Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Lincoln used to be the home of a substantial Jewish community who came over to the UK during the Norman Conquest.

This community stayed in Lincoln until the expulsion of the Jews in England in 1290.

Just over 700 years passed by until a new, smaller, Jewish community was established in the city.

Lincolnshire Live spoke to the Chairman of the Lincolnshire Jewish Community, Richard Dale, about what it was like to be living in Lincoln before the community was established.

He said: "Before we started the Lincolnshire Jewish Community there really wasn't a lot of Jews around.

"If you wanted to worship at a Synagogue you had to go to Sheffield, Nottingham, Grimsby or Hull. I personally traveled to Nottingham.

"It was a long journey there and it was whilst I was in Nottingham that it was suggested that we set up our own community here in Lincoln.

"This was in 1992 and we are still going to this day."

Initially the community would meet at friends houses but they later decided it would be best to meet at the site of the medieval Synagogue in Lincoln.

The medieval Synagogue is thought to have been based behind the existing Jew's Court and Jew's House on Steep Hill.

It was attacked in 1266 by the Disinherited Barons and Gentleman in the Isle of Oxholme. The attackers broke into the Synagogue burning holy documents.

In the modern day, Lincolnshire Jewish Community has around 30 families as members, with hundreds more supporting them.

The upper floor of Jew's Court is now used as a Synagogue whilst the lower floor of the Grade I listed building is a bookshop.

The community itself has been able to continue most of its practices during the Coronavirus pandemic but, like all of us, has had to adapt to the new normal.

Mr Dale explained: "At the moment we are using Zoom like everybody else in the country. In some ways it has been quite nice but it is no substitution for meeting in real life.

"Of course we do not meet due to Coronavirus so this means we aren't able to eat together like we normally would. Some people choose to eat on Zoom but it just isn't the same.

"We still have the services and for some people this has proved to be better, especially for those that have mobility problems. A couple of clicks on the internet and they are able to attend virtually."

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The story of the Lincolnshire Jewish Community who meet at the oldest Synagogue in the UK - Lincolnshire Live

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

BURLINGTON, Vt.

At This Place in History were in Burlington with Executive Director of the Vermont Historical Society Steve Perkins.

Were standing on the steps of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue on Prospect Street in Burlington. Through those doors behind us is an amazing piece of history, international in scope. The co-archivist of Ohavi Zedek, Aaron Goldberg, is going to walk us through what we see, explained Perkins.

This mural was painted by an artist named Ben Zion Black in 1910. It was painted in an older synagogue called Chai Adam Synagogue on Hyde Street in Burlington. The Chai Adam Synagogue closed in 1939 and the Lost Mural was successfully moved here in May 2015, began Goldberg.

Why is it called the Lost Mural?

First, the Lost Mural represents a lost genre of wooden painted synagogues that was prevalent in eastern Europe. We arent quite sure if there were hundreds, there may have been thousands, and they were destroyed during the Holocaust, or by fire, or simply just fell into ruin. This may be the only symbol of that lost genre that exists, certainly in North America of this size, grandeur and splendor.

The other reason it was lost, or that we call it lost, was that the mural was intentionally hidden behind a false wall in 1986 when the synagogue building it was in was converted into an apartment building, added Goldberg.

What were looking at is a biblical image of the Tent of the Tabernacle in the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers. So, youre walking inside what was the mobile Tent of the Tabernacle when the Israelites were wandering in the dessert after leaving Egypt.

The imagery is as youre walking outside into the inner sanctum, going through several layers of drapery into the Holy of Holies, which is where the Ten Commandments would have been kept. So as you move inward, you come to the throne of Solomon.

As youre looking farther up, you have the lions of Judah, the guardians of the Ten Commandments. Theyre also surrogates for the Jewish people, who are both receiving the law and defending the law, explained Goldberg.

Above that, you have the Crown of the Torah. Of course, you have the suns rays emanating down through the tent, and then above that you have the bell chord. The bell chord is also specifically referenced, as are the colors of the drapes, in the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers.

