profound grief and immense sense of loss over the passing of Reb Moshe Kotlarsky.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky was the kind of friend to my father that was more akin to brothers. I grew up going to his home in Crown Heights and attending the Rebbes fabrengen on Purim. He lived and breathed Torah and chassidus and was a devoted talmid to the Rebbe. He devoted his pic.twitter.com/zUr8WrVBTm

" .

.

. pic.twitter.com/UWNE87qmVj

Rabbi Kotlarsky was renowned for his commitment to furthering the Lubavitcher Rebbe's mission of spreading light throughout the world.

Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet. https://t.co/ziKDGDQGDG

A remarkable letter for @Isaac_Herzog, President of Israel, to the family of Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, recognizing his incredible contributions to the Jewish people.

As thousands and thousands gather on New York for his Levaya, the effects of his passing are felt across the world. pic.twitter.com/A5fm4elQhe

". . ".

" . pic.twitter.com/kmE8FAx4uL

We are saddened to learn of the passing of Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky z"l, Vice Chairman of @Chabad's educational arm. Rabbi Kotlarsky's legacy will live on in the hearts and minds of the many individuals he impacted for the better. May his memory be a blessing. https://t.co/NNJJddJAzj

Rabbi Kotlarsky 74 has passed away. A giant in chabad.A giant in klal yisroel. A giant in Chesed. Anyone who was privileged to meet Rabbi Kotlarsky went away remembering what it means to be a proud Jew. pic.twitter.com/dyjauN6bwS

The Jewish world lost a giant today and a pillar of our community. Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, sadly passed away today. May his memory be a blessing. He was a Mensch to us all. https://t.co/dndzTlVS7q

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky was one of the most influential religious and spiritual leaders of the world, seeing the expansion of Chabad to thousands of cities worldwide, directly affecting hundreds of thousands, and indirectly millions. His son is my rabbi who bar/bat mitzvah my kids https://t.co/TBH5NrkxPA

Today we bid farewell to a great friend and mentor, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky. Rabbi Kotlarsky was not only a guiding light for hundreds of Jewish communities worldwide but also a beacon of inspiration and leadership, and a source of invaluable support and guidance to me personally pic.twitter.com/WxsZVnh5Im

Remembering Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, instrumental on expanding @Chabad centers around the world. Jewish families across thousands of cities in over 100 countries are eternally grateful for his dedication. pic.twitter.com/E5GyZvPoR1

Today the world lost a giant. Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, ZL, sadly passed away.

Rabbi Kotlarsky played a pivotal role in expanding Chabad's work for the Jewish people, tirelessly traveling all over the world. He touched the lives of all who had the privilege of knowing him and pic.twitter.com/O109neyjHc

Everyone dreams about changing the world, but few actually do.

Rabbi Kotlarsky was one of the few that actually changed the world.

Rabbi Kotlarsky oversaw the 6,000 Chabad emissaries operating 3,500 embassies in over 100 countries, and 500 college campuses.

BDE. https://t.co/f47gzV20MY

View original post here:

Global Outpouring of Condolences for Reb Moshe Flood Social Media - Anash.org - Good News

Category: Rabbi | Comments Off on Global Outpouring of Condolences for Reb Moshe Flood Social Media – Anash.org – Good News
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

This year, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah, fell on May 6. It commemorates the Nazis attempt to exterminate the European Jews during World War II.

The 2024 observance occurred amid a deplorable upsurge of antisemitism, in the United States but elsewhere as well. Antisemitism is not, of course, a recent phenomenon. It goes back at least to the Middle Ages and was influenced by, among other things, popular superstition, economic resentment and Christian antipathy toward the Jews.

The intervening centuries witnessed anti-Jewish outbursts by such celebrated figures as Martin Luther, who led the Protestant Reformation, French writer Voltaire and Ford Motor Co. founder Henry Ford. There were periodic pogroms including during the First Crusade of the 11th century, the bubonic plague of the 14th century, and at various times in Russian history into the 20th century in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were massacred.

One element of contemporary antisemitism is Holocaust denial. Since the 1970s, groups and individuals expressing this baseless idea have conducted an ongoing campaign that claims that the Holocaust never happened. Their modus operandi is to challenge the factual basis of the Holocaust and question the veracity of its survivors.

