Robert Narev ONZM: Destined for Auschwitz

INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
WELLSFORD 26 JANUARY 2025

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena kouto katoa shalom and good evening ladies and gentlemen

My brief address is titled Destined for Auschwitz, a topic which, in my case, is followed by a question mark for reasons which will become apparent shortly.

I was born in a small town in central Germany on 6th October 1935, exactly three weeks after the promulgation by the Nazis of what became known as the Nuremberg Laws. While initially discriminatory only against the Jewish population of Germany, those laws effectively established the foundation of the Holocaust and the systematic state-organised and executed murder of six million Jews in occupied Europe.

I was an only child, clearly because the mid and late 1930s were not a propitious time for Jewish parents to have children in Germany.

My father was a high school teacher, soon deemed to be unsuitable as a Jew to teach Aryan students and my mother’s career as an opera singer was cut short for similar reasons in accordance with Nazi ideology.

There followed 5 years in Frankfurt under conditions which must have been a most stressful and indeed traumatic time for adults, compelled as we were to limit our movements to a small part of the city and to wear the Judenstern,  the Jewish star, of which  the one on my jacket is an original example.

Then in August 1942 the order came for us, together with over 1000 other Jews, to assemble at the local railway station, to be transported across the border into Czechoslovakia.

The journey finished at a railway junction some 3 kilometres from what turned out to be the concentration camp of Theresienstadt, to which we had to march in the summer heat with the few belongings which we were allowed to bring with us.

The town had previously served as a Czech army camp, housing some 5000 soldiers in barracks, which became the cramped living and sleeping quarters for never fewer than 40,000 Jewish deportees. The men were separated from the women and children and all were placed in large dormitories consisting of two or three-tier bunks.

My two elderly grandmothers died after a short time there and in the following months my father did not survive an operation carried out by no doubt skilled Jewish surgeons but with little medical facilities and equipment.

I come now to my speech title Destined for Auschwitz, including the question mark to which I referred earlier. Unbeknown to me in my two and a half years in the camp as a 6 to 9 year old, Theresienstadt was not designated as an extermination venue, but rather a transit camp to which a total of some 150,000 Jews were taken from various European countries between 1941 and 1945.

The vast majority of these, or rather of those who survived the deprivations of the camp, were regularly transported to Auschwitz and to their virtually inevitable death.

After only a short time with my mother, I was transferred to what was euphemistically called a children’s home, housing youngsters from a variety of European countries, to the extent that Czech became the lingua franca, the common language for all of us.

There was a continual arrival of new occupants, the majority of whom were more often than not there one week and dispatched to their fate the next, so that the forming of even short friendships was a rarity.

The basically unanswerable and therefore unanswered question for me, even today, is why I remained in the home for two and a half years, while children around me invariably disappeared, indeed why I was not destined for Auschwitz.

Was it the vagaries of fate or divine intervention that kept me there, was it that privileged status was given to me by reason of the fact that my father had been awarded the Iron Cross second class in World War 1 for fighting valiantly for the Fatherland which had now deserted him or that my mother was required to contribute to the Nazi war effort by working as a slave labourer in a camp factory and, finally, was it one of these which enabled my mother and me to be freed to Switzerland 3 months before the end of the Holocaust rather than succumbing to a typhus epidemic which erupted in the camp after we left and which took many lives of  inmates who had remained there.

I digress from my story for a moment by mentioning that my wife Freda, to whom I have now been married for 67 years and who regrettably was not able to join us this evening, is also a Holocaust survivor, having been hidden from the age of three by a kindly Catholic family in Poland after both her parents had been murdered either by the Nazis or local sympathisers. It is worth recording that, 75 years after those events, three generations of descendants of that courageous woman were presented in Poland with a prestigious Israeli award, granting to the lady the posthumous distinction of being named as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Are there therefore obligations incumbent upon people like my wife and me as survivors of the Holocaust? There are those who attempt, more or less successfully, to blot out or to be silent about their experiences and sufferings and then there are those who, like ourselves, who feel a duty to ensure that the millions who perished are not forgotten, that the lesson of the Holocaust should be conveyed to those who would listen, so as to give emphasis to the dictum of the 18th century British philosopher Edmund Burke when he said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

Thus we have both spoken of our experiences to over 120 school and adult groups over the last 15 or so years, thereby making a small contribution to the growing realisation also in this country, of the importance of Holocaust education, a realisation to which perhaps even Her Majesty the Queen came in my case when compiling the New Year’s Honours list 5 years ago.

I cannot of course testify from personal knowledge that 6 million of our people were murdered during the Holocaust. I leave that to the records which the Nazis themselves largely kept. I can only hope that, with our efforts, we keep alive the memories of my father Erich, my two grandmothers Emma and Agnes, my uncle Albert, his wife Edith and teenage son Hans Peter, my father-in-law Yakov, my mother-in-law Kora and my sister-in-law Esther, a list small in itself but hopefully enough with those provided by many others to at least give pause to the diatribes of doubters and deniers.

I hope that I have also been able, at least in part, to answer the question of why I was not destined for Auschwitz and thus able to speak to you this evening.

Perry Trotter: Speech at IHRD 2025

INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Wellsford, New Zealand, 26 January 2025

Tonight we remember Europe's decisive action to purge itself once for all of the Jews, and of all that they represent. Advisedly I say Europe acted, not merely Germany. In many of the countries into which the Nazis moved, the general populace was willing, sometimes passionately eager, to cooperate in gathering, betraying, torturing and murdering their Jewish neighbours.

I well remember the words of one of the seventy survivors I have photographed. He explained that it was not that the Germans hated Jews more than the Poles or Ukrainians. It was that the Poles or Ukrainians would kill with pitch forks or their boots. The Germans, however, applied themselves to the task. They developed an industrial machine for efficient disposal of Europe's Jews.

Europe acted, to be free once and for all of the Jews, and of all they represent. And in large measure Europe succeeded. Of the Jews of Poland, 3 million strong prior to the war, 90 per cent were murdered. In Lithuania, up to 97% of Jews were killed.

Eighty years have passed since the Holocaust. But according to recent statistics, the global Jewish population is yet to recover to pre-Holocaust levels.

Eighty years. So much has changed. And yet nothing has changed. Today there are many entities eager to resume the task interrupted by the allied victory in 1945. And just as a cooperative general populace in Europe was essential to the success of the Nazi death scheme, antisemitic ideas and actions proliferate today because so few are willing to speak up.

A decade ago about a quarter of the world’s adults held antisemitic views. Today that figure is closer to half of all adults. The implications are disturbing. The trajectory is unmistakable, undeniable.

Elsewhere I have made the observation that The Jewish Problem, as it came to be known, might be more properly named The Gentile Problem. Antisemitism is, after all, a Gentile issue before it is a Jewish issue. The Gentile Problem is that for at least three and a half millennia the Jews have been subject to various forms of persecution at the hands of non-Jews, from marginalisation to murder. The Gentile Problem didn’t begin with the Holocaust - and it certainly didn’t end with the Holocaust.