This is really a very important legacy for many reasons. Many of the original Jewish immigrants came from Kaunas, Lithuania, which is one of the provincial capitals in Lithuania. Ben Black came from that area also, said Goldberg.

For immigrants, this represents a symbol of immigrant art. Its a beacon of hope for all immigrant groups, all refugee groups. Madeleine Kunin, our esteemed governor called the mural a symbol of freedom over oppression and hope over despair, concluded Goldberg.

Next week, in Part 2, we will explore the process of saving, moving and restoring the mural and what the future holds for this international treasure.

At This Place in History!

For more from our This Place in History series, click here.

To view a map of Vermonts roadside historic site markers, click here.

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This Place in History: The Lost Mural Part 1 - Local 22/44 News

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

I had come to Paris in 1980 with the grandiose objective to contain antisemitism. Little did I foresee its nature.

On 3 October, the eve of Sukkot (Tabernacles), I was visiting an Israeli journalist, Tamar Cohen. Her houseguest, Aliza Shagrir wife of the late cineaste Micha Shagrir had just arrived from Israel. Asking her hostess if she needed anything for dinner, Tamar suggested some dates from the fruit shop three hundred meters away, facing the synagogue on the rue Copernic. We went down to the street together. She turned into Copernic, I continued walking straight ahead. I felt the bomb, where Aliza met her death.

The following day, Prime Minister Raymond Barre stated This odious bombing meant to strike Jews who were going to the synagogue, but hit innocent French people who crossed rue Copernic. In fact, one was a Portuguese concierge, another a Jewish worshipper, Aliza and one innocent Frenchman. In 2007, Barre attributed the subsequent protests to a campaign of the Jewish lobby.

The Copernic terrorist attack launched 73 shootings and bombings of Jewish targets in Western Europe, 29 in France. The wave ended with the 1982 Jo Goldenberg Restaurant massacre in the Jewish quarter. Indeed, a recent French extradition request to Norway, for one of the perpetrators, has been approved.

The wave of violence stopped due to Israels incursion into Southern Lebanon, to destroy Palestinian terrorist training camps. European terrorists fled home, where they stopped targeting Jews. Needing money, they attacked banks and embassies. The authorities cracked down, proving Simon Wiesenthals dictum What starts with the Jews never ends with them.

The French government tried to pin Copernic on the extreme right. We knew better,the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or its derivativesfingerprints were the most likely

In November 2010, I was in Ottawa, attending the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combatting Antisemitism (ICCA). I saw in a newspaper that a suspect in the bombing, Hassan Diab a Sociology Professor at Carlton University was in court proceedings but six blocs away, regarding a request for extradition to a Paris trial. The court was full, predominently wearing hijabs and Palestinian keffiya headdressThe atmosphere was more a trial against Israel

We followed the lengthy procedure -normally a few weeks between democracies until Diab was brought to France in 2014In 2018, he was released as the French court dismissed all charges ,despite a pending appeal.Reportedly,his passport had been confiscated and he was under a no-fly order. Yet his disappearance ended with photos together with his family in Ottawa. French politicians allegedly in the know when approached by our Centre, refused to comment.

Diab proceeded to sue the Canadian government for 90,000,000 dollarsA new French tribunal has called for another trial ,either after a second extradition or for a proceeding in absentia.

The ball is now back with the Canadian government which, apparently,will only act if the French Supreme Court calls for Diabs return

The bottom line: After 40 years,the victim families and wounded of Copernic still have no closure ..Justice so long delayed is indeed justice denied

Shimon Samuels is Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He has served as Deputy Director of the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, European Director of ADL, and Israel Director of AJC. He was born in UK and studied in UK, Israel, U.S. and Japan.

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Wiesenthal Centre and the 1980 Copernic Synagogue in Paris Bombing - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

67-year-old Lebanese-Canadian Hassan Diab is accused of blowing up a synagogue in Paris on October 3rd, 1980 in an attack that killed four people and injured 46.

Diab, a former University of Ottawa sociology professor was extradited to France from Canada in 2014. In 2018, he was released due to a lack of convincing evidence against him.