Some who question it have endorsed presenting opposing views of the Holocaust as if there were more than one valid interpretation regarding its authenticity. There is not.

Deniers sometimes try to get the unwary to debate the legitimacy of the Holocaust. That would be the equivalent of having a debate with a member of the Flat Earth Society.

Paradoxically, the deniers methods reinforce both the reality of the Holocaust and the utterly spurious notions of denial itself. Hundreds of published personal testimonies by survivors of manifestly traumatic experiences provide evidence that only close-minded persons or those with a specific antisemitic agenda could question.

Among the earliest first-person accounts of this collective anguish, and perhaps the best known, was the late Elie Wiesels searing memoir Night. This short but intensely powerful book recounts the deportation of Romanian Jews (including Wiesel and his family) first to Auschwitz and then eventually to Buchenwald, together with the appalling conditions of the death camps.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed, Wiesel wrote. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Subsequently, other narratives have appeared, many written years later by survivors who were simply unable to come to grips with their ordeal in the immediate aftermath of World War II. While these accounts broadly share a common theme, each is unique in referencing the different locales and the wide variety of personal stories. This lends further credence to the diverse nature and savage inhumanity of the Holocaust.

Equally compelling are the many surviving documents in which the Nazis themselves discussed both their plans and their murderous policies. These were among the massive numbers of records captured by the Allies as the war concluded incriminating evidence that the Nazis didnt have time to destroy.

An especially significant example is a collection of documents called the Einsatzgruppen reports. The Einsatzgruppen were mobile killing squads composed of Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) and police who proceeded through the western Soviet Union including Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and the Baltic states in 1941-42 in search of Jews to slaughter.

At each stop, they kept a precise, detailed record of the men, women and children they shot in cold blood. At Babi Yar, outside of Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine), more than 33,000 were murdered in the course of two days.

These reports were then sent back to the appropriate government officials in Berlin, where they were filed away. By the end of 1942, no fewer than 1.5 million killings of mainly Jewish civilians had been recorded.

Less well-known participants communicated regularly with their comrades regarding the extermination of Jews at pure death camps in occupied Poland such as Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka pure because, unlike Auschwitz, which was also a slave labor camp, their sole purpose was to kill people. Most of the documents are chillingly matter-of-fact: The perpetrators simply had a job to do, however unpleasant.

Both survivors accounts and Nazi documents are among the vast number of artifacts on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. This collection also includes victims personal belongings, audio and visual recordings and an enormous quantity of photographs. Many of these photos were taken by the Nazis themselves. They were, after all, proud of what they were doing.

The Holocaust is, in sum, a matter of historical record. It happened. Those who suggest otherwise are playing into the hands of antisemites and deniers. Thats not just fundamentally wrong. Its also a moral travesty.

Gene Miller, a Lancaster County resident, taught history at Penn State Hazleton from 1969 to 2004.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.

Error! There was an error processing your request.

Read more:

Holocaust denial is a moral travesty and rejection of fact [column] - LNP | LancasterOnline

Category: Holocaust Denial | Comments Off on Holocaust denial is a moral travesty and rejection of fact [column] – LNP | LancasterOnline
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

DUNWOODY, Ga. Victory over Germany was in sight for the Allies on April 29, 1945, as the 42nd Infantry Division stormed toward Munich.

Pfc. Hilbert Margol and his twin brother Howard, now deceased, were part of an artillery convoy heading for the city on a two-lane road through the woods. As Margol remembers it, the convoy was stopped and the Howard brothers were permitted by their sergeant to investigate the source of a stench wafting over the area. After a short walk through the woods they spotted boxcars.

A human leg dangled from one of them.

So we looked and inside the box car were all deceased bodies, just packed inside the box car, said Margol, a 100-year-old World War II veteran living in Dunwoody, Georgia.

World War II veteran Hilbert Margol speaks March 14 in Atlanta. Margol, 100, and his twin brother, Howard Margol, were a part of the 42nd Infantry that arrived in Marseille, France, in January 1945.

The 42nd Infantry is among those credited with liberating the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. The Margol brothers were among the first Americans to discover the lingering horrors at the camp, which was established in 1933 and became a symbol of Nazi atrocities. More than 200,000 people from across Europe were held there and over 40,000 prisoners died there in horrendous conditions.