In 2019 we visited Auschwitz in Poland. It was on that occasion that I shot six of the images you will see in the Auschwitz. Now. exhibition, installed 300m from here at 267 Rodney St. On the same journey we also visited Le Chambon Sur Lignon in the South of France.

Although it is less than a day’s journey from Auschwitz to Le Chambon, the two locations may as well occupy distant galaxies.

Auschwitz was a product of Europe’s most culturally, scientifically and educationally advanced society. In contrast, Le Chambon and the surrounding towns, were home to mostly simple peasant farmers and villagers.

One has appropriately become a symbol of ultimate evil. The other, much lesser known, stands as an example of selfless love and courage in the face of such depravity.

Shortly, to conclude tonight’s programme, we will play a three minute film that tells the beautiful story of Le Chambon. It is tragic that there are so few such beautiful stories. I will ask you to view the film as a call to action.

But first, let me say that I have often reflected on how I might have behaved in 1940s Europe. Friends of the Jewish people faced appalling dilemmas. Would I have had the courage to risk my life in order to shelter Jews? I hope so, but I really don’t know. But of this I am certain: had I not had the fortitude to act in the 1930’s, when Jews were maligned and incrementally marginalised, I certainly would not have had the fortitude to act in the 1940’s, when Jews were gathered to be shot in the forests or shipped to the gates of Auschwitz.

Enemies have been many and friends have been few. And the character of friends like those of Le Chambon is ultimately only proven in times of peril. The Holocaust taught us that those considered friends of the Jewish people are worse than irrelevant if they will not act.

Allow me to ask some rhetorical questions, questions that expose and unsettle, and that demonstrate my theme that although so much has changed, nothing has changed.

In 1945 the world emerged from war. What came to be known as the Holocaust was brought to an end.

But what really changed in 1945? We know the allies prevailed but in regard to what has drawn us together tonight, what really changed?

• Did ordinary Europeans repudiate the Jew hatred that for centuries had manifested in economic, social and religious discrimination?

• Were the masses of willing accomplices brought to account or at least filled with remorse?

• Did the philosophers who influence society from above abandon their intolerance of Jewish distinction and particularity?

• Did theologians and churchmen reject the toxic, incoherent and deplorable replacement theology that for centuries had infected Christendom, while cultivating and undergirding the persecution of Jews in Christian Europe?

• And in the Middle East, was there a change of heart among the Muslim leaders so keen to see Hitler’s policies implemented in their own lands?

• Were the western political and military leaders who knew what was happening to European Jews and yet chose to do little or nothing - were they brought to account?

• Of the many nations that chose to close their doors to Jews fleeing certain calamity, how many were willing to acknowledge their moral failure? (NZ made it very difficult for Jews to find refuge here).

• Did the exemplary philosemitism, compassion and courage of Le Chambon - as you will soon see - did it begin to permeate European culture?

The answers to these questions are obvious and they are disturbing, confronting and relevant.

Let us leave this place carrying enough of this discomfort to make a difference as antisemitism surges even within our own society.

And so, to the film about Le Chambon…

Dame Lesley Max: Speech at IHRD 2025

INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Wellsford, New Zealand, 26 January 2025

Kia ora koutou, shalom aleichem and good evening to you all,

I would first like to thank Sheree and Perry Trotter for giving me the honour of speaking tonight at this important occasion, in conjunction with the exhibition of Auschwitz Today here in Wellsford, to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  I cannot speak highly enough of the way in which Sheree and Perry carry the burden, which they have voluntarily assumed, of telling this dreadful story, and of honouring the memory of the people who suffered the greatest crime in recorded human history.

The day chosen is the day of liberation of Auschwitz towards the end of the Second World War.  For many people, so many years later, the name Auschwitz conveys little information.  Yet it is the best known of all the camps established by the Nazis to carry out Hitler’s intention of annihilating every Jew in Europe.

This process started as soon as the German invasion of Poland and the East got underway.  First came the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ – where Jews were herded into forests and fields and shot.  Others were packed into sealed trucks and gassed to death by carbon monoxide.

But all this was not efficient enough.  So in January 1942, high-ranking officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to coordinate the implementation of what they called ‘The Final Solution of the Jewish Question’.  This was a euphemism for mass murder, for the annihilation, the extermination of every Jew in Europe.

I wish this desire to exterminate Jews had died with the Nazis.  It didn’t.  It is what motivates the Islamic Republic of Iran and its clients, Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.  They don’t hide their purpose.

But back to the Nazis.  We know all about the Wannsee conference, because one copy of the Minutes was not destroyed.  I recommend a brilliant film, ‘Conspiracy’, with Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth.  The dialogue draws heavily on those Minutes.  Of the 15 top officials, eight had doctorates.  So they were Germany’s intellectual elites.  Many of us remember that fact as we witness some of the activities at universities in support of the Hamas massacre of Jews in Israel, on October 7th, 2023.

Wannsee was a brief, focused conference.  They were finished in time for a leisurely lunch, having decided the fate of those millions.  And they were effective in meeting their targets.  Not many escaped those meticulous plans.  They annihilated 90% of the Jews of Poland, 90% of the Jews of the Baltic countries, including my husband’s paternal grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins; 90% of the Jews who remained in Germany and Austria, including my husband’s maternal grandmother and other relatives; 77% of the Jews of Greece;  75% of the Jews of the Netherlands – and so it goes on.  Six million in all.  Of that six million, some one and a half million were children.

It’s hard to comprehend that number.  My assembly hall at Takapuna Grammar held about 1000 young people.  It would take 1500 school halls of that size to hold one and a half million children.  Thought of another way, the number of Jewish children and young people killed in the Holocaust is greater than the number of children and young people living now in New Zealand.  Now, THAT is what a genocide looks like.

The extermination camps in German-occupied Poland were one of the outcomes of that Wannsee conference.

The names of the extermination camps – where Jews were herded directly from the cattle cars they arrived in, to gas chambers – are less well-known, for the simple reason that there were virtually no survivors.  Those names should be known:  Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek,  and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Auschwitz-Birkenau had two functions.  It was both an extermination camp and a slave labour camp.  There was a selection process when the Jews arrived, after days packed without food or water into railway cattle wagons.  So that’s men, women, children, babies, the elderly, the ill, arriving to a scene of horror – snarling dogs, orders barked in German, men with guns.

People over the age of 50, pregnant women, children, babies and their mothers were directed to the left, to death.  Others who could be worked to death through slave labour and starvation were directed to the right.  There they were stripped, shaved, had numbers tattooed on their arms, and were given a light, striped uniform, all they had to protect them from the Polish winter.

Those who survived found it difficult to communicate what it was like to endure this place.  I think it’s important to try to understand the day to day misery, the all-pervading hunger, the extreme cold, the degrading, dehumanising absence of provision for bodily functions, and always, always, the terror of death, on top of the grief of loss of family.

