NCSEJ WEEKLY TOP 10 Washington, D.C. March 8, 2019

What’s Behind Europe’s Surge in Anti-Semitism? By William Echikson Politico, March 4, 2019 https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-anti-semitism-surge/

Anti-Semitism is back in Europe. Cries of “dirty Jew” during Yellow Jackets protests in France, anti-Semitic posters condemning Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros in Hungary, a row over anti-Semitic remarks that threatens to tear the Labour Party apart in the U.K. — these are all part of the same worrying trend.

This particularly European pathology never truly went away, of course, but it had been confined, after the Holocaust, to the far-right fringes of society. Now the numbers of high-profile incidents and violent attacks are multiplying. Not only is this disease back; it is being weaponized by nationalist governments and parties on both sides of the political spectrum.

So what explains this alarming resurgence?

The collapse of Europe’s center-right, center-left political consensus plays an important role. As the center has dissolved, the fringes have expanded. The rise of extremist parties has acted like a green light for the Continent’s anti-Semitism, much like U.S. President Donald Trump has empowered racists and white supremacists to speak up on the other side of the Atlantic.

At a basic level, today’s European anti-Semitic threat is physical. France this month reported a 74 percent increase in violent attacks against Jews, and German police announced a 60 percent rise. In a survey addressing more than 16,000 Jewish people in 12 European countries, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency at the end of last year found that 90 percent of respondents felt anti-Semitism is growing in their country, and 30 percent said they have been harassed. Over a third avoided going to Jewish events or sites out of fear for their safety.

The danger goes beyond the physical. Issues that, on the face, have nothing to do with Jews — the migration crisis or a protest movement sparked by fuel prices — suddenly became all about them. Centuries-old stereotypes have reappeared: the conniving Jewish financier, the all-powerful Jewish conspirator accused of buying political influence or acting as a “globalist,” pulling the levers of power in pursuit of enrichment. The common theme: Jew are “others” who do not belong in European society.

The source of this resurgence differs in Western and Eastern Europe.

In the West, the danger comes from left-wing opposition and from the street. In the U.K., anti-Semitism is tearing apart the opposition Labour Party, whose leader Jeremy Corbyn insists the internationally accepted definition of the scourge infringes on his right to criticize Israel. Muslim critics of the Jewish state are also often guilty of extending their criticism to all Jews: When protestors in Malmö, Sweden rallied against U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, they called for an intifada and promised “we will shoot the Jews.” A day later, during a demonstration in Stockholm, a speaker called Jews “apes and pigs.” And more recently, the broad anti-establishment French Yellow Jacket protests have portrayed Jews as part of a corrupt establishment that oppresses them and keeps them poor. In the former Communist bloc, the rot starts at the top. Right-wing nationalist politicians propagate anti- Semitism themselves. Many of the region’s governments — led by Hungary — have rehabilitated their wartime criminals and minimized their country’s guilt in the destruction of their Jewish communities.

Adding fuel to the fire is Israel. Instead of criticizing Europe’s revisionists, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cozies up to them, justifying his outreach to leaders in Poland and Hungary as a way to counterbalance the European Union’s more Palestinian-friendly Western states.

There may be something to this. But the Israeli leader seems to share with Jarosław Kaczyński and Viktor Orbán an alarming hostility toward human rights, Enlightenment values and the European Union. He has even echoed the Hungarian prime minister’s attacks on Soros.

The United States, too, is standing on the wrong side of this ideological battleground. Like the Israeli prime minister, President Trump favors Holocaust-revisionist leaders in the East over longtime democratic allies in the West. At home, he traffics in anti-Semitic stereotypes. Even so, many American Jews don’t consider themselves to be in danger, and even think they can support Trump without supporting European anti-Semites.

These worrying trends don’t necessarily portend a return to the 1930s in Europe. Most Western European governments not only defend their Jewish citizens, they plead for them to stay. French President Emmanuel Macron responded to a wave of attacks by announcing new measures to tackle anti-Semitism and told Jewish leaders France would recognize anti-Zionism — the denial of Israel's right to exist — as a form of anti- Semitism.

Germany has been similarly vocal in condemning anti-Semitic attacks and has created a new ministry to tackle issues of Jewish life in Germany.