People who knew him were absolutely shocked by the allegations against him saying Diab didnt come off as someone who was capable of such acts.

Maintaining his innocence, Diab filed a lawsuit against Canada for unjust extradition demanding around $90 million in reparations for himself and his family.

Just after everyone thought it was over, a French court has ordered Diab to stand trial over the bombing that happened over 40 years ago.

According to AFP, Diabs legal team in France said the ruling is crazy and motivated purely by a politically correct drive to have a trial at all costs.

Diab continuously denied that he was ever involved in the attack and said that he was in Beirut taking exams at the time.

Alex Neve, the former secretary-general at Amnesty International Canada, called on the Canadian government to pressure France to drop the charges againstDiab calling them unfounded.

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Lebanese-Canadian Professor Will Stand Trial Over 1980 Paris Synagogue Attack - The961

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Video above: White supremacist images culminate at Capitol riotSecretary-General Antonio Guterres urged coordinated global action on Monday to build an alliance against the growth and spread of neo-Nazism and white supremacy and the resurgence of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and hate speech sparked partly by the COVID-19 pandemic.The U.N. chief also urged international action to fight propaganda and disinformation. And he called for stepped up education on Nazi actions during World War II, stressing that almost two-thirds of young Americans do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.Guterres spoke at the annual Park East Synagogue and United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Service marking Wednesdays 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, held virtually this year because of COVID-19.He said the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding injustices and divisionsPropaganda linking Jews with the pandemic, for example, by accusing them of creating the virus as part of a bid for global domination, would be ridiculous, if it were not so dangerous, he said. This is just the latest manifestation of an anti-Semitic trope that dates back to at least the 14th century, when Jews were accused of spreading the bubonic plague.The secretary-general said its sad but not surprising that the pandemic has triggered another eruption of Holocaust denial, distortion and minimizing history.In Europe, the United States and elsewhere, white supremacists are organizing and recruiting across borders, flaunting the symbols and tropes of the Nazis and their murderous ambitious, he said. Tragically, after decades in the shadows, neo-Nazis and their ideas are now gaining currency,Guterres said U.S. authorities have warned that neo-Nazis are on the rise across the country and around the world. In some unnamed countries, he said, neo-Nazis have infiltrated police and state security services and their ideas can be heard in debates of mainstream political parties.The continued rise of white supremacy and neo-Nazi ideology must be seen in the context of a global attack on truth that has reduced the role of science and fact-based analysis in public life, he said.Guterres said fragmentation of the traditional media and the growth of social media are contributing to the absence of shared facts.We need coordinated global action, on the scale of the threat we face, to build an alliance against the growth and spread of neo-Nazism and white supremacy, and to fight propaganda and disinformation, he said.Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor, warned that if we do not carry the tragic lessons of history, they are doomed to be repeated.This guiding principle memory not amnesia is a moral imperative to quell the rise of hate, which is greater today than at any time since the end of World War II, he said.Schneier said Nazi swastikas are again defacing synagogues and cemeteries in France, Germany and most recently Montreal, and among those storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were people wearing shirts saying Camp Auschwitz and 6MWE short for Six Million Wasnt Enough.Children are not born with hatred; they are taught how to hate, the 90-year-old rabbi said. Holocaust education in schools is a must.

Video above: White supremacist images culminate at Capitol riot

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged coordinated global action on Monday to build an alliance against the growth and spread of neo-Nazism and white supremacy and the resurgence of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and hate speech sparked partly by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.N. chief also urged international action to fight propaganda and disinformation. And he called for stepped up education on Nazi actions during World War II, stressing that almost two-thirds of young Americans do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

Guterres spoke at the annual Park East Synagogue and United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Service marking Wednesdays 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, held virtually this year because of COVID-19.

He said the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding injustices and divisions

Propaganda linking Jews with the pandemic, for example, by accusing them of creating the virus as part of a bid for global domination, would be ridiculous, if it were not so dangerous, he said. This is just the latest manifestation of an anti-Semitic trope that dates back to at least the 14th century, when Jews were accused of spreading the bubonic plague.