Few survived longer than a few weeks or months.  Selections for the gas chambers occurred frequently as the starvation, slave labour, brutality and sickness took their toll.

Some had another function in this hell that was Auschwitz-Birkenau.  That was, as human guinea pigs, subjects for medical experimentation.  That deeply moving video we just saw of Ben Steiner gives us insight into this diabolical enterprise.

I have personally known three women who survived this horror.  One, Sara, had arrived with her family at Auschwitz from southern Hungary.   A Jewish prisoner, working on the arrival platform, asked if the baby she was carrying in her arms was her own.  She said no, it was her sister’s.  “Then give the baby to your sister,” he instructed.  She did.  Sara and her other sister, her twin, were then directed to the right, while her sister with her two little ones, her mother and father, were directed to the left, which meant death within hours.

Sara survived because she was a twin and so had some utility for the infamous Dr Mengele, who performed grotesque medical experiments on twins.  Her twin did not survive the death march towards the end of the war.  Sara somehow survived, getting back to Hungary as a skeleton weighing 35 kilos.  Forty years later, I met her in her home in Israel, tenderly cradling a baby grandson, the tattoo on her arm bearing witness of when she was just a number.

The other survivors I know of Mengele’s fiendish experiments on children are two people who, many years later, became the aunts of my daughter-in-law.  Another sister, Judith, was murdered in Auschwitz, at about six years old.  The two who survived, Eva and Marta, have given extensive testimony.  Eva has written a book, called “Gazing at the Stars”.  In that book she tells about the suffering of the children at the hands of Mengele.  Children were subjected to agonising procedures.  Children disappeared.  Eva tells of opening a door one day and finding, to her horror, the torso of a child she knew, his amputated limbs stacked alongside him.  Amputations done without anaesthetic.

I won’t tell you any more stories of horror.  But I will say that I am incensed that a young woman who has a huge following online, Candace Owens, a young woman who is going to do an event soon in Auckland, mocks these victims of Mengele.  It doesn’t make sense, she says.  Why would anyone bother, she says.  It’s lies, she says.  And much more besides – not so different from Hitler’s and Goebbels’ slanders.

Eva is too frail now to challenge this callous, deceiving young woman, but her recorded testimony and her book, provide the truth.  If you want to learn more, just search on YouTube the names of Eva Slonim and her sister, Marta Wise.  Get Eva’s book, “Gazing at the Stars”.  In it, you will see a very famous photograph of a number of miserable children standing behind barbed wire.  The photo is a still from footage taken by one of the Russian liberators of Auschwitz, on the day we are commemorating here, in Wellsford, 80 years later.

Eva, who was 13, looked like an ill, haggard old woman, with a white headscarf over her dark hair.  Marta, who was 10, is standing beside her, with a white scarf over her blonde hair.

I think of the other people I have known, who survived Auschwitz, most of them the only members of their family to survive.  I think of the beautiful Zosia, who came to Wellington, and the Aucklanders - Lily and her husband Victor, Mancie, whose daughter died in Auschwitz, the extraordinary Sol Filler, Ika and Karl.  None of them are still living, but most of them had children and grandchildren.

What is absolutely remarkable is that those children and grandchildren, like their parents and grandparents, are positive, contributing citizens of this country.  I have never heard expressions of hate.  I absolutely honour the survivors I know for their dignity, their restraint, the good lives they have led.  That is a kind of a miracle.  Bob Narev, whom you will hear from soon, epitomises that dignity, that restraint and a good life, well led, as does his dear wife, Freda.

I want to end on a note of hope.  So there it is.  The fact that human decency and goodness could survive the hell of Auschwitz.  And the fact that you are here tonight, to learn, to understand, to remember, and, I trust, to bear witness against attempts at trivialising or denying this unique and massive crime.

Thank you.

200 Attend IHRD Event in Rural Community

Dame Lesley Max

It was heartening to see a full Community Centre in Wellsford, New Zealand, as the local community and wider district gathered to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Special guest speakers were Holocaust survivor Bob Narev ONZM (Survivor of Theresienstadt) and Dame Lesley Max. They shared their reflections on the Holocaust and antisemitism and their personal stories.

Robert Narev ONZM, Chair of Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand

The evening came to close with a viewing of the story of Le Chambon, a small village in the South of France. The villagers, led by a Protestant Pastor, chose to follow their conscience and shelter Jews, who were being hunted down by Nazis and their collaborators. It was a fitting call to action in a period in which antisemitism has reached levels reminiscent of the 1930s.

The event was organised by Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Auschwitz. Now. exhibition is being staged in Wellsford till at least mid-February.

Speeches from the event will be posted shortly.

Event photography courtesy of Smoke

Prof Wayne Horowitz on the Holocaust

Prof Wayne Horowitz recently visited NZ. Wayne has worked for 30 years at the Hebrew University, as a teacher of Sumerian and Akkadian texts and traditions.

Wayne agreed to be filmed by the Holocaust Foundation as he described the way his family was impacted by the Holocaust. Watch.

Tabarovsky on Antisemitism since October 7

Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism. She is a Senior Fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities, a Research Fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and ISGAP, and a contributing writer at Tablet Magazine. Holocaust Foundation interviewed her and asked for her comments on antisemitism since October 7 and the state of academia.

Zuroff steps down: comments on education, October 7

Published on Jerusalem Post

The last Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, stepped down from the position of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel Office director after 38 years, Zuroff announced on Facebook on Tuesday morning.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948, Zuroff has dedicated his life to identifying and bringing to justice Nazi war criminals who evaded capture for decades. His interest in Holocaust studies began early, and after completing a degree in history from Yeshiva University, he moved to Israel in 1970 to work at Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.

Zuroff staunchly combatted antisemitism.

“Holocaust education was the best cure for antisemitism,” he stated in an interview with Australian actor Nathaniel Buzolic, who has been vocal in his support of Israel since October 7. He immediately followed that statement and said, “It turns out it’s not true.”

He then explained that Holocaust denial is a problem “in the Muslim world and the Arab world, where they don’t teach anything about the Holocaust… where they have a deep tradition of antisemitism,” implying that Holocaust denial is another form of antisemitism.

Zuroff's career in Nazi-hunting began when he joined the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles in 1978. He later returned to Israel, where he played a crucial role in launching “Operation: Last Chance,” a campaign which offers financial rewards for information leading to the conviction of Nazi war criminals. This operation has been implemented in over a dozen countries and has led to numerous prosecutions, including that of Sobibor death camp guard John Demjanjuk in Germany.

Zuroff has been instrumental in exposing Nazi collaborators in post-Communist Eastern Europe, particularly in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. His work has led to the indictment and extradition of several war criminals and the cancellation of pensions for those found guilty of Holocaust crimes.

Continued fight against Holocaust denial

When asked during his interview with Buzolic about a story concerning hunting Nazis that stood out, Zuroff was quick to respond, stating, “The most important Nazi war criminal whom I helped bring to justice was a man named Dinko Sakic,” who was “one of the commanders of a camp called the Jasenovac,” in Croatia. It is estimated that in this particular camp, 90-130 thousand people were murdered.