And yet, violent incidents continue to multiply. Unless the political fringes are reigned in again, their severity and frequency will only accelerate. The European Parliament election in May will send an important signal. The big question is: Will the political extremes win, or will the democratic center hold?

As a Jew living in Europe, part of the EU’s reason for being has always been to tame destructive nationalism, and to privilege and protect minorities — allowing its citizens to be proudly and freely Belgian, French, Polish, or Hungarian — and also Jewish.

These values risk coming under serious threat if parties in the political center find themselves outnumbered in the European Parliament and lose control to populist parties that espouse anti-Semitic ideas. Strengthening and protecting Jewish life in Europe will require us to strengthen and protect Europe itself.

William Echikson is the director of the European Union of Progressive Judaism Brussels office and an associate senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies.

Here’s How Young European Jews in Far-Flung Cities Are Connecting to Jewish Studies By Ben Harris JTA, March 4, 2019 https://www.jta.org/2019/03/04/global/heres-how-young-european-jews-in-far-flung-cities-are-connecting-to- jewish-schools

When Jewish physicist Vladimir Osipov emigrated from his native Moscow 13 years ago, he first moved to Holon, a city in central Israel.

But it wasn’t until Osipov relocated with his family three years later to a mid-size city in Germany that they felt part of a vibrant Jewish community. It wasn’t because of the preponderance of Jews in Duisburg, a city of about half a million people in Germany’s western Rhineland region. On the contrary, there are only about 2,500 Jews spread out across Duisburg and two neighboring cities.

In fact, the Osipovs’ main Jewish connection isn’t to their local Jewish community at all, but to a largely virtual one created by a Jewish day school in Berlin.

Osipov’s 12-year-old son is a student in a distance-learning program run out of the Lauder Beth Zion School of Berlin. The program, part of the Lauder e-learning network, teaches online courses in Hebrew and Jewish studies to students in outlying areas that don’t have local Jewish educational opportunities.

In an effort to reach out to a largely immigrant Jewish population that often lacks basic knowledge of Jewish life, the program also offers online courses and regular gatherings aimed at parents.

That’s where Osipov finally found his Jewish niche.

“This really changed my life,” Osipov said. “We don’t work on Shabbat now. In spite of the fact that we were in Israel, we were surrounded by non-religious people. Nobody invited us to participate in celebrating Shabbat. Here in school was the first time I took part in Shabbat and synagogue, with singing, reading Torah. This was the first time, and I enjoyed it a lot.”

Since 1987, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation has been working to rebuild Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe, opening schools, kindergartens, youth centers and summer camps in areas devastated by the Holocaust. With the launch of its online learning platform in 2012, the foundation focused on bringing formal Jewish education to areas where the Jewish presence isn’t large enough to sustain a brick-and-mortar facility.

Begun in Poland in 2012, the Lauder E-Learning Schools now provides online instruction in Hebrew and Jewish studies to more than 250 students in six European countries.

This isn’t some automated, computer-based learning program. Rather, it connects students via video with real teachers and other students in far-flung areas for live, video-based classes and discussions. Instructors teach the students in their native language and interact with them in real time. The program also brings children and their families together in person multiple times a year.

The program is entirely free of charge, and each participating student receives a tablet computer that permits two-way video, so the instructor can see the kids and vice versa.

“The Lauder Foundation saw that they were catering for people in capital cities, but there were still many children living outside of these cities where it was not possible to go to day schools,” said Gafna Ganova, one of the deputy directors of the Lauder school in Prague, whose e-learning program educates 42 Jewish kids ages 7-18. “So we created a program for families that either live in other communities where there are no Jewish schools or who live completely detached from the Jewish community.”

One of those families is the Syka family, which moved from Prague to Pretoria, South Africa in 2016 when Anna Syková took a position at the Czech embassy there. Without a Jewish school in the South African capital, David Syka worried that his daughter, who was then about to start first grade at the Lauder school in Prague, would fall behind.

“For me, it was important that when we come back to the Czech Republic they will need to be at the same level as other kids in their classes,” said Syka, whose two children take Hebrew lessons online twice a week with a Czech-speaking instructor. “So it was important for them to start with Hebrew.”

