Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

W. Joseph Campbell, American University School of Communication

(THE CONVERSATION) Polling is hardly a flamboyant field that attracts a lot of colorful characters. It is a rather reserved profession that now finds itself under siege in the aftermath of yet another polling surprise in a national election.

The field is buffeted by intense criticism by even extreme claims that it may be doomed following mischaracterizations in national polls that former Vice President Joe Biden was bound for a blowout victory.

Many preelection polls suggested it was to be a blue wave election in which Biden would easily take over the White House, while fellow Democrats would sweep to control in the Senate and fortify their majority in the House of Representatives.

The 2020 election was closer and more complex than most national polls indicated, and it marked the second successive polling surprise in a U.S. presidential election. In 2016, polls in key Great Lakes states underestimated support for Donald Trump, states that were crucial to his winning the White House.

In its troubled hour, polling could use a prominent, outspoken and irreverent character who knows the professions intricacies and whose default isnt to defensiveness. Such a figure could place pollings latest misstep in useful and plausible perspective, and do so candidly, without seeming too haughty or arcane about it.

To prove were not yellow

Polling has no such colorful, outspoken character now. It did once, in Burns (Bud) Roper, the Iowa-born son of a pioneer in modern survey research, Elmo Roper. Bud Roper was disarming enough to tell a newspaper reporter in the 1950s: I guess the main reason we do these election polls at all is to prove were not yellow, or cowardly.

Roper, who died in 2003, was in polling much of his adult life, entering his fathers market research firm after World War II. He retired as the companys chairman in 1994. He was around when the Roper poll dramatically miscalled the 1948 presidential election, predicting that Thomas E. Dewey would defeat President Harry Truman by 15 percentage points.

Truman won reelection by 4.5 points, which meant Ropers polling error was a staggering 19.5 percentage points almost as dreadful as the Literary Digest failure in 1936, when the venerable magazines mail-in survey erroneously pegged Alf Landon to unseat President Franklin D. Roosevelt by a wide margin.

The 1936 debacle occurred at the dawn of modern opinion research and, as I write in my latest book, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections, it left a legacy of nagging doubt about the effectiveness of polling in estimating election outcomes.

Nonetheless, it is also true that journalists, and the public, inevitably turn to polls and the illusion of precision they offer in seeking clarity about the dynamics of a presidential campaign. Even after the back-to-back embarrassments in 2016 and 2020, election polling is surely not destined for collapse or dissolution. Polling may be an unglamorous profession; it also is a hardy one.

Bud Ropers long career traced fairly well pollings entrenchment in American politics and culture. He once said that he entered the field when it was somewhere between a kooky off-the-wall and an established industry.

In some ways, Ropers most noteworthy contribution was candor and a refreshing disinclination to take survey research all that seriously. In that sense, he was like his father, who began conducting preelection polls in 1936 but came to doubt their value.

In the run-up to the 1948 election, for example, Elmo Roper equated polling to a stunt, like balancing cocktail glasses on top of each other or tearing a telephone book in two. Its impressive. It has a certain fascination. But it tells us very little that we wouldnt find out even if poll-taking had never been invented.

Bud Roper similarly tended toward colorful outspokenness. He was not hesitant to call out his profession for its shortcomings and flaws.

Largely art

In 1984, at a time when election polling was going through another rough patch, Bud Roper said in a speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Our polling techniques have gotten more and more sophisticated, yet we seem to be missing more and more elections.

Roper was frank about some of pollings unresolved headaches, such as differentiating between likely and unlikely voters a determination crucial to a surveys accuracy.

One of the trickiest parts of an election poll is to determine who is likely to vote and who is not, Roper once said, adding with characteristic frankness, I can assure you that this determination is largely art.

The likely-voter conundrum remains a defiant and persistent problem. It also is an important reason that election polling is a blend of art and science, which Roper liked to emphasize. In fact, he said it tended to be more art than science.

I have heard it said that opinion research is half art and half science, Roper stated in an address to members of the American Association for Public Opinion Research at the close of his yearlong presidential term in 1983. I would say that a good deal more than half is art and correspondingly less than half is science.

Roper held some out-of-the-mainstream ideas about polling. He was not enamored with surveys conducted by telephone, noting they too often interrupted respondents and disrupted their routines. Roper argued, somewhat vaguely, a solution to the sharp decline in response rates to telephone surveys was to go back to personal interviews. Telephone wont do it, internet wont do it, email wont do it, he said late in his life.

He added: I dont have all the answers as to how, but if [the problem of declining response rates] is not solved, I think the industry as weve known it is going to be oh, itll survive, but its going to survive with worse and worse results every time we go up.

Taking responsibility for a bad poll

Roper was not one to sidestep controversy. He conceded error without hesitation when, in 1993, his company conducted a survey for the American Jewish Committee that suggested 22% of Americans doubted the Holocaust had occurred.

It was a surprising, controversial and off-target finding that Roper soon questioned, noting the questions wording included a double negative and should have been rephrased. When the question was revised and posed in a separate survey, only 1.1% of the respondents said they doubted the Holocaust.