“They were murdered in the most horrific way imaginable,” Zuroff added. He then drew a parallel between Nazi soldiers and Hamas terrorists when he described the way the former handled prisoners and emphasized, “exactly what Hamas did.”

When asked what Israel means to him, Zuroff put his hand over his heart and asked, “You want me to start crying here?” adding that Israel means “everything” to him, as “it’s the negation of the Holocaust.”

Despite ending his nearly 40-year tenure at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where for 13 years he was responsible for Eastern European Affairs as well, Zuroff stated in his announcement on Facebook that he will continue looking for further opportunities to combat Holocaust denial and antisemitism.

Call for Special Envoy to combat antisemitism

The Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand supports the recent call for the appointment of a special envoy to combat antisemitism. A media release by New Zealand Jewish Council and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand stated it is time for New Zealand to get “serious about battling the world’s oldest hatred – antisemitism.  We call on the government to appoint a special envoy to combat antisemitism and work with envoys internationally to rout out this scourge in Aotearoa New Zealand”.

The release points out that special envoys have been appointed by UK, USA, Canada and numerous European nations including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Sweden. Holocaust Foundation agrees that it is time for New Zealand to do likewise.

Also cited was a recent survey of Jewish parents of school-aged children. “A staggering 80% of respondents said their children had suffered antisemitic episodes in their schools.  This was an increase in the survey results last year when just over 50% of the parents who completed the survey said their children had been subjected to antisemitism in school since October 7th 2023.”

We urge the New Zealand government to heed the call for the appointment of a special envoy.

Yad Vashem confronts Columbia University President

Minouche Shafik. Image: Yahoo News

Antisemitism is surging throughout the world and nowhere is this more evident than on university campuses. At least 40 anti-Israel protest camps have appeared on USA campuses.

Yad Vashem Chairman, Dani Dayan, has written to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik urging her to show leadership and moral clarity in the face of unveiled Jew hatred on her campus.

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Madam President, the Presidency of Columbia University is one of the most important leadership positions in the academic world. The President of Columbia is not – as sometimes erroneously referred – an administrator. He or she is chosen to be a Leader.

All the decisions you recently made were administrative in nature: to call the NYPD to evacuate the illegal encampment, to allow its re-establishment, to activate or deactivate credentials, to move to online teaching. Even your decision to negotiate is administrative in nature.

Madam, the time requires leadership decisions. Your illustrious career brought you to the Presidency of Columbia not to be a CEO or a Crisis Manager but to lead. To lead academically and even more important, to lead morally.

President Shafik, when thousands of Columbia faculty, staff and students call for the elimination of the State of Israel and the abolition of Zionism, you must take a stand. Not a political stand. A moral stand. When it becomes crystal clear that abolishing the existence of the Jewish State is a prevalent ideology in Columbia – the President of the institution cannot remain silent. The Talmud teaches us: “Silence is admission”. Silence inevitably will be interpreted as tolerance or, even worst, consent.

Your decision to deal only with the behavior – or the manners – of the demonstrators is not sustainable. A polite KKK member is as despicable – and probably more dangerous – than a thuggish one. A moral leader will fight both with the same determination.

Madam President, time has come for you to take a stand: can the promotion of the elimination of Israel – with or without genocide of its Jewish population - be a legitimate cause, advanced in academic syllabi, lectures, events, demonstrations and encampments in Columbia University or – like apartheid, misogyny, homophobia, white supremacism – is so despicable that will not be tolerated.  Each day, each hour you evade making a public decision of this nature and acting accordingly – you actually decide affirmatively.

There is a naïve belief that academy is immune to bigotry and the causes that students and professors lead are inherently “good causes”, even if sometimes ahead of their time. Nothing is further from the truth. Heidelberg University in Germany was not less prestigious than Columbia. In the 1920s it was a center of liberal thinking. A decade later a mob of Heidelberg students burned Jewish and other “corrupt” books in Universitätsplatz ("University Square"). Its faculty developed pseudo-academic fields like race theory, eugenics and forced euthanasia. Heidelberg did have administrators. Unfortunately, it lacked moral leadership.

The Jewish People was dispersed for two millennia, subject to persecutions, forced conversions, discrimination, pogroms and finally the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust. We returned to our ancestral homeland. Pursuing the destruction and erasure of the Jewish State is not less abominable than racial laws. Will Columbia be remembered as Heidelberg? To a very large extent, it is up to you, Madam.

Madam President, Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate defined indifference as “the most insidious danger of all”. And the great civil right leader and fellow Nobelist Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. added that “the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”  A great moral conflict was delivered to your doorsteps. Raise to the occasion. Lead with moral principles, not only with administrative regulations. Speak up.

Published by Yad VaShem

Zuroff: Jonathan Glazer a useful idiot for enemies of the Jewish people

First published in Jerusalem Post

As Jewish history teaches us, there will always be “useful [Jewish] idiots” like Jonathan Glazer, and some of the dangerous anti-Zionists will be Jewish.

Jonathan Glazer poses on the red carpet during the Oscars arrivals at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood, March 10, 2024. Image: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

The natural response to Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech of an Oscar for his recent movie The Zone of Interest, is one of utter disgust and disappointment. 

Glazer specifically said that he refutes his Jewish ancestry and secondly accuses Israel (whom he doesn’t mention by name) of “hijacking the Holocaust by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many, for so many, innocent people.”

These days, such an accusation by a Jew is probably the most damning accusation imaginable, and when it is leveled at us by the director of an apparently highly successful film, which focuses on the Hoess family of the commander of the Auschwitz – Birkenau death camp, and purports to deal with “where dehumanization leads,” it is hard to ignore.

To add to the irony, this past Friday, Yediot Achronot had a very lengthy profile on Glazer by Benjamin Tobias, their film correspondent, who described Glazer as a “proud” Jew.

The new normal since October 7 

The truth is, however, that Glazer’s comments should hardly surprise anybody. How many times have we recently read about Jewish groups that support the Palestinians? Just the other day, I read an article in The Jerusalem Post about the dedication of the new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, attended by President Isaac Herzog. Among those who came to “greet” the president were members of a Dutch Jewish anti-Zionist organization called Erev Rav, which organized the protest together with Jews Against Genocide, the local Palestinian community, and Socialists International.

The 76th Cannes Film Festival - Press conference for the film ''The Zone of Interest'' in competition - Cannes, France, May 20, 2023. Director Jonathan Glazer attends. (credit: Yara Nardi/Reuters)

Jewish groups of this sort have emerged in many Jewish communities, especially in the United States, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow, and have become much more active and visible in the wake of the Hamas mass murders of October 7.

For those of us born after 1948, such criticism of Israel is unusual and hardly popular. The establishment of the State of Israel turned many opponents of Zionism into ardent supporters of the lone Jewish state. 