Hilbert Margol remembers seeing stacks of dead bodies like cordwood once they went in the gates. We couldnt understand what what was going on. It was almost like a Hollywood movie set.

World War II veterans Andy Negra, left, and Hilbert Margol, speak to each other during an an event honoring the two March 14 in Atlanta.

Born Feb. 22, 1924, Jacksonville, Florida,Hilbert entered military life with Howard in 1942, joining an ROTC program at the University of Florida figuring that after Pearl Harbor they would wind up in the military at some point. They joined an Army Reserve unit later, after being told that might enable them to finish college, but they were called to active duty in 1943, Margol said. He served with Battery B, 392nd Field Artillery Battalion, 42nd Infantry Division.

They were separated for a while, in training for different missions. But Howard eventually was able to transfer to where his brother was serving with an artillery unit in Oklahoma. Eventually, they deployed to Europe in the aftermath of D-Day.

After seeing combat, death and destruction, Margol came home to find success in business.

One of the promises I made to myself in combat, that if I was fortunate enough to make it back home, I was going to buy every creature comfort that I could afford, Margol said.

But success and comfort werent the only things driving him. He has spoken at programs about the Holocaust, noting what was found at Dachau.

I hope and pray that everyone who hears my voice, and their offspring, outlive the offspring of the deniers that say the Holocaust never happened.

American assault forces hurdle over the side of a Coast Guard LCI into a landing barge, which will bring them into the fight to liberate France, during the Allied invasion of the Normandy, in June 1944. (AP Photo)

A barrage balloon cruises overhead as a heavily loaded Rhino-Ferry undergoes a test trip before it is used in the landing operations at the Normandy coast of France, in June 1944. (AP Photo)

In this image provided by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, General Dwight Eisenhower gives the order of the day, "Full Victory - Nothing Else," to paratroopers somewhere in England just before they board their planes to participate in the first assault in the invasion of the continent of Europe, June 6, 1944. (AP Photo/U.S. Army Signal Corps Photo)

Ducks (amphibious trucks) and a half-track follow foot troops ashore during the World War II opening invasion of France on a 100-mile front along the Normandy coast by Allied forces on June 6, 1944. (AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard)

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, left, reviews American troops at a base in England on the eve of D-Day, June 1944, during World War II. The initials AAAO on the steel helmets with a line across the As stands for "Anywhere, Anytime, Anyhow, Bar Nothing." The identification shoulder patches of the G.I.s are blotted out by the censor. (AP Photo)

British Commandoes assemble at a coastal port in England, June 4, 1944, in readiness for sailing to France for the liberation of Europe. (AP Photo/British Official Photo)

In this photo provided by the British Navy, wounded British troops from the South Lancashire and Middlesex regiments are being helped ashore at Sword Beach, June 6, 1944, during the D-Day invasion of German occupied France during World War II. (AP Photo/British Navy)

Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower gives the order of the day "Full victory - Nothing else" to paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division at the Royal Air Force base in Greenham Common, England, three hours before the men board their planes to participate in the first assault wave of the invasion of the continent of Europe, June 5, 1944. (AP Photo)

U.S. troops prepare to embark a landing craft, which will take them out to a larger ship lying off the coast, June 5, 1944, at a port in England. These soldiers are due to take part in the D-Day landings. (AP Photo/Peter J. Carroll)

Under the cover of naval shell fire, American infantrymen wade ashore from their landing craft during the initial Normandy landing operations in France, June 6, 1944. (AP Photo/Peter Carroll)

Sitting in the cover of their foxholes, American soldiers of the Allied Expeditionary Force secure a beachhead during initial landing operations at Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. In the background amphibious tanks and other equipment crowd the beach, while landing craft bring more troops and material ashore. (AP Photo/Weston Haynes)

Ducks (amphibious trucks) and a half-track follow foot troops ashore during the invasion of Normandy on a 100-mile front along the French coast by allied forces on June 6, 1944. This was a turning point for the Allies in World War II, known as D-Day. (AP Photo)

U.S. Army medical personnel administer a plasma transfusion to a wounded comrade, who survived when his landing craft went down off the coast of Normandy, France, in the early days of the Allied landing operations in June 1944. (AP Photo)