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Roper said he regretted that the original polls finding served to misinform the public, to scare the Jewish community needlessly and to give aid and comfort to the neo-Nazis who have a commitment to Holocaust denial.

In saying so, Roper showed he could stand up and take responsibility for a bad poll. Its a lesson that has enduring relevance.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/in-its-troubled-hour-polling-could-use-an-irreverent-figure-to-reset-expectations-149810.

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In its troubled hour, polling could use an irreverent figure to reset expectations - Huron Daily Tribune

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

OTTAWA NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says the Liberal government must do more to tackle the growing threat of hate groups.

The past five years have seen a proliferation of neo-Nazi groups and online content from the so-called alt-right, a white nationalist movement, with experts saying the number of hate groups in Canada has tripled to 300 since 2015.

Fatal attacks, including at a Toronto mosque in September and the Quebec City mosque shooting in 2017, make demands for a federal response all the more urgent, Singh said.

"Radicalized white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the alt-right have resulted in the deaths of people," he said, highlighting the threat to Canada's Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and racialized communities.

"Mothers talk to me of the fear they have for their kids going out into the community, worried about the violence they might face."

At a virtual meeting with advocates Tuesday, Singh endorsed an action plan by the National Council of Canadian Muslims calling for federal legislation that would allow authorities to shut down white supremacist organizations that do not meet the threshold for a militia or terrorist entity.

The plan also demands authorities move more proactively to dismantle hate groups under existing provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act and the Criminal Code.

Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, says national law enforcement agencies need to establish dedicated anti-hate crime divisions.

"Right now it is, in my view, one of the most dangerous times in Canadian history when it comes to extreme right-wing violence," said Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, which disbanded in 2011.

Twenty-two people have been killed as a result of right-wing radicalization over the past four years, he said, including the 10 who died during the van attack in Toronto two years ago.

The trial for Alek Minassian, who told police he planned and carried out the attack in April 2018 but has pleaded not criminally responsible, began via video conference Tuesday.

Minassian told interrogators he corresponded before the attack with two mass murderers motivated by the misogynist "incel" culture propagated by males claiming to be "involuntary celibate."

Hate groups and white supremacist ideas are "wildly enabled" by mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and message boards like 8chan, but also fringe platforms including Gab, Telegram and Parler, says Barbara Perry of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism.

"Were also seeing a lot more of what Ive been calling floaters people who dont necessarily affiliate with any particular group but, given the availability of online venues, sort of move in and out of social media platforms, cherry-picking narratives that seem to fit their own grievances or their own lot in life," Perry said in a phone interview.

A toxic blend of borderless white nationalism, sporadically enforced social media policies and flimsy legal resistance has metastasized into radicalization and occasional acts of deadly violence.

"I think its been a perfect storm. Now into the current context you add COVID and the conspiracy theories that are circulating around that 'Blame the Jews,' or 'Blame the Asians,'" Perry said.

Advocates, including Perry and the national Muslim council, met virtually with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and Diversity Minister Bardish Chagger on Monday evening to discuss possible solutions.

The Liberal government has repeatedly pledged to do more to combat hate speech online. During the last election they promised new regulations for social media platforms, including a requirement that they remove "illegal content, including hate speech, within 24 hours or face significant penalties."

"White supremacy and violence have no place in Canada," Blair said in an email Tuesday.

He highlighted law enforcement efforts such as listing terrorist entities under the Criminal Code, a step that freezes their assets and makes it a crime to knowingly handle them.

The neo-Nazi groups Combat 18 and Blood & Honour were listed last year, the first time right-wing extremist groups were added, Blair noted.

"There's 298 more," said Mustafa Farooq, head of the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

"Its rare to see prosecutions, despite the preponderance of hate materials that we see," said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, policy director at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto.

Anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise since 2016, exceeding 2,200 last year, according to advocacy group B'nai Brith Canada.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said most of them begin online.

He and Conservative MP Marty Morantz are part of a task force launched this fall that includes politicians from Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States who aim to push their legislatures to pass similar laws and collectively pressure web companies to act.

"Ayatollah (Ali) Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has tweeted vile anti-Semitic content multiple times in the past month, and Twitter has not flagged it," Housefather said in a phone interview.

He said companies should work harder to contextualize or remove hateful posts.

Facebook has been slow to root out insidious conspiracy theories, but banned hate speech linked to harmful stereotypes earlier this year, including anti-Semitic posts. It went further last month by banning Holocaust denial.

The Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism hosted its first virtual briefing with community organizations Tuesday evening.

Monday and Tuesday marked the anniversary of Kristallnacht also known as the "Night of Broken Glass" a 1938 pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany that saw scores of civilians killed, stores and synagogues smashed and thousands rounded up for concentration camps.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2020.

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Singh says government must move to counter hate groups, which have tripled since 2015 - Kamloops This Week

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

In the days before the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, President Trump was on Twitter doing battle with Twitter.

