Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Reinier Heinsman, Opinion contributor Published 2:21 p.m. ET Jan. 27, 2021

They lost their parents and siblings to the death camps. But when it was time for these orphans to be deported, fate intervened.

When the Nazis raided a Belgian orphanageon Oct. 30, 1942,it was unthinkable that the arrested Jewish children, soon to be deported, would still be alive more than 78 years later. Earlier this month, they finally reunited.

Unaware of the fate they barely avoided, the young Jewish children innocently posed for a picture shortly after the rescue from the Dossin barracks the former Belgian transit camp from where Jews were deported. Their parents and in several cases their siblings as well had already been sent to Auschwitz. When the Nazis took the young orphans to the transit camp to be deported, fate intervened.

Trains were delayed and through various courageous individuals, the arrested orphans eventually reached the attention of Yvonne Nevejean, leader of the Children's National Care Authority in Belgium.Negotiations started with high-ranked Germans, after which an agreement to release the orphans was reached.

Jewish orphans in the Dossin Barracks, Belgium, in 1942. The orphans in the front row, from left to right, are Alfred Friedman, Roni Wolf, Annie Coughlin, Michael Hartogs and Fred Kader.(Photo: Marie Albert-Blum family)

Born between 1938 and 1940, none of the still-living children in the photo from 1942 were old enough to even remember their murdered family members. While conducting researchand tracing the fate of the orphans, I came to know many of them.

I was around 3.5 years old when my sister and two brothers were deported to Auschwitz, says Florida resident Alfred Friedman. I have no recollection of them at all. The death of his siblings left Friedman, whose mother survived the camps and reached the age of 102, with a void. Having no recollection of them, I focus more on abstract losses, like what could have been or should have been. Its hard to define as I have nothing to relate to, except wishing I had siblings to grow up with, feeling cheated and resentful that death stole my opportunity to have a relationship with them.

We have a duty to remember: My family's Jewish heritage was kept a secret. Now I mourn a relative I never knew.

Falls Church, Virginia, resident Michael Hartogs, born as Max Kohn, experienced the same kind of loss: Being just under four years of age when my parents and sister were deported, I have no memory of them at all.

Later in life, some of the orphans learned about the family they once had, such as retired pediatric neurologist Fred Kader, born as Frans Jeruzalski and also in the same 1942 photo. Kader, living in Omaha, came from a household of eight of which he is the sole survivor. He only learned about his murdered family when he was 21 years old. He explains: When I applied for citizenship in Canada and requested my Belgian birth certificate, someone who helped me from Belgium realized I was all by myself, and that person made a list of all of my family. That is how I finally learned about my parents and my siblings when I was already an adult.

The parents of the two girls in the center of the photo were also murdered in Auschwitz. Roni Wolf, who now lives in Israel, was 1 year old when her parents were deported. I found herpositive attitude remarkable: It doesnt really matter who the parents are or who arent, she says, as long as you have people loving you. It characterizes the strength of the survivors who lost their families at an age too young to understand what had happened to them.

Annie Coughlin, standing tothe right of Roni and nowadays living in South Carolina, had a surviving brother, Jacques, who was adopted by a different family. While Annie moved with her own adoptive parents to the United States, her brother remained in Belgium.

Despite their traumatic past, all of the survivors seemed to thrivein their adult life. Friedman, after retiring from manufacturing childrens wear, became a music producer and choreographer in Florida. Nicknamed Mr. Dance, he created Neodance, a dynamic fusion of rhythms and dance. Wolf, standing tothe right of Friedman, became the mother of local African children while living in apartheid South Africa for more than 10 years. Coughlin meanwhile became a teacher at a school for autistic children. Their difficult past led them to dedicate their life to helping children.

Life lessons at a death camp: 75 years ago, this Holocaust survivor reclaimed life. Now he works to erase hate.

As different as their adult lives are, they all share the same Belgian childhood. This month, more than 78 years after the picture was taken, they finally reconnected on Zoom, because of their distance, the virus, and their advanced age.

It gives us a chance to clear our traumatic past, says Wolf, When I learned about Annie right next to me in the picture, it felt like finding a sister. Hartogs shares the same sentiment. It does feel like family, he says. It fills in a lot of emptiness. We now have something that can bring back good memories in spite of our very sad beginnings.

Seventy-eight years after their rescue, the orphans in the picture from 1942 are becoming good friends once again.