A tribute to an unknown American soldier, who lost his life fighting in the landing operations of the Allied Forces, marks the sand of Normandy's shore, in June 1944. (AP Photo)

German prisoners of war, captured during the Allied Normandy invasion, are marched to the ships that bring them into captivity in England, in June 1944, at Bernieres-sur-mer, France. (AP Photo)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, a U.S. Coast Guard landing barge, tightly packed with helmeted soldiers, approaches the shore at Normandy, France, during initial Allied landing operations, June 6, 1944. These barges ride back and forth across the English Channel, bringing wave after wave of reinforcement troops to the Allied beachheads. (AP Photo)

Get local news delivered to your inbox!

Continue reading here:

He saw the horrors of Dachau. Now, this WWII veteran warns against Holocaust denial - Franklin News Post

Category: Holocaust Denial | Comments Off on He saw the horrors of Dachau. Now, this WWII veteran warns against Holocaust denial – Franklin News Post
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

Donald Trump used the term holocaust, which usually refers to Nazi Germanys industrial murder of 6 million Jews, to characterize a misleading claim about migrant children in the United States.

The presumptive Republican nominee was responding to reports that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for unaccompanied minors at the border, received no response to follow-up phone calls for 85,000 migrant children. The children and their sponsors are not required to answer, and HHS says 81 percent of the checkups are successful.

Republicans have seized on the statistic to misleadingly claim that 85,000 children are missing or have been forced into slavery. A Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation last year found some migrants being exploited for child labor, but not all of the 85,000 who were no longer in contact with HHS.

In an interview that aired Thursday with the television personality Dr. Phil, Trump repeated the misleading claim about missing migrant children, inflating the number to 88,000 and describing it as a holocaust.

You know, we have 88,000 missing children now, he said. Can you imagine if that were Trump that had 88,000 missing children, 88,000? Thats a holocaust. Thats as bad as, I mean, think of it.

Trump has made immigration a central message of his campaign, often using exaggerated and inflammatory language to describe the surge in southern border crossings. He has vilified and dehumanized migrants by describing them in broad strokes as dangerous criminals, terrorists, mentally ill and carriers of diseases. He has repeatedly suggested that undocumented immigrants were poisoning the blood of our country, which historians said resembled the propaganda of Adolf Hitler.

The Holocaust is the largest and most extensively documented genocide in world history, a systematic campaign of state-sponsored persecution and extermination by Nazi Germany against European Jews and other minority groups between 1933 and 1945, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The methods of murder included mass shootings, large-scale detention and labor camps, poison gas chambers and ovens. The victims included an estimated 1.5 million Jewish children, according to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, known as Yad Vashem.

Its really inappropriate to compare that to the Holocaust, said Laurie Marhoefer, a history professor at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington who studies Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The numbers of people are astronomically larger. Those arent people who are murdered. Hes just trying to whip up some kind of emotion by using that term. Its dangerous and its really a distortion of what hes talking about and also a gross misrepresentation of the actual Holocaust.

Beth Kean, the CEO of the Holocaust Museum L.A., said that while the condition of 85,000 undocumented children is of grave concern, making a false equivalency with the Holocaust is dangerous. His use of the word trivializes the real meaning of the Holocaust which was the worst genocide in history, she said. Such distortion of the truth of the Holocaust when something is clearly not the systematic murders of millions can take us down the path towards blatant anti-semitism.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung defended the former presidents comments and attacked President Bidens handling of the border.

President Trump was talking about the horrors of human trafficking at the border, he said. These horrific stories are sadly happening far too often because we have a weak leader in Joe Biden.

Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.

Go here to read the rest:

Trump compares misleading claim about migrant children with 'Holocaust' that murdered millions - The Washington Post

Category: Holocaust | Comments Off on Trump compares misleading claim about migrant children with ‘Holocaust’ that murdered millions – The Washington Post
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

The Claims Conference secures a $114 million increase in funding from Germany for social welfare services on behalf of Holocaust survivors worldwide.

The funding is for acute assistance for the next two calendar years, the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which represents the Jewish people in compensation talks with Germany for the Holocaust, says in a statement. This brings the total budget for social welfare services in 2025 and 2026 to nearly $2 billion in funding $972.5 million per year the Claims Conference says.