As the incumbent tweeted through the slow vote-tallying process that would ultimately end in his loss, Twitter had covered much of Trump's timeline with warning labels cautioning that the president's posts contained disputed and potentially misleading information. Trump responded by tweeting a reference to Section 230, the obscure, decades-old law that shapes content moderation on social media.

Such feuds with Silicon Valley companies have been a through-line of Trump's presidency; he has often criticized Facebook and Twitter for conspiring against him, siding with liberals and stifling conservative voices, even as Facebook helped get him elected and Twitter remained his soapbox of choice.

He has blasted Amazon and spearheaded a resurgence of Big Tech trust-busting that found purchase among Republican congresspeople, red state attorneys general and his own Justice Department.

His focus on tech also bled into his long-running trade war with China, as he issued executive orders to keep Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei out of America and ban the Chinese-owned apps WeChat and TikTok (unsuccessfully so far, in the case of both apps).

Now, as Trump enters his lame duck period and Biden readies for the transition of power, there is opportunity for change but how much can actually be expected?

The paradigm that comes next is not entirely clear. Aside from calls for the social media giants to more aggressively fight misinformation, Joe Biden did not make Big Tech a major focus of his campaign. The makeup of Biden's Cabinet remains uncertain as well.

"My sense is that the Biden team hasn't developed detailed positions on some of the most urgent questions relating to big tech," Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in an email.

It's possible that the transition to a Biden presidency would not be as transformative for the tech world as it would be for other sectors. Tech reform has been the site of some unlikely bipartisanship during the Trump years, with the confluence of progressive regulation efforts and conservative free speech concerns yielding an unlikely alliance against Big Tech that could continue under a President Biden.

Even if the election ends with a split government Biden in the White House but Mitch McConnell controlling a still-red Senate, potentially resuming the obstructionist strategy he honed during the Obama years it's therefore not inconceivable that Biden could rein in the Silicon Valley giants at least slightly.

On antitrust, for instance, there's clear overlap between progressive calls to "break up Big Tech" which Biden has nodded to but not endorsed and the various tech antitrust investigations Trump has overseen. Christopher Lewis, president of internet advocacy nonprofit Public Knowledge, pointed to the House antitrust subcommittee's recent investigation into anti-competitive practices in the sector as indicating a possible path forward.

"It was a bipartisan investigation, and ... there were a lot of bipartisan and shared findings," Lewis said. "There's room for legislative work based off of that investigation, that one still hopes can have a bipartisan effort. So that'll be a big priority."

Even if Republicans resume a more traditional hands-off approach to industrial consolidation, a Biden administration could act on its own to regulate mergers and acquisitions, said Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. "They can be more active antitrust enforcers (and) more skeptical of both vertical and horizontal mergers," Sohn explained. "I expect them to be more like the Obama administration, which didn't allow T-Mobile and Sprint to merge, didn't allow Time Warner and Comcast to merge."

Social media content moderation represents another potential site of compromise. Democrats generally want more moderation thanks to concerns about viral disinformation and foreign election meddling, while many Republicans want less due to concerns that conservative voices get "silenced" online.

But both sides have taken issue with Section 230, the law that drew Trump's ire as the ballots were coming in. In one of the election's few areas of explicit agreement, Biden and President Trump have both called for the law to change, with Biden at one point telling the New York Times that "Section 230 should be revoked ... for (Facebook CEO Mark) Zuckerberg and other platforms."

Jaffer speculated that Biden's stance is more nuanced: "I assume what he really means is that he wants to replace the rule of near-categorical immunity with something more fact-sensitive."

"That's a reasonable idea," Jaffer added, "but the details will matter." And the shared enemy that brought Democrats and Republicans partway together during the Senate's recent Section 230 hearing could evaporate quickly once those details come to light.

Social media executives seem to be anticipating some sort of crackdown. In the lead-up to the election, amid polling suggesting a Biden sweep, Facebook became more aggressive in its moderation policies, banning Holocaust denial in a reversal of a long-running policy, and reducing the spread of a New York Post story alleging corruption by the Biden family.

Some have speculated that Zuckerberg's change of heart came in anticipation of a Biden win, pre-empting future calls for more stringent moderation; although even before Biden was the Democratic front-runner, the Facebook CEO had begun pivoting from lobbying against regulations to calling for more of them. Facebook and Zuckerberg have attributed the policy changes to growing concerns about hate-based violence and electoral misinformation.

On Chinese tech which prompted Trump's attempts to ban Huawei, WeChat and TikTok Biden hasn't substantially distinguished himself from Trumpism. Trump has often framed economically ascendant China as a threat to both U.S. trade and national security, as well as blaming it for the spread of the coronavirus; but Biden's campaign consistently tried to cast itself as harder on China than Trump, not softer.

In September, Biden deemed TikTok "a matter of genuine concern," echoing Trump's framing of the attempted ban.

One topic that's become increasingly urgent in the era of telework and Zoom-schooling is the "digital divide," or disparities in who has access to the internet. Biden's campaign has pledged to expand "broadband, or wireless broadband via 5G, to every American," bringing internet access to rural areas, urban schools and tribal lands, including with a $20-billion investment in rural broadband.