Who remembers the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism and the opposition to Zionism of numerous Reform rabbis? Who remembers the anti-Zionist socialist Bund, one of the largest Jewish parties in Poland? Or the notorious Yevsekstiya, the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party, whose goal was for all Russian Jews to join the party and abandon Judaism? In fact, Zionism was a small minority movement in world Jewry until the middle of the 20th century.

Three events changed practically the entire Jewish world – the Holocaust, the establishment of an independent sovereign Jewish state, and Israel’s stunning victory in the Six Days War. From a distinct minority of world Jewry, Zionism became the majority ideology of the committed Jews of the world, and one of the most important elements of modern Jewish identity.

So, it is particularly unpleasant when successful and famous Jews accuse the state of Israel publicly and unfairly of exploiting the Holocaust to commit war crimes, probably the most disgusting accusation one can make against the Jewish state. But we should not overestimate the impact of such accusations. In most cases, they are a function of ignorance, or a desire to find favor with audiences who have little knowledge of the circumstances; or out of fear of losing fans.

As Jewish history teaches us, there will always be “useful [Jewish] idiots” like Jonathan Glazer, and some of the dangerous anti-Zionists will be Jewish. The best way to combat their lies is to teach the history of Zionism and Israel’s efforts to make peace with our neighbors, and expose the extremism of our enemies and the crimes committed against us, as painful as that might be.

Dr Efraim Zuroff is the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs.

Pogroms and Press Complicity

“If the press is to avoid having blood on its hands it must be very careful not to inflame a very volatile situation and go down in history as causing a pogrom.”

— David Robinson

On Saturday the 7 October 2023, on Shabbat and the celebration of Simchas Torah (Rejoicing of the Law), and 50 years since the Yom Kippur War, over 1000 Hamas terrorists broke through the border between Gaza and Israel. In a very carefully planned attack they tortured, raped, burned alive, beheaded and in other brutal ways murdered all they encountered. About 200 including the aged, infirm, handicapped, children and babies were kidnapped and dragged to Gaza to be hostages. One of the lucky four hostages to be released to date, a woman in her eighties, described how she was beaten by her captors when being dragged to Gaza. Young people attending an open air concert were not spared, 260 were murdered in cold blood. 

David Robinson

The terrorists, proud of their achievements, videoed the massacre. One grabbed the mobile phone of a dead victim to boast to his parents in Gaza that he had killed ten Jews. His parents in their reply were very proud of their son’s achievements as if he had scored ten goals in a football tournament.

Many of the citizens in Gaza were delighted at the massacre and were pictured dancing in joy, desecrating the dead bodies of the victims and taunting the hostages. In one video they practically knocked each other down for the chance to stomp on dead Israeli bodies. It is not possible to express in words the horror of families of the hostages, witnessing the scenes captured and displayed by the perpetrators of this massacre. 

In all, 1400, mostly civilians, were massacred and more than 200 taken  hostage. What happened was nothing less than genocide and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

The effect of this massacre spread around the world and many Governments including the UK, USA, Canada and Australia immediately unreservedly condemned the massacre and expressed solidarity with Israel in opposing the evil that is Hamas.

In contrast our foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta posted on twitter:-

“Aotearoa New Zealand is deeply concerned at the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Gaza. We call for the immediate cessation of violence. The protection of all civilians, and upholding of international humanitarian law is essential.”

— Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta

It is interesting to compare this post with the  New Zealand Government’s position following pogroms of Jews in Russia in 1891 when the New Zealand House of Representatives led by Sir George Grey passed a resolution for a petition to be presented to the Emperor of Russia to repeal the restrictive laws imposed on the Russian Jews.     

Immediately after the attack, following consultation with the  authorities in New Zealand, the Auckland Jewish Community closed Kadimah School (the only Jewish day school in New Zealand) and advised  that the Auckland Hebrew Congregation Shabbat services would not take place at the Remuera complex that weekend.  It is an indictment of the society in which we live that  the Jewish community in Auckland felt intimidated enough to take these unprecedented steps. This did not follow any aggression by the Israelis. It was a reaction to the slaughter of Israelis which was followed by Hamas’ call to international Jihad against Jews. 

Although the Jewish Community had expressed solidarity and sympathy with the Muslim Community for the dreadful massacre of 50 worshipers in two Mosques in Christchurch, the Muslim Community was openly aggressive in its support of Hamas.

Hamas has been, and is, openly hostile not only to the Jews in Israel but also to Jews throughout the world including New Zealand. Its charter which was in force when a majority of the Palestinians in Gaza voted in its favour clearly states:

The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight Jews and kill them.

It also states:

The establishment of Israel is entirely illegal… …Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. 

The River is the Jordan River and the sea is the Mediterranean. In other words, Hamas which had the support of the majority of Palestinians living in Gaza seeks the annihilation of the State of Israel and the death of all its inhabitants. 

It is hard to see what more Hamas can do to satisfy its supporters and the Government in New Zealand that both its military and political wings are terrorists.  Consistent  with its charter it has authorized and carried out the torture and slaughter of Israelis thus establishing that its charter means what it says and cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric. In case anyone did not believe in the extent of the slaughter, the murderers recorded their deeds to boast to their supporters and terrorize their enemies.

Although years were spent in preparing for this massacre, Hamas did nothing to protect their Palestinian citizens from the attacks which they must have anticipated from the Israelis. Unlike the Israelis they did not build bomb shelters or safe rooms and unlike the British in World War 2, when Londoners were able to shelter in the underground during the Blitz, they have not allowed shelter in the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels built with reinforced concrete. Instead they use the citizens of Gaza as human shields. By placing their rocket launches and ammunition near hospitals and schools they endanger their citizens using them as human shields. Even though Israel does its best to avoid civilian casualties, innocents do get killed. Hamas use the victims to further their narrative and with a complicit press, they gain public sympathy.

Unfortunately a rocket launched by Islamic Jihad aimed at Israel misfired and blew up in the carpark of a nearby hospital. Hamas immediately reported that an Israeli rocket had struck the hospital killing hundreds.  Although Israel denied it was responsible for this incident the international press hastily published the Hamas version of events, blaming Israel. In the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to reporters: 

What I have said to people publicly, is “Don’t assume it’s Israel. You have no proof that it’s Israel. Many people have made a clear case it’s not. At the very best do not start propagating another blood libel.

The term blood libel refers to the false allegation that Jews use the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes. The Nazis made effective use of the blood libel to demonize Jews. Blood libels often resulted in pogroms against the Jews, one of the first of which occured in Norwich England in 1144.

Unfortunately the Archbishop of Canterbury is entirely correct when warning journalists of the risks of starting another blood libel. With Hamas calling for Jihad against Jews throughout the world, including New Zealand, it is extremely likely that a false accusation that Israel has bombed a hospital in Gaza will result in violence against the local Jewish community.  Calls for genocide including cries to “Gas the Jews” could very easily escalate to physical violence against person and property. 

If the press is to avoid having blood on its hands it must be very careful not to inflame a very volatile situation and go down in history as causing a pogrom.

David Robinson is a former Associate Judge of the High Court of New Zealand and is on the board of the Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand

Media Release: Auckland Museum’s Apology

Media Release by Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand

Auckland Museum’s Apology for expressing solidarity with Israel

17 October 2023

Civilised nations across the world, including UK, Australia, and USA,  have seen fit to show solidarity with Israel at her time of grief, by lighting prominent buildings with Israel’s colours. Sydney Opera House, 10 Downing St, The Brandenburg Gate and buildings in Kyiv and the European Commission have responded appropriately after the worst slaughter and atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust.

Auckland Museum houses a Holocaust room and our Holocaust Foundation has directed Holocaust memorial events on its premises.

In response to the antisemitic thuggery of Hamas supporters, Auckland Museum has now apologised for the lighting of its building in expression of solidarity with the Jewish nation.

This is shameful.

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Media Release: Suggested Moral Equivalence Repugnant

Media Release by Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand

Suggested Moral Equivalence between Hamas and IDF, Repugnant

13 October 2023

While we deplore the misappropriation of Holocaust memory, it is important to observe that Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israeli civilians saw the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.  Jewish people were tortured, murdered, raped, burned alive, and in recent days there has been verification of reports of babies being beheaded.

Many Israelis have been abducted and taken into Gaza. Among them is at least one Holocaust survivor.

We stand firmly with Israel at this time and share the deep grief felt by Jewish people worldwide.

Our grief is further compounded by the equivocation of several New Zealand leaders, in their response to Hamas’ attack.  All suggestions of moral equivalence between the actions of Hamas and its followers, and those of the Israeli Defense Forces, whether stated or implied, we consider repugnant and reprehensible.

This is a time for moral clarity. Antisemitism is virulent and knows a multitude of expressions. It must be called out.

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Statement on Hamas attack on Israel

Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) has issued a statement regarding the Hamas attack on Israel:

STATEMENT BY ISGAP EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR DR. CHARLES ASHER SMALL ON THE ATROCITIES

A pogrom is conventionally defined as a mob attack resulting in a massacre, with the approval of authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national group.
 
As the details of the barbaric acts against Israelis become clear, the leadership of Hamas, the Iranian Regime, and the Hamas paymasters, the Qatari Regime, are guilty of carrying out and supporting a pogrom, and actually celebrating these unspeakable crimes. The murder, torture, mutilation of bodies, and sexual crimes against innocent Jewish children, women, and the elderly are nothing less than a pogrom. Hamas is the murderous shock troops, and the Iranian and Qatari Regimes are their overseers.

"On behalf of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) team of scholars, researchers, policy experts and students from around the world, we stand in full solidarity with Israel, as it faces a genocidal war launched by Gaza-based Hamas, a terrorist group listed by the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Organization of American States, and many other international actors. Hamas is supported by the Iranian Regime and its paymasters the Qatari Regime."
 
“Make no mistake about it,” Dr. Charles Asher Small, the founding director of ISGAP, continued. “Hamas openly declares its aim of annihilating Israel and murdering Jews. And it does so with the full support of the Iranian Regime, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and with the guiding principles of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist network financed and empowered, closely linked to the Qatari Regime, the paymasters for this axis of hate.”
 
“We call on the international academic community to show its full understanding and support for Israel at this critical time,” Dr. Small added, “and to counter supporters of Hamas, including the Iranian and Qatari Regimes, and their eliminationist ideology on campuses worldwide.”
 
“We applaud the dozens of countries that have expressed their support for Israel and its full right of self-defence, offered their assistance, and pledged to fight the cancerous evils of Hamas and its pernicious antisemitic, anti-Western, and misogynist worldview.”
 
Dr. Small added, “The ideology of Hamas, the Iranian Regime, the Qatari Regime, and the Muslim Brotherhood all share an ideology that is literally inspired by ancient European antisemitism and Nazi ideology, which is founded on a belief and rhetoric that incites to genocide.”
 
ISGAP, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, is the leading global organization dedicated to studying antisemitism in all its forms, and to connecting scholars to combat it on campuses and beyond. Its founding chair was Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace laureate, and its current chair is Natan Sharansky, the human rights activist who spent nine years (1977-1986) in the Soviet Gulag for his struggle as a Jewish activist and political dissident.

For additional comments, please contact Dr. Charles Asher Small, Founder and Executive Director, ISGAP;
Director, ISGAP-Woolf Institute Fellowship Training Programme on
Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Cambridge, UK
at charlessmall@isgap.org

Antisemitism and the Funding of Higher Education

Narratives that prevail in academia soon filter down to politics, media and society’s culture more broadly. There is evidence that those narratives are sometimes influenced by donors.

The founder of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, Dr Charles Asher Small, recently spoke of his findings concerning Muslim Brotherhood funding of many of the world’s finest universities. The implications for antisemitism are significant.

Woke Antisemitism

Antisemitism comes in many forms, among them Islamist, Christian, economic, and conspiratorial antisemitism. Many correctly associate antisemitism with the far right and yet it is increasingly prevalent on the progressive left.

David L. Bernstein is the author of Woke Antisemitism: How Progressive Ideology Harms Jews. The Holocaust Foundation interviewed David at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy at the University of Oxford.

Review: The slaughter of Lithuanian Jews

This book review was originally published by The Jerusalem Report. Used by permission.

On April 4, 1945, Leyb Koniuchowsky sat down in Kovno with Lithuanian Holocaust survivor Dina Zisa Flaum and carefully recorded by hand her testimony in Yiddish regarding her harrowing experiences during the Holocaust. Flaum was one of the very few survivors of the community of Rasein (in Yiddish), or Raseiniai (in Lithuanian), a pre-war community of some 6,000 Jews, and Koniuchowsky was a man on a mission, a sacred mission. Originally from Alytus, Lithuania, Koniuchowsky survived the Kovno Ghetto and decided to record the testimonies of all the (few) Jews who had miraculously survived in the small shtetlach (villages with Jewish communities) in the provinces.

Of the 220,000 Jews who lived under the Nazi occupation in Lithuania, only about 8,000 survived. The overwhelming majority of them, however, were from Lithuania’s large urban Jewish communities in Vilna (Vilnius), Kovno (Kaunas), and Shavli (Siauliai), where the Nazis had established ghettos and kept alive several thousands of Jewish forced laborers. The decimation in the small communities was almost total.

Flaum’s testimony was particularly important because she had seen at least one of the mass murders in Rasein (not all the Jews were murdered at the same time) and could identify several of the killers. This is her description of one of the most horrific crimes she witnessed:

“While lying in the hay [close to the murder site], I clearly saw two women standing near the pit [which the victims fell into after being shot] smashing the skulls of small children with a large rock or killing the children by smashing their heads together. One of the women was the student Klimaite.”