Additionally, there is an increase of $55 million for Holocaust education through 2028, bringing the total for Holocaust education funding to $177 over the next four years.

The extra funding answers a genuine need, Greg Schneider, the Claims Conferences executive vice president, says.

As Holocaust survivors age and their care is more complex, we see a need for increased social welfare services globally, he adds.

Gideon Taylor, the president of the Claims Conference, says the extra funding shows that the commitment to this final generation of Holocaust survivors by the Claims Conference and the German government both is steadfast and unfaltering.

You're a dedicated reader

Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

Thats why we started the Times of Israel eleven years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.

So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we havent put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.

For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

See more here:

Germany gives Claims Conference $114 million for 'acute assistance' to Holocaust survivors - The Times of Israel

Category: Holocaust | Comments Off on Germany gives Claims Conference $114 million for ‘acute assistance’ to Holocaust survivors – The Times of Israel
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

On May 4, as war and famine raged in Gaza, Amsterdam marked Remembrance Day, an annual commemoration of those who resisted the Nazi occupation, with special emphasis from the citys organizing committee on the Jews who perished in the onslaught. Among the dozens of ceremonies that crisscrossed the city, I joined one at the Centrale Markthal, a building that had, throughout that period of dread, housed a vast open-air market that sold food to Amsterdammers, though it is currently dedicated to spectacles, parties and gatherings enjoyed by those who, mostly, know little about that remote tragedy.

I was there at the invitation of Max Arian, an 84-year-old Dutch friend, one of the speakers that day. I had met him 50 years ago, on my first visit to the Netherlands to drum up solidarity for the Chilean resistance to the dictatorship of General Pinochet, which drove me into exile. Max, as a secular Jewish survivor of the Nazi occupation, was particularly attuned to freedom and national liberation struggles elsewhere around the world, including the struggle of the Palestinian people for a homeland and an end to the occupation. What bonded us most back then, of course, was how he identified with the promise of Salvador Allendes peaceful revolution, which was abruptly ended by Pinochets 1973 coup detat.

During that initial, hospitable encounter, he hinted at his childhood story, but I only learned the details when, with my wife and son, I moved to Amsterdam in 1976 for a four-year stay welcomed warmly by Max and his family, like an echo of the refuge he had been given as a young boy back in 1943.

His father, Arnold, a member of the resistance to the Nazis, had been shipped to Auschwitz, where, unbeknownst to his relatives, he had died in October 1942. Maxs mother, Rebecca, was subsequently arrested and beaten and, while in captivity, managed to smuggle a message to a relative asking that her 3-year-old son be hidden from the Nazis. The child spent the rest of the war with a loving Christian foster family, the Micheels, under a false identity. Rebecca herself was eventually packed into a train with thousands of other Jews and was only rescued at the last minute by men she presumed to be comrades of her husband.

She lived the next two years in safety in Limburg, not far from where her son was being cared for, though she could not know where he was for security reasons. The only sign that he was well was an unsigned letter from Maxs foster mother allaying Rebeccas fears and mentioning how much, perhaps too much, the little boy enjoyed vlaii, a cake with green berries that was only baked in that southernmost region of the country. So Max was nearby and there was hope that they might still have a future together. And on May 5, 1945, which is still celebrated as Liberation Day in the Netherlands, Rebecca sought news of her sons whereabouts and immediately retrieved him.

If that clue of shared food had been her sole connection to her lost child, food must have also been on her mind as a way of connecting with her parents, Philip and Mietje Witteboom. They had been spared when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands in early 1940 because Philip, with his wifes help, ran a stall in the Centrale Markthal providing fruit and vegetables for the populace. Classified as essential workers, they managed to avoid deportation until finally, in 1944, they were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. When Maxs grandfather fell ill, he was transported to Auschwitz, where he died. Mietje outlasted her jailers, though she almost succumbed to starvation before the camp was liberated. Indeed, when Rebecca heard her mother had returned to the Netherlands and rushed to see her, she did not recognize the gaunt, skeletal woman advancing down the street, and was only able to identify her by the dress Mietje was wearing.