"I think there's ... some bipartisan opportunities there, just because everyone has been impacted by it and some of the hardest-hit communities are rural communities, red parts of states," Lewis noted.

On other topics, a partisan shift can be expected. For instance, Biden has said he'll lift Trump's suspension of H1-B visas, which allow companies to hire foreign workers with specialized skills about three-quarters of which go to tech workers.

In this regard, a move away from Trump's protectionist efforts positions Biden as a more natural ally of Silicon Valley echoing the Obama years, under which Democrats and tech leaders enjoyed a generally friendly relationship. Many tech executives were anti-Trump in 2016, and tech employees disproportionately donated to the Biden campaign this cycle.

Markets expressed confidence that a Biden presidency especially one constrained by a Republican Senate wouldn't bring an end to the runaway growth that tech companies have experienced despite the Trump administration's antagonism. The Standard & Poor's 500 index closed an uncertain election week up 7.3%, fueled in part by gains from some of Silicon Valley's largest players.

Some policy areas have simply not been fleshed out by Biden enough to know if and how they'd change.

Domestic surveillance was a major concern when Biden was vice president; stories like Edward Snowden's NSA whistle-blowing and the FBI's fight to make Apple unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone remain hallmarks of the Obama administration's relationship with tech.

Biden's campaign has only nodded to the issue, calling for tech and social media companies to "make concrete pledges for how they can ensure their algorithms and platforms are not empowering the surveillance state" as well as not facilitating Chinese repression, spreading hate or promoting violence. In his New York Times interview, he said America "should be setting standards not unlike the Europeans are doing relative to privacy."

Biden did not focus on automation to the extent of primary challengers such as Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders . However, his website does say he "does not accept the defeatist view that the forces of automation and globalization render (America) helpless to retain well-paid union jobs and create more of them," and he calls for basic employee protections around automation and a $300-billion investment in artificial intelligence R&D (as well as electric vehicles and 5G networks).

One area around which the tenor of discussion will almost certainly shift is the role social media platforms should play in moderating misinformation, especially if it comes from the president's account. But that doesn't mean the issue of "fake news" will go away, either.

"Misinformation," cautioned Lewis, "is bigger than just Donald Trump."

(c)2020 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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As the Trump era comes to an end, what happens to Big Tech? - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany revealed a startling lack of Holocaust awareness & knowledge among Millennials & Gen Z.

CLEVELAND Erika Gold was just 11 years old when she came face-to-face with the devastating reality of anti-Semitism.

"When the Nazis came into Hungary, it was March 19,1944, and then right away, by the first of April we had to wear a yellow star," she recalled in a recent interview with 3News.

Roman Frayman was not even 4 when his family was forever changed by hate and genocide.

"I have lost my brother, who was a year old," he remembered. "I lost all of my aunts and uncles and many cousins. At one time, I probably would have had 81 first cousins.

"Some things are so traumatic, you just cannot forget."

Both Gold and Frayman survived the Holocaust, though many of their immediate family members did not. Lives cut short, among six million Jews murdered by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945.

Both settled in Northeast Ohio, where they began new lives, raised their own families, and both have worked in Holocaust education -- sharing their stories with younger generations so we never forget.

"I think the most important thing that I feel I've accomplished is to try and tell people that the Holocaust really happened," Frayman said. "There's so many people who deny the Holocaust, which of course leads to anti-Semitism."

Yet, recent years have seen a disturbing rise in violence against Jews in the United States. The ADL has reported a spike in anti-Semitic incidences and hate crimes since 2016 -- including deadly attacks on Synagogues.

Frayman says he's seen incredibly disturbing signs in recent years.

"I came to this country in 1949," he said. "I was 11 and a half, and I never thought that I would ever witness Nazis walking down the streets in the United States, and it's very bothersome."

Gold says she, too, is concerned.

"Hate groups are getting stronger, and they have more members and they're vocal," she lamented. "I don't know what we're gonna do about that."

A new study out this fall, by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, is underscoring their concerns. It revealed a concerning lack of Holocaust awareness and knowledge among millennials and Generation Z.

Among the studys findings, almost two-thirds of those surveyed did not know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Forty-eight percent could not name a single concentration camp.

"If you go there, you see the ovens," Frayman said of the nortorious Auschwitz death camp, which still stands today as a memorial and museum in Poland. "You see where the people were brought into Auschwitz, what happened to their shoes or glasses and toothbrushes."

The study also found that 10% believed the Holocaust did not happen at all, and 59% believe something like the Holocaust could happen today.

"I get angrier as I get older," Gold said when asked about her reaction to the study. "People are bystanders, and they don't know when to speak up or they don't want to or they're afraid, but that's one of the things we're trying to emphasize: That if you see something [wrong], you have to speak up."

"[Philosopher] George Santayana said, I quote, 'Those who forget the Holocaust are doomed to remember it,'" Frayman reflected. "Will this happen? I hope not."