The secretary-general said its sad but not surprising that the pandemic has triggered another eruption of Holocaust denial, distortion and minimizing history.

In Europe, the United States and elsewhere, white supremacists are organizing and recruiting across borders, flaunting the symbols and tropes of the Nazis and their murderous ambitious, he said. Tragically, after decades in the shadows, neo-Nazis and their ideas are now gaining currency,

Guterres said U.S. authorities have warned that neo-Nazis are on the rise across the country and around the world. In some unnamed countries, he said, neo-Nazis have infiltrated police and state security services and their ideas can be heard in debates of mainstream political parties.

The continued rise of white supremacy and neo-Nazi ideology must be seen in the context of a global attack on truth that has reduced the role of science and fact-based analysis in public life, he said.

Guterres said fragmentation of the traditional media and the growth of social media are contributing to the absence of shared facts.

We need coordinated global action, on the scale of the threat we face, to build an alliance against the growth and spread of neo-Nazism and white supremacy, and to fight propaganda and disinformation, he said.

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor, warned that if we do not carry the tragic lessons of history, they are doomed to be repeated.

This guiding principle memory not amnesia is a moral imperative to quell the rise of hate, which is greater today than at any time since the end of World War II, he said.

Schneier said Nazi swastikas are again defacing synagogues and cemeteries in France, Germany and most recently Montreal, and among those storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were people wearing shirts saying Camp Auschwitz and 6MWE short for Six Million Wasnt Enough.

Children are not born with hatred; they are taught how to hate, the 90-year-old rabbi said. Holocaust education in schools is a must.

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UN chief urges global alliance to counter rise of neo-Nazis - WXII The Triad

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

(January 27, 2021 / JNS) The Federal Bureau of Investigation is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a man on surveillance video last year vandalizing a synagogue and Chabad House in Huntsville, Ala.

Swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti were spray-painted on Etz Chayim Conservative Synagogue in the wee hours of the morning on April 9 as Jews around the world were observing the start of Passover. The next night, similar graffiti was painted on Chabad of Huntsville.

According to a joint release by the FBI and the Huntsville police,Surveillance camera footage indicated the vandalisms were perpetrated by the same individual.The individual walked with a pronounced, distinct limp and appeared to have a prosthetic left leg, authorities said in their statement, noting that the individual may be driving an early model Toyota Prius, light in color.

The Anti-Defamation League Southern Division is offering its own reward of $2,000, saying we are grateful to the Huntsville Police and FBI Birmingham for showing such service to and solidarity with the Jewish community. We hope this additional reward money will inspire others to speak out and help correct this wrongful, hate-filled attack.

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FBI poster seeking information on a man perpetrating vandalism in Alabama. Source: Screenshot.

In addition to the FBI award and ADL rewards, the Huntsville Area Crime Stoppers is also offering a reward of $1,000.

Elsewhere in Alabama, which is home to about 9,500 Jews statewide, authorities in the city of Mobile are decrying vandals who painted swastikas and wrote the words Heil Hitler, along with other images on school buses in nearby Semmes.

In a statement posted on Facebook, local Jewish community leaders expressed their outrage at the vandalism.

Mobile Area Jewish Federation is horrified at the appalling act of anti-Semitic vandalism that took place at Semmes Middle School. There is no place for hate and bigotry in our community and our country. We believe that education is the only way to fight bigotry, and we urge our community leaders to be proactive about teaching our students about anti-Semitism, they wrote online. We have every confidence that the authorities will do what is necessary to keep our educational, religious institutions and community-at-large safe during this challenging time.

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FBI, ADL offer rewards for leads to vandalized Jewish institutions in Alabama - JNS.org

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

This is the true story of one remarkable man who outwitted Hitler and the Nazis to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other during World War II.

It is the story of Oscar Schindler who surfaced from the chaos of madness, spent millions bribing and paying off the SS and eventually risked his life to rescue the Schindler-Jews. You may read the letter written by his Jews May, 1945.

Oscar Schindler rose to the highest level of humanity, walked thro

The Legacy Of Oscar Schindler

In those years, millions of Jews died in the Nazi death camps like Auschwitz, but Schindler's Jews miraculously survived.