I imagine their elation, and also the abiding pain left behind by so many missing, murdered relatives, the extended family whose names and dates of birth and death are inscribed now on the Holocaust Memorial Wall, where, on a visit last year, I examined them, one by one, with Max by my side recounting their stories. And we talked, once more, about his own life as a hidden child, which had continued to fascinate me over so many decades, to the point that I had borrowed many aspects of his experience for one of the protagonists of my novel The Suicide Museum (2023).

It was not, however, until the ceremony on May 4 of this year that I learned what had happened in the aftermath of the occupation and, once again, the importance of food. Because Mietje, in addition to that solitary dress, had brought something else back from Theresienstadt: a piece of chocolate given to her by the Russian liberators of the camp. This famished woman, instead of devouring it, had kept it for her grandson, wagering that he was still alive. It offered him not only sustenance but the memory as well, because that sweet would remain for Max as the unforgettable moment when he first tasted chocolate. It had melted and then hardened over time, mixing with the tin foil, and yet it was so savory.

And more memories of food: how his grandmother and mother had, for the following decades, sold fruit and vegetables in a stall at that marketplace, despite the efforts by some other vendors to deny them that right on the grounds that the original license was in the deceased Philips name. This was the place where the miraculously saved Max, beloved of those two formidable female figures, had spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence, had helped to carry boxes and scrape the muck from them and even, on Mondays, work the cash register. So it was food, again, that came to the rescue of the family, providing a livelihood during difficult years of scarcity, continuing a tradition that had been in the family for generations, even if Max himself would become a famous journalist and cultural critic.

The commemoration at the former marketplace was, therefore, a way of celebrating the triumph of life over death, embodied in the fact that both octogenarian speakers, Max and another hidden child survivor, Simon Italiaander, were very much present to evoke a time when that space had resounded with the back-and-forth of merchants and wholesalers and clients and filled with the smell of cabbages and tomatoes and oranges, so Amsterdammers could eat and love, multiply and laugh, betting that life could, that it must, go on. Because Max was not alone that day of the ceremony. His (non-Jewish) wife Maartje was there, as were other members of his family one of his three children and two of his eight grandchildren who existed solely because he had been saved. The ghosts of the past, the dead who await some sort of resurrection in our memory, seemed to be blessing those who had managed to defy the extinction the Nazis had wanted to visit upon those innocent people.

And yet, as more and more recollections of the food that had been sold in that marketplace filled the air, as photos of that space vibrant with sustenance and nourishment circulated among the spectators, as I stared at a marvelous image of a robust, older Mietje, no longer famished, standing defiantly in the midst of endless crates of vegetables, what kept intruding on me, perversely and inevitably, was Gaza: the horror of what was going on in Gaza, what students around the world have been protesting against, including in the streets of Amsterdam. How could a state that had been founded by the survivors of the Holocaust be inflicting starvation on its Palestinian neighbors? How could its armed forces massacre children who, unlike Max, had nowhere to hide, no one to take them in? How could so many Israelis feel indifferent to such grief and afflictions an indifference that, alas, recalled how so many Germans (and Dutch people, and millions around the world) had turned a blind eye to the sins of the Nazis?

These searing questions, which invaded me, which I could not help asking, do not undermine or disrespect the ceremony at the Centrale Markthal. They make the need to remember more relevant than ever, the certainty that never again should humanity witness terrible war crimes without demanding accountability, as the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague has done. More relevant, also, because those who acclaim Hamas a murderous, theocratic, misogynistic, oppressive organization that also massacres children and holds innocent hostages those who share its dreams of ridding the region of its Israeli enemies, would do well to attend memorials like the one I was at on May 4 in Amsterdam.

This is the complicated challenge of our times: to rejoice at the wondrous survival of Max Arian, a fervent supporter of amity between Palestinians and Israelis, and at the same time condemn those persecutors who, by their current acts of terror and forced famine, are betraying the ardent memory of so many of their ancestors who died and are still crying out for peace and justice.

This first appeared on New Lines.

Read more:

Remembering the Holocaust as Gaza Starves - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

Category: Holocaust | Comments Off on Remembering the Holocaust as Gaza Starves – CounterPunch.org – CounterPunch
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

At a Holocaust museum in Atlanta, staff members had typically ended their tours by saying that many survivors of the death camps immigrated to Palestine.

