Polish neo-Nazis praising Hitler spark revulsion and debate

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Interior Minister promises to crack down on neo-Nazis after TV expose films them celebrating Hitler in a nighttime forest ceremony while burning a large swastika, praising the Fhrer and giving the Nazi salute. Polish neo-Nazis praising Hitler spark revulsion and debate : http://ift.tt/2DNcOWq

Holocaust survivors pay visit to Schindler's grave

Just like in the final haunting scene of Schindler's List, a group of Holocaust survivors who owe their lives to the German industrialist, and their descendants, paid a visit to the gravesite of Oskar Schindler Thursday in preparation for International Holocaust Remembrance Day this coming Saturday.

 

The scene shown in the movie was filmed 25 years ago and the number of survivors is decreasing each year, but the families keep the memory alive and continue to pay respect to the man to whom they owe their lives.

Oskar Schindler, who saved the lives of 1,200 Polish Jews and was recognized as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, is buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Dozens of survivors, together with rabbis, representatives of the Vatican and of the Franciscan Order of Jerusalem visited the site Thursday.

Schindler gravd (Photo: Eli Mandelbaum)

Visitors placed small stones on Schindler's grave in the Catholic-Franciscan cemetery and recited prayers for his soul. Afterwards, they held a small ceremony in the nearby Chamber of the Holocaust museum where they dedicated a plaque to Schindler. The event was initiated by Limmud FSU (former Soviet Union), an organization dedicated to revitalizing and restoring Jewish identity and learning; the Claims Conference against Germany (for Holocaust restitution); the March of the Living and the Chamber of the Holocaust museum on Mount Zion. "This event is especially emotional for me," said Bronia Shkolnik, 86, a Holocaust survivor, during the candle lighting ceremony. "To be here, in the State of Israel, and pay tribute to those who saved so many lives—it cannot be taken for granted." Lily Heber, Director of the Organization for Survivors of Cracow, grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. Her father, Yaakov Lazar was saved by Schindler. She stressed that Schindler also saved the thousands of descendents of those 1,200 Jews he saved and that we must remember the heroes who risked their lives to save Jews. Lazar was born in Austria-Hungary and was transported to the Cracow Ghetto with his family in 1941. With the liquidation of the ghetto, he was transferred to the Plaszow camp where he was lucky enough to find work at Schindler's factory, together with two siblings, that saved his life.

(Photo: AFP)

Rabbi Yitzhak Goldstein, Rabbi of Mount Zion and Director of The Chamber of the Holocaust read the El Malei Rachamim (Oh God full of mercy) prayer and laid flowers on the grave. "If not for him those Jews would have been killed. His soul is very special," said Goldstein. When Schindler passed away in 1974, he was buried, as per his request, in the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion next to the country's first Holocaust museum. The cemetery became a pilgrimage point for the survivors who decorated the walls of the museum with plaques commemorating their communities destroyed by the Nazis. The ashes of 250,000 victims were also brought there from 20 different concentration camps. Father Alberto, the representative of the Franciscan Order told Ynet the group "wants to remember the Christians who understood the importance of rescuing Jews and overturning history." Chaim Chesler, the founder of Limmud FSU said: "(Schindler) was the biggest rescuer of Jews. The goal of International Holocaust Remembrance Day is that we do not forget the non-Jews who saved Jews."

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Ukraine’s new heroes: Anti-Semites and murderers of Jews

KIEV—A statue in memory of Symon Petliura was unveiled several months ago in the Jewish neighborhood of Vinnitsa. The monument was initiated and erected by the Ukraine authorities. Petliura, by the way, is linked to the massacre of as many as 100,000 innocent Jews during the 1918-1920 civil war.

And he’s not alone. Meet Ukraine’s new heroes: Anti-Semitic murderers who massacred Jews and are being commemorated as part of a “decommunization” (a process of dismantling the legacies of communism) in the streets and city squares.

Avenues and streets have been named after Stepan Bandera and his partners, who collaborated with the Nazis and massacred Jews during the Holocaust. Ironically, the avenue leading to Moscow and to Babi Yar (the site of massacres carried out by German forces and local Ukrainian collaborators) is named after Bandera.

The Symon Petliura statue. Connected to the massacre of as many as 100,000 innocent Jews (Photo: Myvin.com.ua)

It’s no wonder Ukraine’s Jews are angry and troubled, living in a country where anti-Semitic murderers are backed by the authorities and spraying hate graffiti is routine. During Catholic Christmas, for example, hate graffiti were sprayed in three Jewish sites—the gates of the Holocaust museum in Odessa, a Jewish cultural center and an inactive synagogue in the city.

So security around Jewish institutions is being boosted, but at the same time—according to Jewish sources in the country—the authorities are encouraging a glorification of anti-Semites. “My call on the president and prime minister of Ukraine to condemn the acts has yet to be answered,” the chief rabbi of Odessa and South Ukraine, Avraham Wolff, said in response to the graffiti. He expressed his confidence, however, that the condemnation would eventually arrive. “It’s very important to prevent it to begin with, because unfortunately everyone knows where it begins and where it ends.” The acts were strongly condemned by the European Parliament, which rushed to send Rabi Wolff a letter calling on President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to denounce the acts and monitor the investigation.

Eduard Dolinsky, executive director of Ukrainian Jewish Committee, is waging an all-out war on this alarming trend. He is often forced to confront a long list of angry nationalists on the country’s most popular current affairs program, but his performances have turned him into a popular blogger and a leader in the Jewish community.

An official ceremony in memory of Petliura in the Jewish neighborhood of Vinnitsa (Photo: Myvin.com.ua)

If you’re wondering how all this is happening in a country led by a man called Groysman, Dolinsky explains that “the prime minister wasn’t elected as a Jew and he is doing his non-Jewish job, so his Jewishness has no influence whatsoever on the agenda.” As for the anti-Semites’ successful integration into Ukraine’s legitimate mainstream, Dolinsky explains that the nationalists have a lot of influence. “They helped senior officials rise to power, and they owe them quite a bit. The second reason is the impact of the conflict with Russia. Glorifying the anti-Semites is an ideological and practical way of recruiting the population. In other words, in a bid to enlist the public against the aggressor, they have to create an agenda of ‘heroes’ who fought for our country with weapons in their hands. This is also happening under the nationalists’ influence.” Dolinsky says Ukraine is basically shooting itself in the foot with its policy of glorifying anti-Semite criminals. “It has already led to a serious conflict with Poland, which has barred some of the government workers involved in this policy from entering the country, and they are also working to prevent it from joining the European Union. In other words, these issues are already serving as an obstacle for Ukraine’s integration in Europe.”

Earlier this month, on Stepan Bandera’s birthday, the anti-Semites held a torch parade just like they did last year, when they chanted, ‘Jews Out.”

Dolinsky accuses his country of denying the Holocaust and warns that “a conflict with Israel, Germany and the United States is inevitable. “These countries are keeping silent for now, because of the conflict with Russia, but they’ll never accept a glorification of the Nazis’ collaborators.

Graffiti scrawled on the Holocaust museum gate in Odessa on Christmas eve: ‘First toast for the Holocaust’

“The Ukrainian government,” he says, “participates in memorial events, like the one marking 75 years since the Babi Yar massacre, but at the same time it places signs in Babi Yar in memory of the Ukrainian nationalists who helped target the Jews, whether ideologically or practically. “There is a sign there, for example, for Ivan Rohach, the editor-in-chief of aa newspaper which called for the murder of Jews at around the same time of the Babi Yar massacre, but you won’t read anything about that on the memorial plaque. Both the murderers and their victims are commemorated at Babi Yar, in one place. This is morally unacceptable. It’s a case of abusing the memory of the annihilated Jews, rewriting history and denying the Holocaust.” Dolinsky mentions other incidents, like the erection of a Petliura statue at the center of the Jewish neighborhood of Vinnitsa. “They are trying to impose one ideology on the Ukrainian public. This group, which is organized around the Institute of National Remembrance, the nationalist and anti-Semitic parties like Svoboda, and others, is creating activities that infiltrate the government bodies and the public.

“For example, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UPA (the Ukrainian Insurgent Army), the Ukrainian president’s office issued a special document to local authorities on how to mark the event, including instructions on ‘how to respond’ to claims of anti-Semitism in the organization and its denial. They presented a series of

examples of Jews’ participation in the organization, but all their examples were in fact false. Some were of Jewish doctors who were forcefully held by the UPA, and some were of people who never even existed. These examples were aimed at whitewashing the criminals who played a part in the Holocaust.”

Dolinsky clarifies that “the Jewish community has a unified stance on this issue against the glorification of murderers and collaborators of the Nazis who took part in the Holocaust. I’m talking about the entire Jewish community and the Jewish organizations.

“Having said that, there are few Jewish activists who have an opposite opinion, but they only represent themselves.”

Eduard Dolinsky. ‘Both the murderers and their victims are commemorated at Babi Yar’

What are the chances of winning this battle against the falsification of history?“I think the pressure on Ukraine will increase both internationally and internally. The thing is that most of the country’s residents are related to millions of Ukrainians who fought against the Nazis in the Soviet army. These people are very unhappy with policy of glorifying that small group of the OUN-UPA, which was mainly active in western Ukraine and is now becoming the main historical agenda. There is a concern, however, that the damage has already been done and that the youth has been successfully brainwashed.” Dolinsky pins his hopes on the international pressure. “We can’t announce that we accept the European values, and at the same time declare people who collaborated with the Nazis as heroes, while completely denying those exact same values. Ukraine will have to make a choice: Either to become an enlightened European state or to sink into the mud of historical contradictions and nationalism.”

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Holocaust remembrance initiative 'WeRemember' launches

As the International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches this Saturday, a massive international campaign that seeks to memorialize the Holocaust was kicked-off Wednesday at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.

 

In what organizers are calling the largest Holocaust remembrance campaign in the world, photos of survivors, together with those of participating web users from all over the world, will be projected onto the walls of the death camp, holding a sign saying #WeRemember, until Sunday evening.

 

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is behind the initiative, which has been dubbed the WeRemember campaign.

Tovby Levy

Toby Levy was only eight when she had to hide in her aunt's attic. "I want you to be my witnesses," she implored. "I was born the year Hitler came to power, 1933, when the Germans came, they immediately gave us orders." Levy will never forget the horrifying images she witnessed as the Jews were rounded up. "One Jew was taken aside, they shaved his short beard and proceed to push him to the ground; a German placed his foot on his back saying: 'You are now finished, you have no more rights.'" Toby, together with eight family members, hid in the attic, but her grandfather refused to hide and his family heard as the Germans shouted at him to come along; he refused and was shot. And then there was silence. "My mom asked: what are we going to do now? And my dad said: we will find someone to hide us." Her name was Stefani Strak, but after a run in with the police, Stefany feared for the life of her children (16 and 19) and asked Tova's family to leave. Toby says she understood his fear, but the 16 year-old son Tajek beseeched his mother saying that the family would not survive alone and helped lead the family to safety in the forest.

 

Despite the many years that have passed, Levy remembers everything. "We never called Stefani by her name, we called her 'the queen' or the' the savior.'" The family lived off of the kindness of Stefani and Tajek for 23 months and survived the war.

Toby Levy is now participating in the international remembrance campaign that is asking people to make the "#WeRemember" signs and publish them on social networks. Joining her are dozens of Knesset members, influential figures and religious leaders from all over the world; football and basketball players are joining with youth groups to be photographed with the sign. The WJC say that more than 250 million people were exposed to the campaign last year. They are hoping to double that amount this year. "Anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and xenophobia continue to rear their ugly head," says Ronald Lauder, President of the WJC. "We must remember the Holocaust because the number of survivors among us drops every year. In a few decades there will be no more. It is the duty of the young generation to teach their friends about the horrors of hate." "International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity to spread the message: Never Again," said Robert Zinger, Director of the WJC at its NY headquarters. "We therefore launched the"#WeRemember" campaign with the symbolic goal of reaching six million people."

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German corporations join Holocaust remembrance campaign

Heads of the enormous German corporations that supported the Nazi regime during World War Two joined the World Jewish Congress (WJC)'s international Holocaust memorialization initiative, dubbed, #WeRemember, in anticipation of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked January 27. The leaders of German juggernauts Volkswagen, BMW and Siemens, all of which supported Adolf Hitler's regime during the Holocaust, declared Tuesday that they too were joining the WJC's WeRemember initiative.

Volkswagen Chairman of the Supervisory Board Hans Dieter Pötsch and the company's CEO Matthias Müller were photographed holding placards with the campaign's slogan, as did Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser and BMW CEO Harald Krüger.

Volkswagen CEO Matthias Muller (L) and Chairman of the Supervisory Board Hans Dieter Potsch participated in the WeRemember campaign (Photo: World Jewish Congress)

 The WeRemember initiative is an international campaign as part of which photos uploaded to social media networks with the slogan will then be screened at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp before and during International Holocaust Remembrance Day. "Volkswagen recognizes its historic responsibility and is committed to acting out against intolerance, racism and anti-Semitism, as well as to engender international understanding and humanity," said the company's CEO Müller. "Today, learning from history is a significant portion of our organizational culture. It has been a difficult and painful process for the company, but we will never abandon this value," he vowed.

Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser (Photo: World Jewish Congress)

WJC CEO Robert Singer added, "The world will be marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day Saturday. This day is an opportunity to spread the message that never again truly does mean never again." The WeRemember project is the largest such initiative to be undertaken in the world, whose origins date back to last year's International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The 2018 campaign will operate in 45 countries around the world and in 23 languages. More than 250 million people have been exposed to the project worldwide, and more than 150 million have already uploaded photos of themselves holding the WeRemember sign.

BMW CEO Harald Kruger (Photo: World Jewish Congress)

Photos of the campaign's participants have begun to be screened on the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp's walls Tuesday and will continue to be screened until Saturday. The photos will also be inundating social networks in an effort to drum up awareness for anti-Semitism and hatred the world over. In only several weeks' time, WeRemember has become the number one hashtag on social networks in Germany and elsewhere. WJC President Ronald Lauder said, "Anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and hatred towards the 'other' continue rearing their ugly heads even today. We have to remember the Holocaust, because the number of living survivors is dwindling and in mere decades, they will all be gone."

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Neo-Nazis vandalize Holocaust monument in Greece

A Holocaust memorial was found vandalized in Thessaloniki, Greece this week, just days ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked worldwide on January 27. The memorial was apparently vandalized by local neo-Nazis, who sprayed it with the words "Golden Dawn," the name of the country's far-right party.

  The monument, erected to commemorate the memory of the city's Jews who were sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust. The incident took place during the extremist party's demonstration against a compromise between Greece and Macedonia over the latter country's name—which is identical to a geographical region in Greece—in which tens of thousands of people participated.

The defaced monument in Thessaloniki

Golden Dawn activists sprayed their party's name on the memorial during the protest. Days later, unknown parties sprayed "Free Palestine" on the memorial. To add insult to injury, neo-Nazi activists handed out anti-Semitic flyers to passersby Wednesday near the White Tower, one of the city's most recognizable symbols, aimed against Thessaloniki Mayor Yiannis Boutaris, who was dubbed "a slave to Jews." Sabby Mionis, a Greek Jew who made Aliyah to Israel 12 years ago and serves as the joint chairman of the Jewish Agency's taskforce for combating anti-Semitism, said, "Despite this government and Prime Minister (Alexis) Tsipras's staunch stance against anti-Semitism, racist activists still pollute many Greek institutions. "Everyone knows Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi party, but what's even more dangerous is anti-Semites who—motivated by their hatred of Jews—work behind the scenes to sabotage the two countries' relationship. According to a study by the Anti-Defamation League, Greek is still the most anti-Semitic (country) in the non-Muslim world."

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Hungarian mass honoring Nazi ally cancelled after Jewish protests

A Budapest church has called off a memorial mass it was planning to hold in honor of a former Hungarian leader and Nazi ally on Saturday—International Holocaust Remembrance Day—after protests from Hungarian Jews and the World Jewish Congress.

 

Parliament's deputy speaker who is member of the ruling Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, had been due to speak at the event called in memory of interwar Governor Miklos Horthy.

Hungarian PM Orban (R) with Netanyahu (Photo: Reuters)

The planned ceremony for Horthy, an admiral who led Hungary for 24 years until 1944 and handed over hundreds of thousands of Jews to the Nazis, triggered strong objections from Jewish organizations.

With the WJC declaring it a provocative measure honoring an "unabashed anti-Semite", the Budapest church which had organized the Catholic ceremony, cancelled the event on Thursday.

The affair, ahead of a parliamentary election on April 8, has thrown a spotlight again on the policies of Orban who has an ambivalent track record on anti-Semitism.

He has repeatedly pledged zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, though he has called Horthy an "exceptional statesman." He has risked angering Israel and Jewish people with remarks about "ethnic homogeneity" apparently aimed at radical right-wing voters ahead of the April 8 election.

He has also used a massive billboard campaign against US billionaire George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew, to promote an anti-immigrant agenda that critics, including Soros, say harks back to the 1930s. The government strongly rejects this.

Zoltan Osztie, the priest of the Budapest church, said the church had a tradition of organizing a mass for Horthy each year and nobody had noticed that Saturday was also International Holocaust Remembrance marking the day in 1945 when the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated.

Anti Soros campaign (Photo: Reuters)

"We could be blamed for this perhaps, but these two events cannot be juxtaposed. Nonetheless, after discussion with church leaders a decision has been made that neither the memorial ceremony nor the mass will take place," he told szemlelek.blog.hu.

WJC President Ronald S. Lauder asked Orban to intervene, calling the event "nothing short of a provocative measure."

"The terror that Admiral Horthy, an unabashed anti-Semite, inflicted on the Jewish community of Hungary ... and his role in the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews must never be forgotten and can never be excused," Lauder wrote in a letter to Orban.

The government did not reply to Reuters questions.

Sandor Lezsak, deputy parliament speaker and a member of Fidesz party, had been due to speak at the ceremony, stirring protests from the Hungarian Jewish communities federation.

After Hungary's occupation by Germany in March 1944, still under Horthy's rule, Hungarian gendarmes and state organizations collaborated in the deportation of close to half a million Jews. Horthy stopped the deportations only in July 1944.

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