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Holocaust survivors in Northeast Ohio reflect on concerning new study - WKYC.com

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

Fired Spanish River High Principal William Latson listens Tuesday as Dr. Donald E. Fennoy II, superintendent of the Palm Beach County School District, testifies during an administrative court hearing in which Latson is try to get his job back.(Photo: PROVIDED PHOTO)

WEST PALM BEACH,Fla. A former principal whose Holocaust remarks outraged people around the country has been fired for a second time.

Palm Beach County School Board members voted unanimously Tuesday to terminate former Spanish River High Principal William Latson, little more than a year after their first vote to fire him.

The veteran administrator was oustedOctober 2019 aftertelling a parenthe "can't say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee."

Latson appealed and an administrative law judge sided with him, concluding in August that Latsons action did not merit termination.

But board members on Tuesday rejected the judges recommendation, adopting afinal orderin the case that maintains Latsons actions did merit termination.

Contrary to the [judges] conclusions, Dr. Latson did commit misconduct in office, incompetency, and gross insubordination, providing just cause for his suspension and termination, the final order stated.

Oct. 27: Former principal embroiled in Holocaust controversy apologizes

Oct. 2019: Principal fired after refusing to call the Holocaust a 'factual, historical event'

The judge's decision was based, in part, on an assumption that the school district hada "progressive discipline" policy for principals, meaning most initial incidents of misconduct are punished lightly,and subsequent violations punished more harshly.

But while the district has a progressive discipline policy for teachers and other unionized workers, board members said the policy does not apply to principals.

"There is also no mandatory progressive discipline policy requiring any heightened showing for termination to be appropriate," the board's final order stated.

The vote concludes a chaotic month in which board members struggled to navigate widespread outrage over Latson's actions and the legal complexities of what was their first effort to fire a principal in years.

But it may not be the end of the legal battle over his fate. Board members have acknowledged Latson is likely to appeal in state court. His attorney did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

When the administrative law judge ruled the board had gone too far in firing him, a split school board reluctantly voted Oct. 7 to reinstate him.

That decision drew a newoutpouring of outrage from around the nation. Embarrassed and chastened, board members quickly moved to reconsider.

Last week, they unanimously voted to rescind their acceptance of the judge's recommendation to rehireLatson.

Then, on Tuesday, board members formally adopted thenew "final order," formally terminateLatson once more.

Follow Andrew Marra on Twitter:@AMarranara

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Florida principal refused to call the Holocaust a 'historical event,' appealed termination and was fired again - USA TODAY

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

When the Germans bombed Warsaw in September, 1939, my familys future was cancelled, but not their hopes. My father and grandparents barely survived and eventually escaped the Warsaw Ghetto, then were pursued by the Gestapo across the Polish countryside. As a second generation survivor, I have welcomed opportunities to share their story of dedication to family, personal fortitude, unshakeable faith and a bit of luck.

Through the rubble, disease, death squads, forced slave labor and starvation, my grandfather could only plan to get through the day, then maybe the next one. As a 7-year old, my father smuggled food, was forced to collect the dead on the street and ultimately, tunneled out of the Ghetto. My father and grandmother shared their true stories of resilience with me, now a published book shared world-wide with thousands of people.

After giving numerous book signings and presentations, the comments were kind and honest. Attendees would approach me and wonder, in subdued tones, how my family could endure such brutality and deprivation and survive. The downward gaze and head shake were common, as if they were trying to personally imagine it.Whether they were students, educators, second generation survivors or from the community, it was the same, yet one question was never asked. Never.

If I were in the Warsaw Ghetto, would I have survived? Would you, you may wonder? The question is left unanswered, because it is never openly asked. Until now.

For me, it is like when a family member or friend faces a dire medical challenge and you privately wonder how you would deal with it, if you were put in that situation.

The ability to survive would depend on numerous personal and Ghetto factors, but thats over thinking it; the end result would probably be the same. Most of the Jews herded into the Warsaw Ghetto did not survive the German invasion or occupation. They died because of bombing, starvation, disease, forced labor or were violently killed in the streets or the Treblinka concentration camp.

As I sit here in 2020, contemplating my familys perseverance, why bother wondering if I would have been up to the life challenges they faced? It pains me to envision what the Nazis did to my family and concede that I cant go back in time and change it.

However, by answering the survival question for ourselves, we recall the twisted justification for total extermination of the Jewish people and many other innocent victims. Abandoning the truth re-victimizes the dead and disrespects the survivors.

A recent study reported in USA Today noted that 2/3rds of millennials and Gen Z dont know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Half of them couldnt name a single concentration camp. Without understanding the Final Solution, they wont be able to conceive the unimaginable horror of executions, gas chambers and crematoriums.

Holocaust education is vital to remind everyone that it can happen again and in any society. It is essential to maintain the fundamental historical truth and never take it for granted.

Would I have survived? It is unlikely, but if I say yes, then there are more questions. How far would I be willing to go to save lives? Would I have killed to survive or save family members? Looking directly into the eye of a Nazi guard could result in your head being cracked open by a rifle butt. What would I have done if I had seen a loved one beaten to death?