But after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the guides noticed that some students would ask a simple but complicated question: Is this the Palestine that weve been hearing about?

So staff members at the museum, the Breman, made a few changes, according to Rabbi Joseph Prass, the museums education director. Now, docents explain to visitors that many Holocaust survivors found refuge in the British Mandate of Palestine or the area that would become the country of Israel.

Each year, roughly two dozen Holocaust museums in the United States teach millions of visitors often students on field trips about the Nazi genocide of six million Jews, a history that is fading from living memory.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel and the ensuing war, that mission has felt especially urgent, as the number of bias incidents against Jews has risen across the country.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?Log in.

Want all of The Times?Subscribe.

See the original post:

Holocaust Museums Debate What to Say About the Israel-Hamas War - The New York Times

Category: Holocaust | Comments Off on Holocaust Museums Debate What to Say About the Israel-Hamas War – The New York Times
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

Home | At a Time of Global Strife, Holocaust Education Receives a Much-Needed Increase; Holocaust SurvivorsAlso ReceiveIncrease in Social Welfare Services Funding

Claims Conference in the Media | Press Inquiries | Publications | Videos | Updates

Negotiations between the Claims Conference and the German government, held this year at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

Social Welfare Services For Holocaust Survivors Will Increase An Additional 105 Million, Impacting More Than 100,000 Survivors Worldwide. Outcomes For These Negotiations Also Include An Increase Of 51 million For Holocaust Education.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK: June 5, 2024Today, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) announced the outcomes of their negotiations with the German Federal Ministry of Finance on behalf of Holocaust survivors living globally. The results include a 105 million ($114 million USD) increase in funding for social welfare services, involving acute assistance for survivors for each of the next two years. This brings the total budget for social welfare services to 893.9 million ($972.5 million USD), nearly $2billion in funding from 2025 through 2026. Additionally, there is an increase of 51million ($55 million USD) for Holocaust education through 2028, bringing the total for Holocaust education funding to 164 million ($177 million USD) over the next four years.

Greg Schneider, Executive Vice President of the Claims Conference, said, As Holocaust survivors age and their care is more complex, we see a need for increased social welfare services globally. It is imperative that we keep the promises we made to survivors after the Holocaust: We must ensure they are able to live their final years in dignity. We must work to guarantee they have the services and care they require. And, in this time of growing Holocaust denial and distortion, it is critical that we secure a robust foundation for Holocaust education to ensure current and future generations alike have access and opportunities to truly understand the lessons of the Holocaust. Only then can we be sure our past does not become our future. Only then can we say, Never again.

Social welfare services, including home care, are provided through the Claims Conferences network of more than 300 social welfare agency partners across 83 countries. Social welfare agencies engage directly with Holocaust survivors, ensuring their individual needs are met, including home care, food packages, medical needs, transportation to appointments and socialization. Although the total number of Holocaust survivors is decreasing overall, those who remain alive require more care. These services are all essential to this last generation of Holocaust survivors.

Holocaust survivor Simha Natan (left) with her home care worker Polya Ruseva (right) in Yambol, Bulgaria. Simha receives social services from Shalom Yambol through grants from the Claims Conference. Simha also receives a monthly pension from the Central and Eastern European Fund fromClaims forher persecution during the Holocaust. Photo Credit: Tzvetelina Friedman.

Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, Special Negotiator for the Claims Conference Negotiations Delegation, said, Each year as we see the survivor population dwindling, we are reminded that we must sustain our staunch commitment to the critical needs of Holocaust survivors globally. As we have stressed to our German counterparts, even though the survivor population is declining, the needs of those that remain grow and require urgent action.Even as we prepare to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, we are seeing a resurgence of hate and Holocaust denial that plague remaining survivors. We applaud the German government in working with us to fortify our collective commitment to survivors while also helping to ensure that the atrocities of the past are remembered and not repeated.

Gideon Taylor, President of the Claims Conference, said, The commitment to this final generation of Holocaust survivors by the Claims Conference and the German government both is steadfast and unfaltering. In this time of rising antisemitism, we must ensure that survivors know their care and services are secure and our sense of responsibility is unwavering.

Compensation for Holocaust survivors will total approximately 460 million ($500 million USD), including survivors who get pensions and those who receive the one-time annual Hardship Fund Supplemental.