Reinier Heinsman is alaw student and author from the Netherlands who traced and reunited the Belgian orphans. Hisbook "Jewish Orphans from Belgium in the Holocaust" is pending publication.

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, and shortly after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, Marlene Leddick, in Denver, reflects on the word survival.

DENVER January 27th is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Each year, the world remembers the lives lost, including millions of Jews killed by Nazis, and survivors like Marlene Leddick can share their stories.

I think its important that we recognize this day. Its not a wonderful day, its a very sad day. Its a remembrance, Leddick said Wednesday.

She was still a baby when her family fled their home in Paris, seeking safety in Northern Africa. But the horrors of the Holocaust found them there, too. While she was not imprisoned in a camp, she has many childhood memories of running, hiding and fear.

The sirens would come on. In total darkness, I remember having to put our coats on, and our shoes on, and run alongside the buildings. You had to do one person at a time because the planes would come down so low that they could see us. So, we had to be one person at a time running alongside the walls to go to the foxholes, she remembered.

I wasnt sure what was going on. All I knew is it was so dark, so very, very scary when youre 3-, 4-years-old, and youre being told run, run, run, dont look. Just keep moving.

Leddicks father died during the war. Her mother and three sisters survived but struggled. She remembers living in a tiny room with no running water and no bathroom. She remembers being cold and hungry.

Leddicks surviving family moved to the United States when she was 15 and settled in Florida. She made America her home, and eventually had her own family.

I have three children -- two sons and a daughter, she said. Wonderful, wonderful people. Ive been very, very blessed.

While war defined survivors' childhoods, the COVID-19 pandemic is a constant threat now, especially to older adults. Due to their age, some of Colorados Holocaust survivors are among the first to get their COVID-19 vaccines.

Leddick, 83, is one of them.

Today, she lives at Kavod Senior Life in Denver, in independent living.

So far, she has remained healthy. And this month, at the urging of her children, Leddick received her first shot of the vaccine.

I [have] to be truthful, I was a little bit apprehensive, she said. See, when I was little we used to get all kinds of shots. I have no idea what they were, werent, mixtures of something I had to drink.

My children said, 'Mom, go for it. Its going to be just fine.'

Leddick said she experienced no symptoms from her first shot. Shes scheduled to get her second in early February.

To have had the opportunity to have that shot, I felt like I won a million dollars, she said. They cared. They cared for us to be OK, to be safe.

Kavod representatives said the facility has so far vaccinated about 250 residents, both in assisted and independent living, including a few other Holocaust survivors besides Leddick.

Leddick said shes grateful for her survival and her health, for finding her home in America and at Kavod, and for her family.

In addition to her three children, she has six grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and one great-grandchild on the way.

I feel life is a blessing, its what you make of it.

And on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, she remembers.

Once were gone, we the survivors are gone, thats it. There will never be anyone to describe what happened, Leddick said. I feel its important that most people understand it did happen and that I hope it never happens again to anyone in any country.

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Wednesday, Jan. 27, marks Holocaust Memorial Day, also known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It's day designed to commemorate the tragedy of the Holocaust, a genocide that killed more than 6 million Jews and 11 million others during World War II.

For Grand Rapids native Linda Pestka, Holocaust Memorial Day is a somber but important reminder of how much still needs to be done to make sure nothing like the Holocaust ever happens again.

As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, it's a responsibility she takes very seriously.

Pestka's father, Henry Pestka, was one of the few in his family to survive the Holocaust. After the liberation of concentration camps, he came to the United States, eventually settling in Grand Rapids without a penny to his name.

He built a life for him and his family, becoming a successful real estate developer and pillar within the community. He died in 2013 at the age of 93.

Linda Pestka is a board member at the Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids. She said she feels a responsibility to her father to continue telling his story and the story of those who suffered through the Holocaust.

"Since so many people who were in the Holocaust are now deceased, it is really now the responsibility of children of survivors like myself to keep bringing that message out. That 'yes, this did really happen,'" Pestka said.

Pestka is alarmed by the amount of misinformation claiming the Holocaust was exaggerated or never happened. She said it shows why there needs to be more education and awareness, to make sure the coming generations know the grim truth and do everything in their power to avoid repeating history.

The theme for this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is "Bringing Light to Darkness."

Pestka said she has been saddened by the rising incidents of anti-Semitism and hate around the world, calling it a somber reminder that more work needs to be done.

"What we do makes a difference and how we choose our own behaviors," she said. "So to me, when I hear about those things...we need to do more."

The Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids is unable to host any major programs this year due to the pandemic.

To learn more and get involved in the Federation's mission, visit their website at http://www.jewishgrandrapids.org.

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Back to the basics of celebrating independent cinema, actors say a virtual Sundance is better: "People around the world now have access." (Jan. 29) AP Entertainment

Get ready for your next documentary obsession.

The riveting "Misha and the Wolves," which premiered Sunday at Sundance Film Festivaland was picked up for release by Netflix, tells the unbelievable story of writer MishaDefonseca, a Belgian woman living in Massachusetts with a jaw-droppingtaleof how she survived the Holocaust.

In the mid-1990s, Defonseca told her friends about growing up as a young Jewish girl during World War II and beingsent to live with a Catholic family after her parents were arrested by the Nazis. The family was crueland she ran away,walking nearly 2,000 miles to Germany in search of her parents. All alone with justa compass and a knife, she says she befriended a pack of wolves in the forest, who "accepted and protected" her on the journey.

Ranked: All the best movies we saw at Sundance Film Festival (including werewolf tale 'Eight for Silver')

Stranger-than-fiction documentary "Misha and the Wolves" premiered Sunday at Sundance Film Festival.(Photo: SUNDANCE INSTITUTE)

Astonished by heraccount, small publisher Jane Daniel saw potential for a hit book, and in 1997published "Misha: A Mmoire of the Holocaust Years," which Defonseca authored with a ghostwriter.The memoir was a modest success, which Daniel hoped to boostwith a bookedappearance on "Oprah." But Defonseca unexpectedly canceled the night before the interview,and proceeded to sue her publisher for unpaid royalties. Daniel was financially ruined; meanwhile, the book became a sensation in Europe with a different publisher.

To say much more about "Misha" would spoil its many twists and turns, and resulting legal actions. The rest of the documentary plays like an espionage thriller, as Daniel enlists historians and genealogists to help uncover Defonseca's past and see if she was scammed.

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"Misha" director Sam Hobkinson initially read aboutDefonseca's court case in a newspaper article in 2014.

"I went back and researched the story, and couldn't believe it was true," Hobkinson said in a post-screening Q&A. "It started with me finding what I thought would be a great story about storytelling. I wasn't in the market to make a Holocaust documentary, but I realized that we ended up making a kind of Holocaust documentary, albeitquite a different one."

Belgian author MishaDefonseca claims she was taken in by a pack of wolves as she trekked to Germany alone during World War II.(Photo: SUNDANCE INSTITUTE)

The project proved difficult to finance, largely because it casts doubt on someone who says they survived the Holocaust. Six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in the early 1940s, yetHolocaust denial runs rampant in online forums such as Facebook. Anti-Semitic attacks hit an all-time high in the U.S. in 2019, and a recent survey found a "shocking" lack of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Gen Z.

Survey: Almost two-thirds of millennials, Gen Z don't know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust

"People were worried because they didn't want to be involved in something that would fan the flames of Holocaust denial," Hobkinson said. "Of course,that was foremost in our minds from the outset. We've always felt this isdifficult territory, but you shouldn't shy away from it. You'vegot to tackle the difficult subjects head-on. And I hope that we wrestle the story back from the Holocaust denial camp."

Part of the way "Misha" accomplishes that is by puttingEvelyne Haendel, a Holocaust survivor in Belgium, front and center. Haendel becomes a crucial character in the documentary's second half, when she's hired to investigateDefonseca and her family. She ultimately gets the lastword,speaking frankly aboutDefonseca and her motivations at the film's end.

Balancing the documentary's sensational mysterywith actual survivor stories was "paramount, because wedidn't want to feel we wereplaying intothe hands of Holocaust deniers," Hobkinson said."And the more we got to know Evelyne, the more we realized she was our star, really. She's the sort of central, moral good. She was so honest and so open and so thoughtful in our interview that she became a much bigger part of the film."

"Misha and the Wolves" will have a second virtual screening Tuesday (10 a.m. ET) at Sundance.

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Facebook is banning posts that deny or distort the Holocaust and will start directing people to authoritative sources if they search for information about the Nazi genocide. (Oct. 12) AP Domestic

Holocaust denial content remains on Facebook three months after pledging to ban all content that denies or distorts the Holocaust.

That's according to a new report from theAnti-Defamation League, which gave Facebook a D for its efforts.

The ADLs CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said the report released Wednesday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, shows thatFacebook and other major social media platforms are still struggling to address anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial effectively.

Among the pieces of content cited by the ADL that Facebook did not take down: a post promoting an anti-Semitic video that claims to expose "lies" about the Holocaust, and aprivate Facebook group dedicated to Holocaust Revisionism.

Facebook removed the content after being contacted by USA TODAY.

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We don't agree weve made major progress in fighting Holocaust denial on Facebook by implementing a new policy prohibiting it and enforcing against these hateful lies in every country around the world,"Facebook spokespersonDani Lever told USA TODAY. "We are reviewing the content mentioned in this report and will continue working to keep Holocaust denial off of our platform."

Separately, Facebook told USA TODAY that it will now directpeople who search for information aboutthe Holocaust to authoritative sources.

"Anyone who searches on Facebook for terms associated with either the Holocaust or Holocaust denial, will see a message from Facebook encouraging them to connect with credible information about the Holocaust off Facebook,"Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity,said in a blog post.

Mainstream social media, which were slow to crack down on Holocaust denial, have been blamed for handinghate groups powerful megaphones to spread baseless and harmfulconspiracy theories thatdistort the public understanding of the Nazi genocide that killed 6 million Jews.

In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg drew a sharp backlash when he defended the rights of Holocaust deniers to air their views on Facebook, saying his company would not remove content that was factually inaccurate even it was personally offensive to him.

After nearly a decade of campaigning by the ADL and personal pleas from Holocaust survivors, Facebook reversed that stance in October, saying it would now treat Holocaust denial as hate speech instead of misinformation.

Facebooks vice president of content policy, Monika Bickert,cited rising anti-Semitism and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people, for the policy change.

Facebook removed large Holocaust denial groups from the platform. Efforts to remove Facebook groups denying the Holocaust and calling it a Holohoax dateback as far as 2009.At the same time, Facebook also banned anti-Semitic stereotypes.

An iPhone displays the Facebook app(Photo: Jenny Kane, AP)

When Facebook began restricting more content, some Holocaust deniers, who use hashtags such as #HolocaustNeverHappened and #HolocaustIsALie, moved to less-restrictive social media platforms.

Ive struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust, Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post at the time, acknowledging the real-world harms caused by hate spreading on his platforms.

Drawing the right lines between what is and isnt acceptable speech isnt straightforward, said Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, but with the current state of the world, I believe this is the right balance.

The ADL, which for nearly a decade publicly called on Facebook to take down content that denies the Holocaust, saysFacebook either refused to remove the majority of content flagged by anonymous users or did not respond.

The ADL report card found that Twitch was the most responsive platform with the most robust policies to address Holocaust denial, followed by Twitter, Googles YouTube, Roblox and TikTok, each of whom got C's for their efforts.

Facebook'sapp Instagram, Discord, Reddit and Steamearned D's.

In a statement to USA TODAY early Wednesday, Reddit said it removed the contentcited in the report.

"Reddit's site-wide policies prohibit any content that incites violence or promotes hate based on identity or vulnerability, including Holocaust denial content," the company said.

The ADL did not review alternative social media platforms such as Gab and Parler, which experienced a surge of new users as mainstream social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter cracked down on baseless claims of election fraud.

The social media platforms surveyed by the ADL were graded based on how comprehensive their policies are in addressing Holocaust denial, how such content appearsand how responsive each was in dealing with the content once it was flagged.

Twitter and Twitch were the only platforms in the study who took immediate action when Holocaust denial content was reported to them by anonymous users, the ADL said. Other platforms included in the study either maintained that the content did not violate their policies or did not respond.

This is truly shameful at a time when anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are spreading globally, some outrageously based on the big lie that the Holocaust never happened, Greenblatt said.

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

GENEVA (27 January 2021) UN experts* said today States must take resolute action against rising antisemitism and ensure deniers of the Holocaust and all levels of society are effectively educated about the Holocaust and other manifestations of antisemitism. Reminding governments of their international human rights obligations, the UN experts issued the following statement marking the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on 27 January, 1945.

In 2019, reports by the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief and the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism documented a dramatic and persistent increase in antisemitic rhetoric and incidents in many countries in recent years, both offline and online. During 2020, these trends grew even more worrying, with widespread reports of antisemitic rhetoric on social media and in traditional media outlets, promoting outrageous conspiracy theories and attributing responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic to Jews, as noted by the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief in an April 2020 statement and by the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism in an August 2020 report.