In Germany, where over 100 students from 36 cities participate in e-learning, the program offers a wide range of learning opportunities, including a special track for bar- and bat-mitzvah age teenagers that culminates in a trip to Israel, and a program for older teens called J Teens, in addition to adult learning. The 100 spots for this year’s Berlin Shabbat gathering sold out within hours, and the long waiting list prompted the foundation to seek out additional capacity.

Julia Konnik, who coordinates the e-learning program in Germany and teaches several classes, said the program has created lasting bonds between participants. She acknowledged, however, that it’s not always easy to hold student attention in an online classroom.

“You need to give your energy over so they will be energized,” Konnik said. “They need to see the sparkle in your eyes. Every second they’re watching you. One may think that you just sit in front of the computer like you’re watching Facebook or something. It’s totally not the same. To do it well, you need to give a lot of energy.”

In addition to Poland and Germany, Lauder e-learning programs are available in Slovakia, Hungary and Greece. Because many Jewish parents themselves lack Jewish knowledge, some of the programs also include online courses for adults.

Because the programs are aimed at families who live in places with limited access to Jewish life, the foundation brings families together several times a year for weekend gatherings where they attend synagogue services, enjoy Shabbat meals and go on outings. For many participants, it’s a rare opportunity to experience Jewish life and form enduring social connections with other Jewish students.

“Jewish life outside of Prague is not easy,” said Leo Pavlat, the Lauder foundation representative in Prague and the director of the Prague Jewish Museum. “Not because of the official obstruction, but because of the missing structure of Jewish life. These communities are very small ones. They have difficulties making a minyan. E-learning is the only way these kids encounter Judaism.”

For Petr Papousek, the current president of the Federation of Czech Jewish Communities, who lives some 150 miles from Prague, in Olomouc, the e-learning program provides the only formal Jewish education for his two children, ages 12 and 10. Some 150 Jews live in Olomouc, which boasts a synagogue, community center and a kosher kitchen — but no school. The Papouseks are one of just three traditionally observant families in Olomouc.

“The impact is huge, because without such a program most of the kids from the assimilated families — they wouldn’t be able to have any Jewish education,” Papousek said. “In this small country, we have 2,800 people registered in the Jewish communities of the Czech Republic. We count every soul. And as many souls are involved, we are happy.”

This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which works to strengthen the future of Jewish life in Europe through supporting excellent Jewish schools. This article was produced by JTA’s native content team.

Netanyahu: Russia Shares Goal of Removing All Foreign Troops from Syria By Herb Keinon The Jerusalem Post, March 3, 2019 https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/PM-Russia-shares-Israels-goal-of-removing-all-foreign-troops-from- Syria-582306

Russia and Israel share the goal of removing all foreign troops from Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday at the weekly cabinet meeting.

Netanyahu, discussing his meeting in Moscow last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that Iran was the focus of the talks, and that he and Putin agreed on the need to remove all foreign forces that arrived in Syria after the start of the civil war there in 2011. Diplomatic sources said last week that this would exclude Russia, which had a military presence in Syria even before the beginning of the civil war.

“I made it unequivocally clear that Israel will not allow Iranian military entrenchment in Syria, and I made it unequivocally clear that we will continue to militarily act against it,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu said that he and Putin agreed to establish a joint team – along with other actors – to promote the goal of removing foreign forces.

Putin addressed this idea at a press conference on Thursday.

“The idea is to create a working body that would manage the final normalization [in Syria] after the last hotbeds of terrorism are subdued, involving all the stakeholders – primarily Syria, the leadership of the Syrian Arab Republic, maybe the opposition, other countries in the region, all parties involved in this conflict,” he said. “Among other things, it would certainly cover the withdrawal of all armed forces from Syrian territory and the full restoration of Syrian statehood with its territorial integrity intact. We have long talked about this, and it is fully consistent with the Russian position.”

Netanyahu also noted that Putin immediately accepted his invitation to attend the inauguration of a memorial in Jerusalem commemorating the victims of the siege of Leningrad during World War II. Diplomatic sources say that the respect and acknowledgment Israel gives Russia for the Red Army’s role in the victory over the Nazis has had a significant impact on Putin and helped strengthen bilateral relations.

These memorials come as countries elsewhere – especially states that made up the former Soviet Union and its bloc such as Poland, Hungary and the Baltic nations – have removed monuments to the Red Army’s victories during World War II.

Putin, in his press conference, said that he is “certainly grateful” for Israel’s initiative to create a memorial to the victims of the siege of Leningrad.

Netanyahu also addressed Britain’s decision last week to declare all components of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and called upon the rest of Europe – and other countries in the world – to follow Britain’s lead.

“This is an important decision because Hezbollah is a terrorist organization in its own right, and it is also the main terrorist arm of Iran,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu also related to the most recent antisemitic incident in France: the toppling in Strasbourg on Saturday of a memorial to a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis. Calling the attack “shocking,” Netanyahu called upon leaders of “the enlightened countries” to join in the systematic and continuous denunciation of antisemitism, saying the “first way to fight antisemitism is to denounce and condemn it.”

This attack came just two weeks after 100 Jewish tombstones were desecrated in Strasbourg.

Netanyahu welcomed the fact that additional countries, including France, are adopting a definition of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionism as one of its manifestations.

“Anti-Zionism is the latest and most recent expression of antisemitism,” he said.

Netanyahu spoke by phone on Sunday with British Prime Minister Theresa May, and thanked her for the British government’s decision to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Likewise, he also expressed his appreciation for Britain’s steadfast stance against antisemitism.

World Mayors Unite against Anti-Semitism By Itamar Eichner YNet News, March 4, 2019 https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5472706,00.html

In response to the recent uptick in anti-Semitism around the world, a coalition of mayors of cities around the world are pledging to combat hate, anti-Semitism and the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement targeting Israel.

The initiative is headed by Modi’in Mayor Haim Bibas, Mayor of Bal Harbour (Florida) Gabriel Groisman and Mayor of Frankfurt Uwe Becker.

They intend to release a statement signed by the mayors of 40 cities to combat anti-Semitism. They will commit to a number of steps including conducting an annual gathering to discuss dealing with the issue, taking concrete steps to raise awareness in the educational system, examining the possibilities for applicable legislation and exploring ways in which to unite against the rise in extremism around the world.

“"We unequivocally condemn all forms of hatred, prejudice and contempt that have permeated our society, and we, municipal leaders from around the world, understand that we cannot avoid taking responsibility and taking part in global efforts to counter these phenomena," read a statement signed by the mayors last week.

The formation of the coalition was announced during the Local Government Conference for Innovation MUNI- Expo 2019, a gathering for mayors from Israel and around the world.

Among the prominent mayors participating are the mayors of Pittsburgh, USA; Montevideo, Uruguay; Belgrade, Serbia; Kiev, Ukraine; Taipei, Taiwan; Tirana, Albania; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Zero tolerance

"What binds us together is not our religion or nationality, but the fact that we have zero tolerance for hatred and violence, and our duty to stop the violence directed at our residents and to work for the improvement of their lives no matter what religion they believe in or what their nationality is,” said Bibas, chairman of the Union of Local Authorities and the mayor of Modi’in Maccabim-Reut.

"We see the meteoric rise of hate and anti-Semitism around the world, and as mayors we must take part in this important struggle. With the establishment of this coalition, we are making a strong statement against those who spread hate and it will serve as a vital tool for mayors around the world to share ideas and conclusions to combat these phenomena," said Gabriel Groisman, Mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida and one of the initiators of the coalition.

"Our partnership as city leaders who stand together against anti-Semitism is a strong sign of solidarity towards Israel and a clear message against those who spread hatred against the Jews around the world, and I am happy to head this initiative together with Haim Bibas and Gabriel Groisman, and together as a coalition we will create a strong voice for Jews around the world," said Frankfurt Mayor Uwe Becker.

“I've seen a study showing how certain areas of the US are left behind in areas of economic development, there are whole areas that are not part of the acceleration in technology, and it’s happening in the whole of the US," said Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto.

"This is where the most extreme racist and anti-Semitic discourse on the social networks occurs.

Europe’s Jews Caught in a Pincer Movement of Hate By Jamie Dettmer Voice of America, March 5, 2019 https://www.voanews.com/a/anti-semitism-on-the-rise-sollution-hard-to-find/4813805.html

They sang “La Marseillaise,” France’s rousing national anthem, on a gray day in the recently desecrated Jewish cemetery in the Alsace village of Quatzenheim, where 96 gravestones were spray-painted last month with Nazi slogans.

The gathering Sunday of hundreds wanting to mark their disgust at the desecration was somber.

And it was made even more mournful by news of another act of vandalism a day earlier in nearby Strasbourg, where anti-Semites vandalized a memorial marking the site of a synagogue that was was razed by the Hitler Youth in September 1940, after the region was annexed by Germany’s Third Reich.

“Who would have thought we would go back to situations that my parents experienced, that I didn’t experience at all,” a middle-aged man told reporters at the cemetery. “No, I didn’t think it could come back,” he added sorrowfully.

Somberness was seamed with fear at the remembrance event.

That is not an unusual mixture of feelings these days for Europe’s Jewish communities, which are facing an alarming resurgence in anti-Semitism, from attacks on Jewish buildings and cemetery vandalism to social- media taunting and bullying of Jewish lawmakers, journalists and business people as well as physical attacks.

Rising hostility

In Hungary, the government of Viktor Orban has been accused of of playing up anti-Semitic stereotypes in its targeting of Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros.

In December, a European Union study found hundreds of Jews in a dozen member states reported being physically or verbally abused in 2018. Over a third of 16,000 Jews polled say they avoid attending Jewish events out of fear of a possible attack. Ninety percent of respondents said anti-Semitism is growing.

Even more alarming for Europe’s Jews is that anti-Semitic prejudice and abuse has burst out from the far-right fringe where it has generally been confined since 1945 and is shared by left wing populists. Some analysts fear that as ordinary people are exposed to more openly expressed anti-Semitism across the political spectrum they too will start adopting similar intolerance.

French president Emmanuel Macron last month in the wake of the vandalism at Quatzenheim, and following Yellow Vest protesters baiting a prominent Jewish intellectual during a demonstration in Paris, vowed to “fight anti-Semitism in all its forms,” saying anti-Semitism is “the antithesis of Europe.” But as reports mount from Britain to Poland of a resurfacing of anti-Semitism, many of Europe’s Jews are asking whether it is the antithesis — or something so deep in the weave of a Continent, where anti-Semitism can be traced back to medieval times, that it can never be unpicked.

Exodus

Many Jews in France, home to Western Europe's largest Jewish community, numbering more than half-a- million, are drawing the conclusion that it cannot be and they are selling up and leaving; thousands have emigrated to Israel in recent years. Between 2017 and 2018, there was a 74 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in France, according to French authorities.

Jews in other EU countries also say they are thinking of joining the exodus. More than one third of Jewish respondents to a survey by the EU say they have considered fleeing the Continent, which is home to an estimated 2.4 million Jews. In Germany there has been a 60 percent uptick in anti-Semitic incidents and harassment.

Why?

There is no consensus about why there has been a resurfacing of Europe’s centuries' old pathology of Jew hatred. Some point to an overall climate of hate which is seeing anyone deemed different or foreign being targeted, arguing that Jews are just one of many minorities subject to abuse by extremists in "real life" as well as on social media platforms.

But with the Holocaust, which saw the Nazis systematically slaughter six million Jews, weighing grimly on Europe’s recent past that explanation strikes some as inadequate, especially considering the efforts undertaken by authorities since 1945 to dispel persistent blood-libels, poisonous myths and old stereotyping of Jews underpinning anti-Semitism.

A former British chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has said that the sources of anti-Semitism are protean but deeply rooted in European history, saying that Jews have been hated both for being rich and poor, loathed for either keeping themselves apart or for assimilating, and hated for being at the forefront of Communism but also because they have been leading capitalists.

Some place the roots in medieval culture; others in conspiratorial thinking about powerful Jews having too much influence in the media, finance and politics; and yet others see the uptick being less connected with the past and more linked to anti-Zionism and disapproval of Israeli policy towards Palestinians, overlapping with Muslim animosity towards the Jewish state.