Holocaust education saw growth of 51 million ($55 million USD) in this years negotiations. As the Holocaust fades further into the past and we lose our eyewitnesses, the need for Holocaust education amidst the rising tide of antisemitism and Holocaust denial and distortion is evident. This last generation of Holocaust survivors have lessons to share that must be remembered. It is essential that survivors know their own legacy of survival and the history of their family, friends and lost communities will be carried forward by future generations.

While recent global Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Surveys show that knowledge of the Holocaust is fading, all surveys indicate a strong desire for Holocaust education in schools around the world. These surveys include respondents in the United States, Canada, Austria, France, the U.K. and The Netherlands. We must fight the decline in knowledge of key facts about the Holocaust with a fortified and continued commitment to Holocaust education.

Resulting from negotiations in 2025:

Here is the original post:

At a Time of Global Strife, Holocaust Education Receives a Much-Needed Increase; Holocaust Survivors Also Receive ... - Claims Conference

Category: Holocaust | Comments Off on At a Time of Global Strife, Holocaust Education Receives a Much-Needed Increase; Holocaust Survivors Also Receive … – Claims Conference
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 7, 2024

Despite the countless documentaries, movies, TV shows, and books on World War II, 63% of American millennials and Gen Z do not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, according to a 2020 state-by-state survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The survey found that 48% could not name a concentration camp or ghetto.

Netflix hopes to change that with Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, an ambitious new World War II documentary out Wednesday thats geared towards younger audiences. Over six episodes, the documentary traces Adolf Hitlers rise to power and the major milestones of WWII.

While the documentary covers a lot of well-trodden ground, the goal is to tell the story of WWII in a new engaging way for younger audiences. For example, in addition to interviews with academics and archival footage that are typical of WWII documentaries, it features actors recreating key moments in the history of the war, giving the series the feel of watching a silent movie.

Here are some of the biggest revelations from Evil on Trial.

Hitlers personal history paints a picture of someone who desired to be famous from a very young age. Born in Austria, he dreamed of becoming a renowned artist. But he was rejected by Viennas top fine arts institute because he could only paint landscapes and couldnt paint people very well. While living in a mens shelter for a few years, he sold paintings copied from postcards. His worldview was shaped by blaming other people for his misfortune and the rabid anti semitism that existed in Vienna at the time, Joe Berlinger, director of Evil on Trial, tells TIME.

In the second episode, actors reenact young Hitlers obsession with his niece Geli Raubel in the early 1930s. The young Nazi leader wanted her to become a great opera singer and paid for her lessons, and they even lived together in Munichsparking rumors in the local press that they were dating. But she found him too domineering, and in 1931, she shot herself with Hitlers pistol in his apartment. The scandal was in every newspaper, but it did not affect his popularity.

The fifth episode of the docu-series explores the pivotal moment when Nazi leaders started building extermination camps. Officers had been shooting Jews to death, and drinking a lot while doing it to cope. According to Boston College historian Devin Pendas, Nazi leaders looked for a more efficient way to murder Jews en masse in order to protect officers well-being. This shows the perversity of the moral priorities that the Nazis have, Pendas says in the episode. They acknowledge that this is emotionally traumaticbut only for the killers. Nazi leaders finalized plans for a mass extermination of the Jewish population at the Wannsee Conference on Jan. 20, 1942, in Berlin, and the plan has come to be known as the Final Solution.

The episode then shows how the Final Solution remained largely unknown to the general public until footage of the atrocities was played during the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946), the international tribunal convened after WWII to bring Nazi leaders to justice. Prosecutors played footage of dead bodies collected by top filmmakers of the day, Roman Karmen, John Ford and Budd Schulberg.

Some of the defendants do hang their heads in shame, but a lot of them seem bored which is pretty appalling if you think about the fact that these defendants are responsible for that, Pendas explains.

Overall, Berlinger hopes the docu-series will show younger viewers worldwide that democracy is fragile and help them better spot authoritarians in governments. Through the history and horrors of the Holocaustthe propaganda and dehumanizationits a warning that normal people can do horrific things.

More here:

What to Know About 'Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial' - TIME

Category: Holocaust | Comments Off on What to Know About ‘Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial’ – TIME
Tags: