A historic resolution condemning Holocaust denial and distortion was passed by the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. It was sponsored by Israel, co-sponsored by Germany and backed by the United States and Russia. Its passage was intended to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the diabolical Wannsee Conference in Berlin, during which 15 high-ranking Nazi […]
One can readily understand why American Jews were rattled by the hostage incident at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, last Saturday. Although the four Jewish hostages escaped unharmed after 11 hours of captivity, and Muslim attacker Malik Faisal Akram was killed, the standoff left a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of Jews. In a […]
In what amounted to a settling of accounts, some Holocaust survivors in postwar Poland tried to avenge the deaths of their loved ones by exacting punishment on Poles who murdered Jews. These survivors regarded revenge as a therapeutic sacred right and duty, said Polish historian Katarzyna Person in a zoom lecture earlier this month sponsored […]
The Senate in Romania passed a law recently requiring high schools and vocational schools to teach a course on the Holocaust and the Jewish people. Due to be introduced in 2023, its contents will be fleshed out by the Ministry of Education in consultation with the Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust […]
Nazis in Germany and neo-Nazis throughout the world have exploited music and song as instruments of unity, camaraderie and aggression, panelists at an online seminar said recently. During the forum, sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City, two academics, a former white supremacist and a journalist from Italy spoke of […]
Scattered throughout Poland are synagogues in various architectural styles that once served a large and venerable Jewish community. Found in towns ranging from Zamosc and Orla to Krasnik and Lancut, they remind Poles and foreign visitors alike that Poland was home to one of the most vibrant and important Jewish centers in the Diaspora before the […]
A trial is currently under way in a U.S. federal court pitting 24 white supremacists and neo-Nazis against nine plaintiffs who suffered psychological and physical trauma during a violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the summer of 2017. The rally, which took place from August 11-12, began on a Friday night as hundreds of white […]
Israel and Poland are at war again, figuratively speaking at least. For the second time since 2018, they are embroiled in a nasty war of words, which have had an unsettling effect on their bilateral relations. This increasingly bitter diplomatic row revolves around a Polish parliamentary bill which drastically limits the ability of Holocaust survivors […]
Regrettably, the lower chamber of Poland’s Parliament, the Sejm, is considering a bill to limit the ability of Jewish and non-Jewish claimants to seek restitution for property confiscated by the Nazis during the Holocaust and nationalized by the Communist regime during the postwar period. This mean-spirited bill sailed through the first of three readings last week and […]
Israel’s enemies claim they harbor no ill feelings toward Jews despite their hatred of Israel. And while this may be true in some cases, the recent cross-border war in Gaza demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is very thin and porous. As the war unfolded, Palestinian Arabs and their […]