My father frequently witnessed these things on the streets. He was then forced to lift and stack the bloodied corpse onto a wagon full of dead bodies, which were taken outside the Ghetto and dumped in a deep pit. Survival was a death-defying act, where lives were unceremoniously disregarded and ended.

Wishing that my life would have purpose in the Warsaw Ghetto, Id like to believe that I would have joined the resistance and been a part of the uprising, even though I know it was brutally crushed. Even if I had contributed writings to Emanuel Ringelblums hidden archives before the total liquidation of the Ghetto, I envision struggling to the end with my family.

You might ask yourself, if you were there, what would you be forced to do to live? With no guarantees, what would you dare do to save yourself and family? In asking this, you must come up against the reality of the Holocaust and the incredible humanity of those who survived and died in it. Forgetting is choosing the option of calamity. Instead, we should aspire to live better lives than our ancestors, while praying to learn from their lives, values and decisions.

As a Jew, the chance of survival would clearly be against me, but I choose to not focus on that end. We should ask ourselves the unasked question as a means of preserving the memory of the Holocaust, while embracing our family and history. Even if we cannot accurately answer the question, promoting Holocaust education preserves its truth, while seeking to improve the future.That is hope too.

Jeffrey N. Gingold is the internationally acclaimed and award-winning author of Tunnel, Smuggle, Collect: A Holocaust Boy (Henschel Haus, 2015).

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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A question rarely asked: Would I have survived the Holocaust? - Forward

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

In 2018, Robert Judge Rinder took part in the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?, discovering the story of his maternal grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who found a new life in the Lake District as one of the 300 Windermere children. It was a gripping episode tragic and hopeful and one of the best the series had done yet. In My Family, the Holocaust and Me (BBC One), a two-part series, Rinder delves further into the stories of his ancestors and helps other descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors to find out the family stories they had previously heard only in hints and whispers.

It is a remarkably moving endeavour, although, given its subject, that is hardly surprising. Rinder sets out to learn what happened to the family on his paternal grandfathers side. When he visits Harry Rinder in his flat in London, the camera cuts briefly to a photo on the side, of Robert in his wig and robes. His grandfather was an original cockney, born in Stepney in 1928, and his grandfather, in turn, was from Lithuania. They do not know what happened to that side of the family, but Harry gives his blessing for his grandson to visit Lithuania, and the town where the family once lived, to investigate.

Rinder is a wonderful host and an enthusiastic interviewer, which must stem in part from his legal training. He is skilled at asking the right question at the right time and getting to the heart of a story. In one of the many incredibly moving segments in this first episode, he visits Voranava in Belarus, the site of a massacre of 1,800 Jews in May 1942. He meets an old woman there who witnessed what happened; she tells him, with increasing strain, her recollections of the horrific event. Rinder kisses her on the cheek and thanks her for telling the story, insisting, through tears, that it is important for her to have done so, in order for the world to hear about it.

As well as uncovering more of his own story, Rinder helps other families investigate theirs, using the Who Do You Think You Are? template of historians talking people through documents that unlock long-held mysteries. In Plymouth, he meets a psychologist called Bernie, named after an uncle who died in Dachau. They have an honest and heartfelt discussion about the legacy of the Holocaust and the trauma felt by the children and grandchildren who grew up knowing the suffering that their relatives had endured. I feel, in some ways, that I was born into a state of bereavement, says Bernie.

Bernie flies off to Frankfurt, visiting Germany for the first time, to find out what happened to his grandparents; there was a vague notion that his grandmother Sabina died after Auschwitz had been liberated. Its going to be very hard, says the historian who talks him through the documents that reveal what happened to his grandmother and how his grandfather Solomon lost an eye. Bernie says that he never talked about it. Most of the survivors didnt speak, says the historian, as she delivers blow after blow.

Rinder also talks to two friends of his, sisters Louisa and Natalie, whose grandmother Hermine had been part of the resistance in Holland. She had a certificate signed by Dwight D Eisenhower, commemorating her work, framed on her wall, but she, too, never talked about what happened or what she had done. It was, they explain, forbidden territory. They just shut the door. They knew Hermine had a sister, Elsa, but they never knew what had happened to her. They go to Amsterdam to find out, following a trail of breadcrumbs that reveal the full story of Elsas life and death. She was a dancer, a teacher and a seemingly strong and defiant woman; hers is an astonishing tale that turns, unbearably, on a single day. It is a story I suspect I will never forget.

As survivors of the Holocaust diminish in numbers, this is a vital history lesson. It is also a collection of memorials, a way of recording and remembering ordinary lives as well as incredible ones. As Rinder says in the introduction to the programme, these are stories about death, but they are also about life. That comes through with absolute clarity. These lives, having been excavated by documents and witnesses and memories, are revived in some way, their tales passed on to another generation, their humanity, as Rinder puts it, returned to them. It is desperately sad, inevitably so, but it is also beautiful.

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My Family, the Holocaust and Me with Robert Rinder review remarkably moving TV - The Guardian

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

When the Nazis launched the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews during November 9-10, 1938, the reaction from many religious leaders was muted. Most Catholic leaders in Germany did not criticize the destructive pogrom and across the Atlantic, there was similar silence from the flagship Jesuit journal America.

But a new book portrays how not all Jesuits members of the Society of Jesus kept silent about the Nazis. The daringly titled, Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews, and Holocaust Remembrance, depicts how some priests joined the resistance, some gave their lives to it, and 15 even became recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

Yet its those who did not speak out or who even joined the Wehrmacht as chaplains who remain a primary source of concern for author James Bernauer, S.J., a Jesuit who retired this year from 40 years as a professor at Boston College. The book was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in March.

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This should have been written about years ago, Bernauer told The Times of Israel in a phone interview, mentioning his surprise that many in the highly academic Jesuit order didnt know about this part of their history.

Father James Bernauer, author of Jesuit Kaddish. (Courtesy)

Unlike past scholarship on the Catholic Church which has focused on the papacy during the Holocaust, Jesuit Kaddish zooms in on the international order of the Jesuits, who were founded in 1534 by Saint Ignatius of Loyola and have created academic institutions worldwide. One such institution is Boston College, where Bernauer was director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning and served as the Kraft Family Professor of Philosophy. The most famous Jesuit is arguably Pope Francis, whom Bernauer has met and praises.

Bernauer sees a contrast between Jesuits of today and of the past. His book includes a statement he has written in which Jesuits can offer what he describes as repentance and remorse for historical wrongs.

The book discusses individual Jesuits hostility to Jews and Judaism through World War II, expressed not only through anti-Semitism but also what Bernauer calls asemitism a belief in a world without Jews. This latter subject arose in a famous 20th-century, post-Holocaust conversation between two religious leaders shown on the books cover: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Jesuit Gustave Weigel, a pioneer of ecumenism in the United States.

In the early 1960s, Heschel asked his friend Weigel a litany of questions beginning with is it really the will of God that there be no more Judaism in the world? and ending with Would it really be ad maiorem Dei gloriam to have a world without Jews? The Latin phrase, which means the greater glory of God, is the Jesuit motto.

The aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany, November 1938 (public domain)

Bernauer explained that the conversation between Heschel and Weigel helped influence his unconventional choice of a title. So did an exhibit in Frankfurt that characterized the Nazi project as an effort to silence the Kaddish forever, which caused him to see Heschels statements in a new light.

Was the ambition to silence the Kaddish and Jewish prayer really that distinct from the Catholic ambition to surpass Judaism and convert Jews?

[Heschels] questions there were a direct interrogation of the Societys [past] thinking, Bernauer said. Was the ambition to silence the Kaddish and Jewish prayer really that distinct from the Catholic ambition to surpass Judaism and convert Jews? Its a question we all live with the whole notion of conversion of the Jews and its centrality to Catholic thought and Jesuit thought at the time.

Schoolchildren and others brought to watch the burning of synagogue furnishings on Kristallnacht in Mosbach, Germany, November 1938 (courtesy)

Bernauer first became aware of the Holocaust while growing up in what was then the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York. In Fort Tryon Park, he would see Jews with concentration-camp numbers tattooed onto their arms. As a high school student, he and the rest of the world breathlessly followed the Eichmann trial. Going on to study philosophy at Fordham University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, his areas of expertise have included the famed chronicler of the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt. His scholarly travels took him to Germany, France, and Israel as he continued to study Holocaust-related topics.

In the book, Bernauer shares how a Jesuit leader helped stifle a papal letter on racism even as the need for it grew during the period of Fascist ascendancy, when Kristallnacht led to the burning of synagogues, Jewish businesses, and homes in Germany and Austria.

An early undated photo of the Polish Jesuit Wlodzimierz Ledochowski, who was serving as the Superior General of the Jesuits at the outbreak of World War II. (Public domain)

As Europe largely declined to condemn fascism, Pope Pius XI wished to create an encyclical or papal letter to the Catholic Church that would address racism. It was supervised by the Superior General (or head) of the Jesuits, Wlodimir Ledchowski.

[It seems] that Ledchowski deliberately kept it from the Pope for several months, Bernauer writes. He calls Ledchowski fiercely anti-Communist, and one source of his hostility toward Jews was the fact that he held them partially responsible for Communism.

In WWII, Bernauer said, Jesuits motivated by anticommunism as well as patriotism served as German military chaplains in the East, even though Hitler had banned them from that position. Bernauer estimates their number as 651, with 405 ultimately dismissed due to Hitlers ban.

As a form of punishment, Jews [in the East] were forced to clean churches and streets, occasionally under the supervision of Jesuits, Bernauer writes.

Later, he notes, As the brutality of the military actions increased, some Jesuits came to realize that the war that had been considered a struggle against godless Communism had itself become a crime against humanity. But perhaps that realization came too late.

Jean-Baptiste Janssens, elected Superior General or head of the Jesuits in 1946, in this undated photo. (Public domain)

Bernauer finds solace in Jesuits who acted heroically during the war. Fifteen Jesuits have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Bernauer credits Holy Cross Prof. Vincent Lapomarda, also a Jesuit, with finding the first nine and said that he himself found six more quite by chance.