Koniuchowsky started his project in Lithuania immediately after the end of World War II, and later continued in the displaced persons camps in Germany for several years. By the time he finished in 1948, he had collected testimonies about over 100 communities, and he sought a publisher to publish his collection in its entirety. And that’s where the story of this book hit a very unfortunate snag. By this time, he had immigrated to the United States, and he could not find any publisher willing to print his entire book as recorded by its author. And, believe it not, that was still the situation 32 years later when I first met Koniuchowsky in 1980 in Israel while I was working as a researcher for the Office of Special Investigations of the US Justice Department, established to prosecute the Nazis who had entered the United States illegally by hiding their service with the Nazis. I tried to convince Koniuchowsky to let me see the material, but he adamantly refused.

He kept on saying that he collected the testimonies for the kedoshim [martyrs], to which I replied in utter desperation, that those who had turned them into kedoshim were walking around free, and that there is every chance that they will die in peace and tranquility if we cannot have access to his material – all to no avail. Only nine years later was the problem solved, after Prof. Dov Levin, a survivor of Kovno and the world’s leading expert on the fate of Baltic Jewry in the Holocaust, finally convinced Koniuchowsky to donate his collection to Yad Vashem, even though they did not commit to publishing his magnum opus.

According to press reports, Koniuchowsky was getting old, and he wanted to make sure that he kept his promise to the victims. “They yelled, ‘Brothers and sisters, Yidden, please remember us! Take revenge for our poor blood! And I didn’t forget for a minute of my life.” What Yad Vashem did do was publish a book titled Expulsion and Extermination; Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania. It gives an in-depth treatment of the various stages of the persecution and murder of the Jews, using excerpts from the testimonies to illustrate the trials and tribulations suffered by the Jewish inhabitants of the more than 200 Lithuanian towns and villages that had Jewish communities.

The unique historical significance of Koniuchowsky’s project becomes clearly apparent because the witness statements provide critical dimensions and details of the tragic fate of approximately half of Lithuanian Jewry, the most important of which are the major role played by local volunteers from all strata of Lithuanian society in the mass murders, and the incredible cruelty of the perpetrators.

In view of the persistent efforts of successive Lithuanian governments since independence to hide and/or minimize the role of locals in the murders, The Lithuanian Slaughter of Its Jews is an invaluable addition to the historical record of the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry, and it makes available vital information for the English-speaking public. This is not an easy or comfortable read, and the format is not read- er-friendly, but its 569 pages present a message that must be heard and learned.

I cannot conclude this review without two additional points. The first relates to the potential importance of the testimonies in the efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Koniuchowsky’s collection consisted of 1,684 pages of testimony in Yiddish, and listed the names of 1,284 participants, only 121 of whom we had information about from other sources.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the Center’s Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs. His latest book (with Ruta Va- nagaite) is Our People; Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust, published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Given our ability to trace the immigration destinations of thousands of Holocaust perpetrators, especially from the Baltics, to the Anglo-Saxon democracies, the decades-long delay in obtaining access to the testimonies was a veritable tragedy, which allowed many killers to escape punishment. The fact that it was a survivor, well aware of the horrors of the Holocaust, who refused to cooperate, makes it much more painful. One final note. This volume has 121 testimonies from the Koniuchowsky collection, but for some reason additional witness statements were not included, including the testimony of Dina Flaum cited above. Their omission is not explained.

The Corruption of the Term Genocide

The term ‘genocide’ is increasingly being hijacked by activists and bad faith actors who are happy to stomp on the graves of real victims of mass atrocity to achieve their political or ideological objectives. 

Last week, Sanjana Hattotuwa, a researcher from “The Disinformation Project” claimed that, following the Posie Parker visit, online rhetoric directed at the trans community had risen to “genocidal” levels. He offered no proof and the media that published his words clearly didn’t see fit to question his extraordinary claim.

The man who originally coined the term ‘genocide’ was Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. He did so to establish new international laws to prosecute the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the systematic destruction of the Armenian population. Genos means a race, and cide means to kill. Thus, genocide means the systemic murder of a group / or the destruction of a culture.

Hattotuwa directed followers online to a statement released by a new genocide education group named after Lemkin, that incredibly claimed that gender-critical counterargument is the spearhead of a nascent fascist movement. Oddly, this institute has four articles mentioning Uighur Muslims and 137 that mention the United States Police. While an important issue, no reasonable person would refer to Police violence in the U.S. in the same breath as ‘genocide’. 

Hattotuwa is not the only high-profile New Zealander to abuse the word. In 2018 Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman was censured by the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand for accusing Israel of carrying out a ‘genocide’. The Holocaust Centre media release was titled “Grotesque, Reckless Use of ‘Genocide’ by NZ Members of Parliament” and went on to say “… It is not only a grotesque distortion of the term ‘genocide, but it is inaccurate, inflammatory and fuelling hate speech in New Zealand…”

And also last week, Dr Rawiri Taonui, who is part of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission’s ​​National Anti-Racism Taskforce (despite a history of bullying and discrimination), claimed that the Holocaust, which killed 6,000,000 Jews was “equal & opposite” to the situation of the Arab Palestinians today, whose population has increased year on year since 1948. This is an echo of Ms Ghahraman’s “reckless and grotesque” 2018 comments.

Hattotuwa, Ghahraman, and Taonui’s gross misapplication of the term genocide is repulsive. But it is also extremely dangerous. And great that the Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation called it out.

If people truly believe that trans people or an Arab Palestinian population are under imminent threat from feminists or Jews, respectively, then violence may be justified to stop the ‘genocide’. 

Certainly, after a week of rhetoric comparing the gender-critical feminists and others to Nazis (the ultimate genocidaires), Posie Parker’s ‘counter-protesters’ clearly did feel justified to use violence. 

A young man was caught on tape viciously attacking a 72-year-old woman, and while these are the actions of an unhinged individual, such a criminal could lean into a defence that their violence was a fair response to a ‘genocidal’ opposition. Misuse of the term is being used to incite and may be viewed by its abusers as an effective tactic to create unrest and force a final political solution of strident state censorship. 

Misuse of the word ‘genocide’, especially when the term is abused in relation to the Holocaust per Ghahraman and Taonui, is a form of “soft-core” Holocaust denial. As a culture, we need to collectively address this dangerous corruption of a term that, for the descendants of many New Zealanders, from Europe, Africa and indeed around the world, meant what the word was always intended to mean: the conscious and systemic destruction of their people. 

We need to call figures like Hattotuwa out for what they are when they abuse this term – atrocity-deniers – and demand honesty and specificity in our political discourse.

This article was first published on Plain Sight

IHRA’s Success and Difficult Dilemma

This week we observe International Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27, the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp as mandated by the United Nations in 2005. If there was initial skepticism regarding this initiative, especially in countries which already had designated their own memorial days linked to the dates of important local events in the history of the Shoa, like Israel for example, I think that by now there is general approval for the need for an international memorial day observed all over the world on the same date. Thus one day can be devoted primarily to mourning, while the other day can be reserved for dealing the very important political issues which relate to the causes which led to the Shoa, and particularly anti-Semitism.