The antisemitic rhetoric and incidents seen over the past year have included notable examples of Holocaust denial, including in some cases by government officials and state-sponsored media, with particular effect on young people in many countries, as well as distortions of the Holocausts scope and intentionality during public demonstrations in the context of the COVID-19 public health crisis.

It is clear that when left unchecked, distortion and denial of the Holocaust in which six million Jews, alongside members of other targeted groups were murdered in a uniquely brutal, systematic and state-sanctioned campaign of antisemitic extermination, dehumanisation and persecution can undermine States ability to protect and promote human rights. Not only can these and other forms of antisemitic expression create a climate of fear in which Jews are unable to manifest their religion and identity, but they can also threaten the rights to liberty and security and to take part in cultural life and equality and non-discrimination of all by encouraging the spread of conspiracy theories, stereotyping and harmful prejudices.

Today, we call for public figures to condemn Holocaust denial and distortion and for States to urgently step up educational, training and awareness-raising efforts that counter antisemitic stereotypes and prejudices and that include accurate information about the Holocaust, at all levels of society.

We commend recent efforts by some social media platforms to tackle cyberhate targeting Jews and other minorities, by prohibiting content that denies or distorts the Holocaust and by directing users to credible information about it.

These measures must be consistently and systematically adopted, implemented, and enforced, including through concrete regulatory policies and terms of service, while respecting the freedoms of expression and of the press.

We recall the 2005 UN General Assembly resolution 60/7, which urges Member States to educate future generations about the Holocaust and which reaffirms that it will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.

Recent events have served as a painful reminder of the potential for antisemitic conspiracy theories and misinformation to contribute to an environment in which violence, discrimination, and hatred can flourish. We urge stakeholders to come together and act, in line with a human rights approach, to ensure more effectively that the facts of the Holocaust are known and appreciated, and to counter Holocaust distortion and denial and other similarly harmful antisemitic narratives, in the years ahead.

* The experts: Mr. Ahmed Shaheed,Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief; Ms. Tendayi Achiume,Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; Ms. Irene Khan,Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Mr. Clment Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; Ms. Fionnuala N Aolin,Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism; Mr. Fernand de Varennes,Special Rapporteur on minority issues; Ms. Karima Bennoune, Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; Ms. Agns Callamard,Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as theSpecial Proceduresof the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Councils independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntarybasis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

Follow news related to the UNs independent human rights experts on Twitter@UN_SPExperts

Concerned about the world we live in?Then STAND UP for someones rights today.#Standup4humanrightsand visit the web page athttp://www.standup4humanrights.org

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

On January 6 the world watched as domestic terrorists stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC. The pictures seared into our memories of this day are replete with symbols of hatred, racism, and extremism: The Confederate battle flag, the white power hand gesture, and the gallows erected near the Capitol reflecting pool.

What many may not have noticed within this sea of white supremacy was the prominence of anti-Semitic images: the black sweatshirt reading Camp Auschwitz, Work Brings Freedom, and T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan: 6MWE = 6 million wasnt enough above Italian fascist symbols. Those who wore these shirts invoked the Holocaust, not to deny it, but to promote the continuation of its aims and ideology.

Sixteen years ago, the UN officially declared January 27 an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of victims of the Holocaust. By the time Soviet troops arrived at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, the SS forcibly had marched almost 60,000 starved and exhausted prisoners from the Auschwitz camp system westward into Germany; more than 15,000 would die on such death marches. At this camp, the Nazis exterminated 1.1 million people, 90% of whom were Jewish.

Among those Jewish prisoners liberated at Auschwitz, however, was a 25-year-old Italian chemist by the name of Primo Levi. Two years later, Levi would publish his account of his 11 months at Auschwitz under the title If This is a Man (later translated into English as Survival in Auschwitz). Levis account of Auschwitz focused not only on the day-to-day existence of the camp and the interactions amongst the prisoners he encountered there, but also dissected, in clinical and dispassionate fashion, what Levi termed the demolition of man, the process whereby the inmates at Auschwitz were completely dehumanized.

The existence of Auschwitz serves as a reminder of just what humans are capable of. When we teach about Auschwitz, we must remember that the camp stands as a symbol of the failure of humanity to stand up to unchecked hatred, bigotry, and tyranny, as a symbol of the challenge that confronts good people when faced with the absolute worst of human behavior.As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reminds us: The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.