To more than 1200 Jews Oscar Schindler was all that stood between them and death at the hands of the Nazis. A man full of flaws like the rest of us - the unlikeliest of all role models who started by earning millions as a war profiteer and ended by spending his last pfennig and risking his life to save his Jews. An ordinary man who even in the worst of circumstances did extraordinary things, matched by no one. He remained true to his Jews, the workers he referred to as my children. In the shadow of Auschwitz he kept the SS out and everyone alive.

Oscar Schindler and his wife Emilie Schindler were inspiring evidence of courage and human decency during the Holocaust. Emilie was not only a strong woman working alongside her husband but a heroine in her own right. She worked indefatigably to save the Schindler-Jews - a story to bear witness to goodness, love and compassion.

Today there are more than 7,000 descendants of the Schindler-Jews living in US and Europe, many in Israel. Before the Second World War, the Jewish population of Poland was 3.5 million. Today there are between 3,000 and 4,000 left.

Holocaust - Nazi Genocide

Oscar Schindler spent millions to protect and save his Jews, everything he possessed. He died penniless. But he earned the everlasting gratitude of the Schindler-Jews. Today his name is known as a household word for courage in a world of brutality - a hero who saved hundreds of Jews from Hitler's gas chambers.

Schindler died in Hildesheim in Germany October 9, 1974. He wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. As he said: My children are here ..

- Louis Blow

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The Oscar Schindler Story

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

30 January 1933Hitler appointed Chancellor

Following the Reichstag's premature dissolution, the Nazi party remained the largest group in the parliament after the November 1932 federal election. Although Hitler failed to win a majority, on 30 January 1933 President Hindenburg consented to Hitler forming a cabinet.

Photo credit:Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H1216-0500-002 / CC-BY-SA, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE h, via Wikimedia Commons

The camp was initially intended to hold only political prisoners. However, after its opening by Heinrich Himmler, it was enlarged to include forced labour. An estimated 41,500 people were killed in the camp during its operation, including Jews, German and Austrian criminals, and other nationals from occupied countries.

Photo credit:Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was one of the first anti-Semitic and racist laws passed in the Third Reich. After another parliamentary election in March 1933, in which Hitler again failed to win a majority, the Nazi Party created a coalition government with the German National People's Party. Consequently, Hitler passed an act that effectively gave him dictatorial powers, allowing him to target the countrys Jewish population.

New anti-Semitic and racist laws were passed, including the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The rest of the population remained without any citizenship rights.

The German army entered Austria, which was warmly welcomed by most of the population. One of the results of the unopposed annexation was the introduction of the anti-Semitic laws in Austria.

Photo credit:Heinrich Hoffmann, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Ministry of the Interior invalidated all German passports held by Jews. They had to give up their old passports, which would become valid only after the letter J had been stamped on them.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

The growing hostility against the Jewish population in Germany led to 7,000 Jewish-owned shops being destroyed and looted on the night of 9 November 1938. Hundreds of synagogues and houses belonging to Jews were burned. 92 Jews were murdered and 31,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps. The name of the pogrom comes from the broken glass of Jewish shop windows. In the weeks that followed, new laws led to the closure of all Jewish businesses, the expulsion of all Jewish children from public schools and restrictions of freedom of movement for Jewish people.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

The Reichstag speech is mainly remembered for Hitlers declaration that if there was another world war, the Jews of Europe would be annihilated. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels helped write the speech, which was delivered on the sixth anniversary of Hitlers seizure of power in 1933. It lasted for two-and-a-half hours and dealt with both foreign and domestic policy.

The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the MolotovRibbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was a non-aggression pact that allowed the parties to partition Poland and annex other Central European countries. The war that followed claimed around 73 million lives.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

Following the annexation of German-occupied Poland, the Nazis established Jewish ghettos in hundreds of locations, to confine and segregate Poland's 3.5 million Jewish population in order to facilitate persecution, terror, and exploitation.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

Jewish Poles were ordered to wear an identifying mark. Failure to comply with the order was punishable by death. Yellow stars were often referred to as a badge of shame.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

As early as May 1940, the first prisoners arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died. The death toll includes 960,000 Jews, 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and around 15,000 other Europeans. Many died from starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

The German invasion of the Soviet Union brought the mass murder of Soviet Jews by Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads including the 28 September 1941 murder of 33,000 Jews and an unknown number of gypsies at Babi Yar. It is estimated that the Einsatzgruppen and related personnel killed more than two million people between 1941 and 1945.