Among the 15 was Jean-Baptiste Janssens, who was elected Superior General in 1946 and helped rescue Jewish children during the war. Another is Roger Braun, whom Bernauer knew while in Paris. Braun also helped rescue Jewish children and had the Kaddish recited at his funeral a Jesuit Kaddish.

Augustin Rsch (center) was the wartime Jesuit Provincial of Bavaria and one of three Jesuits in the inner Kreisau Circle of the German Resistance to Nazism. He ended World War II on death row. (CC-BY-SA-3.0/ Ambrosius007)

Bernauer expressed a hope that more Jesuits will be considered as Righteous among the Nations, including Polish ones quite a few of them were executed, many more than any other country and regretted not having more about Poland in his book.

But, he noted, theres enough material within its pages to promote more discussion and understanding.

I think its important to convey to the Jewish community the fundamental change in Catholic attitudes, Catholic thinking, Bernauer said. Part of that change is rooted in a more critical understanding of our faith. It should be a Jesuit concern as well.

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Jesuit Catholic priest pens book about his orders complicity in the Holocaust - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

Learning about the Holocaust the atrocities, as well as the events that preceded it can instill important lessons on civic engagement, human rights, antisemitism and xenophobia, but how do instructors make the coursework meaningful to their students, beyond just learning thefacts?

For Gerald Steinacher and Ari Kohen, the question is personal, as Steinacher grew up in a post-World War II Austria near a former concentration camp, and Kohen is the descendant of Holocaust survivors. To help answer it, the two University of NebraskaLincoln scholars launched a five-year study, gathering data from Steinachers History of the Holocaust course, which he teaches each year to 120-150students.

My course (on the history of the Holocaust) is always evolving, and it became particularly pressing to answer this question in recent years, with the strong increase in antisemitism, xenophobia and racism. What can we do to make history more meaningful for the present, and what can we learn from history to strengthen empathy and truth? How can we find ways to fight back against antisemitism and otherfalsehoods?

Utilizing more than 1,000 student pre- and post-class surveys, interviews and evaluations from 2013 to 2018, the researchers found that overall, personal narratives from those persecuted specifically books and oral histories made the most lasting impression onstudents.

There is speculation that personal identification (with others) was an important hallmark of heroism during the Holocaust, and I started questioning how we could use this notion of personal identification to affect change, to care enough to take action, Kohen, Schlesinger Professor of Social Justice and director of the Harris Center of Judaic Studies, said. I started looking at curriculum materials and how people were teaching these topics, and whether we were teaching the Holocaust in a way that stimulated students to care about what they werelearning.

With the findings, Steinacher has grown his course syllabus to include more personal narrative books, including Elie Wiesels Night, and The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, a visit to a Holocaust memorial, guest speakers with first-hand knowledge and video interviews withsurvivors.

At the end of the day, it is about empathy, Steinacher said. What kind of materials really click with students, so they can relate, and say, this was really horrible and how was it possible? We want to teach them the factual knowledge, but also establish empathy and meaning in their livesnow.

Kohen and Steinacher also are actively disseminating what theyve learned. With a generous donation from the Sommerhauser family, Kohen and Steinacher have published chapters in books on genocide education, launched a book series with the University of Nebraska Press on teaching the Holocaust, and host workshops every other year for educators and the general public on different aspects of Holocausteducation.

Its so important to educate a wider audience, Steinacher said. I always felt it was my obligation to be a public historian and get our research, our knowledge, outthere.

And we want to work with teachers, who are so extremely important as people who can distribute the information to the nextgeneration.

Their research has become even more significant as recent studies have shown younger generations lack knowledge about the Holocaust and most other genocides. Specifically, a nationwide survey suggested that 1 in 10 cant recall the Holocaust ever being mentioned, and 63% didnt know the basic fact that 6 million Jews weremurdered.

Holocaust education is not systematized in the United States, so depending on where you are from, you might learn about it or you might not its a roll of the dice, Kohen said. This is one area where we can improve. Were specifically trying to bring as many high school teachers as we can to thetable.

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'Never again:' Research helps raise impact of Holocaust education - Nebraska Today

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Posted By admin on November 11, 2020

Listen to our program on Holocaust history.

On Nov. 9-10, 1938, attacks against Jewish communities living in Germany came to be known as Kristallnacht, or The Night of Broken Glass. The ensuing years of the Holocaust led to the mass murder by Germans of millions of European Jews.

A recent nationwide study found that Holocaust history is poorly understood by younger Americans today. We explore the history of the Holocaust, and what Maine students learn about this terrible but important period.

Shenna Bellows,executive director, Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine

Abraham Peck,adjunct professor of history, University of Southern Maine; child of Holocaust survivorsl founder, holocaust, genocide, and human rights studies, University of Maine

Edith Lucas Pagelson(daughter Ruth Lucas Finegold), Holocaust survivor, resident of Falmouth

Heidi Omlor, social studies teacher, Ellsworth High School

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Holocaust History: Raising Awareness of the Significance of the Holocaust Among Young People - Maine Public

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