In recent years, this noticeable rise in hate speech, antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia has provided renewed momentum to legislative efforts to fix the problem, and by the end of last year, 16 states mandated some form of Holocaust and genocide education. Even so, state boards of education rarely provide the additional resources necessary to gain specialized training on the topic. Thus, the memory of the Holocaust is actually subverted and trivialized, used by politicians to avoid doing the hard work of fixing a broken educational system. Indeed, as Alvin Rosenfeld argued in The End of the Holocaust: the very success of the Holocausts wide dissemination in the public sphere can work to undermine its gravity and render it a more familiar thing. . . . Made increasingly familiar through repetition, it becomes normalized.

Aseducators, we know that the fix to rampant and willful ignorance, baseless hatred, and vile behavior is not so simple. We need a massive investment in basic internet and information literacy to save our democracy. Our belief in democracy rests on humans ability to reason, to separate fact from fiction, myth, and conspiracy theories. Equipping people with these basic tools is a starting point. We absolutely need to teach our students about Auschwitz and about gas chambers, but we also must teach them to distinguish between historical facts and the twisted lies of conspiratorial fiction and propaganda.

Teaching the Holocaust, alone, is not the solution to confronting antisemitism, racism, bigotry, and hatred.Teaching the Holocaust, alone, out of context, will not save our democracy. We need a systematic framework that teaches students the responsibilities of citizenship, the basics of human rights, and addresses massive income disparities and wealth gaps that plague public education in this country.

Teachers need to be trained how to teach difficult topics, how to engage in difficult conversations, and not to avoid what feels uncomfortable. If teachers teach the Holocaust, they need to be able to explain how easily a democracy can be subverted, how easy it is for ordinary people to turn their heads and look away, and how a system of discrimination can evolve into a policy of extermination.

Thepervasiveness of the symbols of the Holocaust swastikas, facile comparisons to concentration camps and Nazism across the political spectrum indicate that the lessons of the Holocaust have not been learned. Indeed, they have become completely trivialized. This at a time whenNazis are literally marching in torch-light parades, carrying out pogroms in synagogues, and attempting to take over Congress.

Holocaust denial and distortion is not new, but for a long time it was fostered by a relatively small number of lunatic conspiracy theorists. The growth of the right-wing internet and social media means that a prominent space now exists, purposefully built and shared, where antisemitism, racism, and white supremacy can feed off one another.

The crowd that attacked the Capitol on 6 January not only proudly demonstrated their white supremacist beliefs but also indicated their readiness to put beliefs into action. They seek to use violence and hatred to create a world that matches their goal: destruction of those who believe in the equality of humans.

Holocaust education, by itself, will not be enough. Let us resolve to teach our young people how to determine the difference between historical fact and fiction. Let us equip our students with the tools to recognize hate speech, conspiracy theories, and dubious web resources. Let us hold big tech companies accountable for profiting off organized hate and discrimination, while hiding behind claims to free speech only when it is convenient. Let us hold them responsible for funding basic internet and information literacy. Maybe then we can help people understand why taking over Congress in an Auschwitz shirt is indicative of deep and real threats to our democracy.

Avinoam Pattis a Professor and Director of Judaic Studiesat the University of Connecticut. Laura Hilton is a history professor at Muskingum University in Ohio.

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or onbangordailynews.com.

There were many shocking things about the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol. The biggest, of course, is that such an attempted insurrection happened at all.

The imagery from that horrific day the Confederate Flag being marched through the building for the first time in history, a man dressed all in black carrying plastic handcuffs hopping over railings in the U.S. Senate will stay with us for decades.

There was also a man in a sweatshirt with words that are so troubling we are reluctant to reprint them. Camp Auschwitz, was emblazoned across the front over a skull and the phrase Work Brings Freedom. Thats a rough translation of the German words above the gate to the largest and most notorious Nazi concentration camp where more than 1 million prisoners, most of them Jewish, were killed.

On the back, the shirt said Staff.

The man wearing the shirt has since been arrested and charged for his involvement in the events at the U.S. Capitol. Etsy and other online retailers who sold the shirts have removed them from their sites. Of course, it is troubling that they were there in the first place.

Antisemitism, sadly, is not new. But, it appears to be on the rise. In America, Jews account for about 2 percent of the population. Yet, nearly 60 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes were targeted at Jews, according to the latest figures from the FBI. In 2019, Jews were the second most frequent targets of hate crimes. Incidents against Black people remain the most prevalent.