At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, leading Nazis developed the plan to murder all the Jews of Europe, the so-called Final Solution. Heydrich explained how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the occupied parts of Poland, where they would be killed.

The first gas chambers were used at Sobibor death camp, soon followed by Belzec on 17 March 1942, and Treblinka on 1 June 1942. The genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe on a mass, highly-organised scale, had begun.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

The revolt in the Warsaw ghetto was a final effort to resist the transport of the remaining ghetto population to death camps. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. Two months after the uprising, in which 13,000 Jews died, Himmler ordered all Polish and Russian Jewish ghettos to be closed. The remaining population was sent to death camps. In the following months, the Treblinka camp inmates rebelled (August 1943), and a revolt in the Sobibor death camp started on 14 October 1943. On 7 October 1944, the Sonderkommando who worked in the crematoria staged an uprising in Auschwitz.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

In the face of Soviet troops advancing into the Germany-occupied territories, in January 1945 Himmler ordered all camps to be evacuated. Approximately 58,000 Auschwitz detainees were evacuated on foot under SS guard to concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Many of them were shot when unable to continue the so-called Death March.

The Red Army arrived at Auschwitz on 27 January 1945; a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. During March and April 1945, other death camps were liberated by the British, Americans, and Soviets troops.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

The inevitable military defeat and news that the Italian resistance movement had executed Mussolini increased Hitlers determination to avoid capture. He shot himself in the head in his Berlin bunker rather than be taken prisoner by the encircling Soviet troops. On 8 May 1945, Germany surrendered.

In November 1945 twenty two Nazi political and military leaders were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust. The trial was held before an International Military Tribunal at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. The city was chosen for symbolic reasons, as it was considered to be the ceremonial birthplace of the Nazi party and the scene of many of its annual mass rallies. It lasted until 1 October 1946. Judges from Great Britain, France, the USSR, and the US presided over the hearing. At its conclusion they sentenced 12 of the accused to death and 3 to life imprisonment. Four others received jail terms of between 10 and 20 years, while the remaining 3 defendants were acquitted.

Photo credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Elizabeth Duddy1

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File: Holocaust remembrance - Council of Europe

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Born in Berlin in 1930, she was only three years old when Hitler came to power and the persecution of the Jews in Germany began.

Speaking at a virtual ceremony marking the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, Dr. Butter said the events that unfolded with the storming of the Capitol, showed that democracy is vulnerable, and we cannot take anything for granted.

It is up to us, to the people, to preserve and protect our democratic institutions and our Constitution, she stated, which is why she believes that everyone in the US needs to be educated about what took place during the Holocaust, from those who survived it.

We have that responsibility to be active citizens, to confront hatred, and to confront the violations of our democracy and in that way, it can be preserved and protected, she said.

Dr. Butter told of how her family fled to Amsterdam to escape the Nazis, but just two years later, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and the persecution of the Jews escalated.

We were deported to two concentration camps, she said. First a German concentration camp in Holland, and then to Bergen-Belsen in Germany because my father had managed to apply for Ecuadorian passports thinking that that might save our lives.

After one grueling year in Bergen-Belsen, their Ecuadorian passports enabled them to be included in a Nazi-administered prisoner-exchange programme.

But then, sadly my father died on the train to Switzerland and when we arrived in Switzerland, my mother and my brother were hospitalized immediately, she recalled.

Separated from her family, the then 14-year-old was sent to a refugee camp in Algiers for almost a year, before arriving in the US in 1945.

I was separated from my mother and my brother for eighteen months before we were reunited in New York to start a new life, she said. Ive lived in the United States ever since and was lucky to take advantage of so many opportunities.