One organization which has accurately recognized the connection between the Shoa and its anti-Semitic roots, and is trying to uproot the latter, is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has become one of the most important groups promoting Holocaust education throughout Europe, North and South America, and Israel. IHRA was founded in May 1998 by Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, who was shocked by a survey which showed that many Swedish schoolchildren lacked knowledge of the Holocaust, as well as his visit to the site of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany. Originally named the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, Germany and Israel joined the initiative the same year as its first members.

Today, 35 countries are full members of IHRA, and 10 additional countries have Observer status. IHRA is playing a major role in a variety of areas connected to Holocaust commemoration, Research and education, as well as in combatting anti-Semitism. And in fact, its most outstanding contribution has most probably been its adoption in 2016 of its Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, which according to the Combat Antisemitism Movement has been endorsed/adopted until the end of 2022, by a total of 1,116 entities, among them 39 countries, 464 non-federal government entities, 339 educational institutions, and 274 NGO’s and organizations. The definition, unlike various other descriptions of anti-Semitism, covers all the existing variations from right and left, including those focused on Zionism, and which unfairly single out Israel for criticism, which are often overlooked or ignored.

There are, however, various problems which plague IHRA’s activities. The first and foremost is that resolutions must be approved unanimously by all the member countries, but there are no consequences for those countries which do not implement them. The most disturbing example has to do with the issue of Holocaust distortion, which is rampantly prevalent in the post-Communist “new democracies” in Eastern Europe. In those countries, they do not deny the Holocaust, but they hide or minimize the highly significant role played by their nationals in the mass murder of the Jews, and promote the canard of equivalency between Communist and Nazi crimes thereby deflecting attention from their crimes and focusing attention on their suffering.

Thus in 2020, IHRA issued a Ministerial Declaration which addressed the issue in unequivocal terms as follows: “We accept our responsibility as governments to continue working together to counter Holocaust denial and distortion…We will continue to work closely with experts, civil society and our international partners to further these goals.” Another declaration under the heading of: “Leading global efforts to counter Holocaust and distortion,” specifically mentions “a shocking increase in efforts to minimize the impact of the Holocaust and downplay the crimes of the Nazi regime and its collaborators. This trend, in which Holocaust distortion inches toward the mainstream, erodes our understanding of the historical truth of the Holocaust and fuels antisemitism.”

IHRA has even created a tool kit against distortion, and the German Presidency launched a global task force against Holocaust distortion which was given an extra-budgetary contribution. In addition, a global campaign to raise awareness about Holocaust distortion was launched, using slogans such as “#Protect the Facts,” and “#Say No To Distortion.”

The problem is, however, that the same countries which are the worst offenders when it comes to distortion, such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Croatia, Poland, Hungary and Romania cannot be punished, or expelled from IHRA. They remain members in good standing, and continue to deny the highly-significant role of their local collaborators in the murders. Thus, ironically, Croatia, a country which suffers from a significant proportion of Ustasha (Croatian fascists) supporters will ascend to the Presidency of IHRA, despite serious problems of Holocaust distortion ever since they became independent from Yugoslavia.

First published on Times of Israel

Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of the Center's Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs. He serves on the International Council for the Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Mother's Love and a Nobel Prize

(Originally posted 2013)

It was a great privilege to meet and photograph Nobel prize winner Roald Hoffmann earlier this year. As Roald recounted his story of surviving the Holocaust as a young child, the heroic tale of his mother captured my attention. I could not help but be drawn to this woman who in the midst of extreme adversity created an environment of love, nurture and intellectual stimulation for her young child.

After Germany invaded Poland and occupied the town of Złoczów, Roald’s family was placed in a labor camp. Roald’s father, Hillel Safran, was an engineer with a detailed knowledge of local infrastructure and so was an asset to the Germans while working in the camp. 

As the situation worsened Hillel made arrangements for his wife Clara and son Roald to be hidden by a Ukrainian school teacher they had befriended in a village not far from their town. Along with two uncles and an aunt they were hidden in the attic and then storeroom of the local schoolhouse for the last fifteen months during the war. 

In this cramped and difficult situation Roald’s mother, Clara made the best of a bad situation. A school teacher by training, Clara found herself confined in the attic storehouse of the school with books, paper and pencils at her disposal and a young son with many hours to fill. 

Roald Hoffmann (then Safran) explains how his mother taught him to read using the school books that were stored in the tiny storeroom:

‘Mother invented endless geography games. I learned latitude and longitude at age six. She would say to me, “Tell me how you would go from here to San Francisco”. I had to describe the route in excruciating detail. It was not enough to say take a train. I would have to explain where I would catch it, where it went. I would have to describe all the surrounding bodies of water, whether to go through a canal or on the sea. And which sea.  She invented a game called “Wet or Dry”. She would specify a latitude and longitude and I would have to tell whether it would be on ocean or dry land. This made for a longish game. But I’m still good at geography’

This resourceful and determined mother was not going to let incarceration imprison the mind and spirit. Could Clara have imagined that those many hours spent stimulating the intellect of her young charge would produce a future Nobel prize winner? 

Whilst this young mother was in hiding Hillel Safran remained at the Labour camp. The Germans valued his skills and Hillel made use of the relative freedom of movement that his position afforded him to work with a resistance group that was planning a breakout. He was able to smuggle weapons into the camp. Unfortunately Hillel along with other leaders of the resistance group were betrayed. This led to their arrest, torture and execution in June 1943.

A friend who witnessed Hillel’s execution informed Clara of the terrible news via a letter to sent to the house. One can only imagine the sorrow of that dreadful moment. Clara poured her grief onto the pages of her husband’s notebook. In this notebook her husband had written notes from a book he was reading on relativity. How apt that the son of this young couple would become a chemist and poet.

The fifteen months in hiding did not mean that Clara avoided the harsh treatment of the Germans. During their time in the labour camp Clara received a terrible beating from one particularly sadistic labour camp director.  Not content with just physical brutality, these perpetrators of terror also engaged in psychological torment. When Roald was four or five some of the drunken SS man wanted to show off and scare the people. They made the Roald sit on the dog house while they used it for target practice. They shot and killed the dog while saying to Roald’s mother, “Don’t be afraid, lady. We’re not going to shoot your son.”

Roald describes his mother as a strong, small woman:

”My uncles were weak from not being able to move after 15 months of confinement. When we walked to the Russian lines at the end of the war, the men had great trouble. Mother, however, carried me for three kilometers to the Russian lines. Mother was leader of this small group of five. Her brothers, lifelong, listened to her.”

Roald was aware of the incredible danger that lay beyond his hiding place. Although he was confined in difficult circumstances Roald remembers being surrounded by family and cocooned in an atmosphere of love. 

What a legacy for a young mother to pass on to her child and what a joy it must have been for her to see her son succeed in the land that adopted them after the war. This small brave woman remarried, immigrated to New York in 1949, had another child in her forties and lived to the grand age of almost 95.

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View Roald’s story