Overall, religious hate crimes are decreasing but anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

David Greenham, the interim executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center in Augusta, says he is not sure that anti-Semitism is on the rise, but it is showing more, he told the Bangor Daily News.

That was clear on Jan. 6, when a mob that included white supremacists, people in the thrall of QAnon conspiracy theories, Trump supporters, stormed the U.S. Capitol. That these folks felt it was just fine to take over the Capitol and to film themselves doing it and to wear a shirt like that, is a reminder that this hard work is not done, Greenham said, referring to the offensive sweatshirt.

But, he sees a positive side to these actions and hatreds being brought into the open, as they should prompt us to have conversations about them and how and why they happened.

We cant be indifferent, he said.

There is urgency to this work.

Wednesday marks the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet soldiers. The day is now remembered as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Seventy-six years after the end of the war, memories of the Holocaust are fading. A recent study found that nearly two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 40 did not know the scope of the Holocaust and only half could name a single concentration camp or ghetto. More than a third thought fewer than 2 million Jews were killed (the actual number is 6 million, about two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe at the time) and more than half did not know of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 1 million men, women and children were murdered.

Nearly half of those surveyed by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany had seen Holocaust denial or distortion of social media, and 30 percent had seen Nazi symbols showing the prevelance of efforts to erase or downplay the Holocaust and to glorify Nazis.

Despite their general lack of knowledge, 59 percent of survey respondents said they believed something like the Holocaust which began with propaganda and systemized discrimination against homosexuals, people with mental and physical disabilities, gypsies and others, including Jews, who were deemed a threat to the German race could happen again.

As the horrors of the Holocaust fade, there are troubling signs that its lessons about intolerance, disinformation and systemic discrimination are being forgotten, at the U.S. Capitol, and in Maine.

Last year, a swastika was painted over a sign in Waldo supporting Black Lives Matter. In Bangor this past June, a swastika was painted on the street outside the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue, Maines oldest. The synagogue and Beth Abraham were vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti in 2012 as well.

Our collective revulsion at the Holocaust and those who mock or minimize it remains vitally important as the U.S. struggles to address racial, economic and other disparities and as Americans too often divide along lines of race, religion, gender identity and political affiliation.

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On this remembrance day, lessons of the Holocaust take on new urgency - Bangor Daily News

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

A report issued this week by the Anti-Defamation League has found that a majority of mainstream digital platforms are responding inadequately to content that promotes Holocaust denial, despite specific pledges by some of these companies to fight it.

Online Holocaust Denial Report Card looked at the various ways popular social media websites, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, handle Holocaust denial.

Released Wednesday on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the report considered whether the company has an explicit policy barring Holocaust denial, how quickly it responded to a post containing such content, and whether any action was taken.

The results, according to ADL researchers, were not very good.

Allowing this sort of hateful, toxic [rhetoric] to become so prevalent and normalized threatens the values of our society, Daniel Kelley told J. He is the reports author and the associate director of the ADLs Center for Technology and Society in Silicon Valley, launched in 2016 to combat online hate. Thats why it matters.

Kelley used his personal social media accounts to search for Holocaust denial content, and then reported it to the respective companies.

Kelley and other ADL staffers assessed how nine popular online platforms approach Holocaust denial and then gave each a grade. The livestreaming and gaming service Twitch received the highest grade, a B. Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and the gaming platform Roblox received Cs. Facebook/Instagram, Reddit, the video game distribution company Steam and the messaging platform Discord all received Ds.

Aside from TikTok and Steam, all of the companies are headquartered in the Bay Area.

Twitch, which allows people to livestream content especially online gamers who want to show themselves playing a game received the highest marks because the company has an explicit policy banning Holocaust denial content. The company also responded within 24 hours to a post and took action against it.

That was in contrast with YouTube (owned by Google), which like Twitch has a policy barring Holocaust denial on its platform. But YouTube did not respond within 24 hours to a video Kelley found promoting Holocaust denial and subsequently did not take action on it, either, according to the report.

One major conclusion Kelley drew was that even when there are established policies surrounding hate speech, they are not the end all, be all of eradicating it. Companies must take meaningful enforcement steps if they are to try to rein in Holocaust denial, he said.

The most surprising finding of the report and something Kelley thinks is most fixable was that none of the online platforms appear to have a system or rationale they can use to measure whether flagged Holocaust denial content is indeed over the line.