Dr. Butter acknowledged that it took 40 years before she was able to follow the guidance of Elie Wiesel, who considered that providing testimony and bearing witnesses was the duty of all survivors.

Since the late 1980s, she has been teaching students about the Holocaust and the lessons she learned during those traumatic years, affirming the need never to become numb to what is happening in the here and now.

We have to continue and be awake and act, she said. Its very easy to get immersed in the day-to-day, but there are a lot of things that are happening around us and its really important to speak up.

According to Israeli Professor, Yehuda Bauer, the Holocaust was an unprecedented genocidebecause of its global form.

Jews were intended to be annihilated all over the world, not only in Europe, he said.

The professor warned that it was a precedent that can be repeated, so, when we deal with mass atrocity hate crimes today, with genocides today, we need to start from the Holocaustnot just for remembering but acting in accordance with the history that we are witnesses of.

We have to remember it, and we have to act in accordance with the lessons that we have learned from it, stressed Professor Bauer.

Ari Folman who also spoke during the day of online commemoration, is the son of Holocaust survivors who met and married in the Lodz ghetto.

His award-winning animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, recounts the story at the d ghetto in September 1942, where for three days, 15,000 Jewish children were deported to concentration camps never to return.

Mr. Folman quoted the very last sentence of the film in which an elderly Holocaust survivor from d says: Once we are all gone from this world, all the Holocaust survivors, the point of view that would be taken, looking back at the events, will be so far away - it will be like looking from a satellite on Jewish history in World War Two.

He said that that was the reason why he was dedicating eight years of his life to finding new dimensions, new ways of storytelling in regards of the Holocaust.

He said that for him, it was comics and animation that can be used for educational purposes, all over the world, to keep the story alive.

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US witnessed 'echoes of the Holocaust' during breach of the Capitol, says concentration camp survivor - UN News

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

(CNN) New galleries due to open in London's Imperial War Museum later this year will challenge commonly held views about the Holocaust, with a focus on the "ordinary" people who carried out the atrocity.

The Second World War and Holocaust Galleries will explore themes of persecution, escalation, the development of violence toward Jewish people, and the rise in tensions that followed World War I.

A V1 "doodlebug" bomb will occupy a space between the new Second World War and Holocaust Galleries.

Imperial War Museum

"The Holocaust looms large in contemporary culture but the version of it that looms large isn't necessarily the historic occurrence that was the Holocaust, it's a kind-of constructed, cultural re-imagining of it," historian James Bulgin, in charge of the new Holocaust Galleries' content, told CNN.

"That's built around certain, very centralized tropes, like deportation trains, selections at Auschwitz and gas chambers. Obviously all of those things are really important, but the Holocaust is a much bigger, much messier, complex history than that," he said.

The birth certificate of Eva Clarke, who was born in the Mauthausen concentration camp, will be on show.

Imperial War Museum

The museum has said the Holocaust Galleries, due to open in October, will examine the "ordinary" identity of the perpetrators, explaining who was responsible for these crimes, exploring their motivations and showing how seemingly normal they were in everyday life.

They will feature personal stories of both perpetrators and victims, alongside objects, documents and photographs aimed at helping visitors understand the cause, course and devastating consequences of the genocide.

Among the objects to be featured in the gallery will be the birth certificate of Eva Clarke, one of just three babies born in Mauthausen concentration camp who survived past liberation.

The galleries will be airy and well-lit, Bulgin said, to remind visitors that the atrocities happened "in our world."

"Allowing the Holocaust to become this apotheosis of industrialized genocide removes so much of the human dimension to it -- for experiencing it, but also those doing it," he said.

"In some people's imagination the process of genocide that the Holocaust represents was almost something that developed an unstoppable momentum, and it meant that the people who were doing the killing and the people who died were just part of an industrialized process," he said, adding that such an interpretation suggests that those who participated in the atrocities had no agency.

"But the reason the Holocaust developed as it did was because people -- individuals -- continued to make decisions day after day, week after week, month after month, even year after year," he added.

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A London museum wants to challenge common perceptions of the Holocaust - CNN

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