The report also included startling statistics about how widespread Holocaust denial content is on the internet.

For example, it cited a September 2020 survey from the Claims Conference, a group in charge of German reparations for Holocaust survivors, noting that 49 percent of Americans under 40 were exposed to Holocaust denial or distortion across social media. The report also cited an ADL study from last year that found 10 percent of online gamers have encountered Holocaust denial.

Kelley conceded that the sheer size of these platforms, which in some cases have billions of users, presents a serious challenge for the companies.

If a social media company has 1 billion users, he said, and they each post once a day, even a 99 percent success rate in monitoring all that shared content would still leave 10 million other problematic posts that could potentially slip through the cracks.

The issues of content moderation are really about choosing which mistakes they make, Kelley said. Theyre going to make mistakes. The scales are too massive for there not to be mistakes. Its just a question about where to put those resources on how to address those mistakes.

Even when online platforms have publicly announced efforts to curb Holocaust denial, their success has varied.

Last October, Facebook announced it would ban such content after major outcry from Holocaust survivors and academics. CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously had said Holocaust denial did not violate company content moderation rules. On Jan. 27, Facebook released a fact check box to direct users to information about the history of the Holocaust.

But Kelleys report found that Facebook was the only platform in our investigation that either failed to respond to our reports, or claimed the content we reported did not violate its Holocaust denial policy.

Twitter also has faced backlash for Holocaust denial on its platform. On Jan. 11, activists from the End Jew Hatred group protested outside CEO Jack Dorseys home in San Francisco. While Twitter announced last October that it, too, would crack down on Holocaust denial, the activists said such content was still easy to find.

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ADL social media Holocaust denial report card: C's and D's all around - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Josh Frydenberg has warned antisemitism is on the rise in Australia and the treasurer says there is an obligation on all good people to take on hate wherever we see it.

The treasurer told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Holocaust Memorial Day that given the age of survivors, memories were fading about the darkest chapter in human history.

Frydenberg said antisemitism was on the rise locally, and Holocaust denial was in evidence globally. He said these trends needed to be called out and Holocaust education is part of the response.

Weve seen antisemitic acts on the rise against kids in Victorian schools including, tragically, kids as young as five, Frydenberg said on Wednesday.

Weve seen swastikas daubed across businesses that happen to be owned by Jews or Jewish sites or indeed on material for a theatre production of Anne Frank, of all things.

Lets not forget what US general Dwight Eisenhower said when he confronted those horrific images at the [concentration] camps in 1945 as part of the allied forces he said there would come a day when people would deny the Holocaust ever happened.

Im afraid there is a rise in historical revisionism we saw Iran, for example, holding a conference denying the Holocaust ever took place, and therefore it is incumbent on all good people, Jewish and non-Jewish across the world, to place an emphasis on Holocaust remembrance but also Holocaust education and genocides more broadly whether it is in Darfur, or Rwanda or Cambodia we need to promote tolerance and diversity and take on hate wherever we see it.

Frydenberg congratulated the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, for requiring high school students to study the Holocaust, but suggested more needed to be done across the country. He attributed rising antisemitism to a lack of education and understanding.

The Morrison government intends to work with the ACT government to establish a Holocaust museum in the national capital.

The treasurers comments on Wednesday come amid rising concern both in Australia and internationally about rightwing extremism.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation revealed last year that far-right violent extremism constituted up to 40% of its counter-terrorism caseload a significant increase.

Since the Christchurch massacre, Asio has been blunt about the growing risk of far-right terrorism, labelling it an enduring threat that is real and growing.

Asios deputy director general of intelligence service delivery, Heather Cook, told a parliamentary committee last year the coronavirus pandemic had contributed to an increase in radicalisation, in particular because of the amount of time individuals are spending in isolation, working from home, or not in school.

She said with more people working remotely and spending increased time online it is much easier to find like-minded individuals with exposure to a much wider variety of chat groups and areas where these views can coalesce.

A federal inquiry will investigate the rise of extremism in Australia. The parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security will run an inquiry examining the nature, extent and threat of extremist movements in Australia.

The Labor MP Anne Aly, an expert in counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation, had attempted to force the issue by pursuing a motion in the House of Representatives last year that would have referred the issue to the intelligence and security committee.

But the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, ultimately agreed to launch the inquiry.

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Antisemitism and Holocaust denial on the rise in Australia, Josh Frydenberg warns - The Guardian

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