Francis Bloch, president of Quatzenheim’s cemetery, says those who link the current wave of anti-Semitism to animosity towards Israel are mistaken. He has said Israel is being used as an excuse, arguing current anti- Semitism “hides behind an anti-Zionist discourse.”

That appears to be the impression of eight British lawmakers who resigned last month from Britain’s Labour Party, the country's main opposition party.

They complained that since the 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn, a far left anti-Zionist who has shared platforms with Holocaust deniers, as party leader, Jewish Labour lawmakers have been subjected to vilification and a campaign of anti-Semitic harassment involving taunts and slurs from party members as well as threats of physical violence.

While they acknowledge that some of the biggest incidents of anti-Semitic abuse have emerged from fierce debates about Israel, they also say that anti-Zionism has morphed too easily into obvious anti-Semitism and the old stereotyping.

The left

Luciana Berger, a Jewish lawmaker who quit, said the party had become “institutionally anti-Semitic.” She and others say Corbyn and his far left followers have stoked anti-Semitism by pushing, among other tropes, virulent conspiracy theories about “Jewish” financiers manipulating World affairs.

That view is shared by prominent British sociologist David Hirsh, a veteran Labour Party member who this year quit in disgust at what he sees as a failure by Corbyn to address anti-Semitism. In a 2017 book called “Contemporary Left Antisemitism,” Hirsh plotted what he sees as a mainstreaming of anti-Semitism thinking on the left of the political spectrum since the 1980s, with anti-Zionism spilling-over into old-fashioned Jew-baiting.

He says Europe’s Jews are now threatened from both the populist left as well as its far right counterpart, caught in a pincer movement of hate. Meet the Heroes Who Ensured the Holocaust Would Never Be Forgotten By Francine Wolfisz Times of Israel, March 5, 2019 https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/meet-the-heroes-who-ensured-the-holocaust-would-never-be-forgotten/

From first-hand accounts and diaries to drawings, posters and scribbled notes, the members of the Oyneg Shabbos organisation diligently recorded life from inside the Warsaw Ghetto for posterity.

Hidden in milk cans and metal boxes, which were then carefully secreted away in basements and within the foundations of buildings, some 6,000 documents provided a trove of evidence about the atrocities of the Holocaust and later helped pave the way for the pursuit of justice.

Now the substantial efforts of these individuals and others have been brought to the fore in a fascinating new exhibition, Crimes Uncovered: The First Generation of Holocaust Researchers, which opened at The Wiener Library last week.

Among the small collection of exhibits on display is an extract from the writings of historian Emanuel Ringelblum, leader of the Oyneg Shabbos collective, which also included writers, rabbis and social workers, who were committed to collecting documents and soliciting testimonies from those living behind the ghetto walls, from 1939 to 1943.

Tragically, Ringelblum and his family were discovered after escaping from the ghetto and executed in 1944, but fellow group member Rachel Auerbach, who survived the war, returned in 1945 to retrieve two canisters and ten boxes containing thousands of documents.

Intriguingly, a third cache has never been found, but the retrieved documents resulted in vital evidence later used for war crime trials, including Auerbach’s own collection of testimonies relating to Treblinka, which were published in 1947 and can be seen on display.

Other exhibits highlight the work of Louis de Jong, founder of NIOD, the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, Raphael Lemkin, who developed the legal concept of genocide, and Vasily Grossman, a Red Army journalist who documented the extermination of Soviet Jews.

Simon Wiesenthal, who dedicated his life to tracking down war criminals and Filip Mueller, who helped smuggle out evidence of crimes committed in Auschwitz also feature, alongside Alfred Wiener, founder of The Wiener Library, who collected and disseminated evidence of Nazi activities from the 1920s onwards, as well as the Library’s Eva Reichmann, who launched one of the earliest projects to collect eyewitness testimonies to the Holocaust.

Together, they provided historians and investigators with the very first solid pieces of evidence about the Holocaust.

“Thanks to their efforts, the Holocaust is today a very well-documented event and even now, more evidence continues to be uncovered,” says exhibition curator Barbara Warnock.

“The documents helped in the pursuit of justice, but were also crucial in enhancing our understanding of history and in commemorating those who did not survive.”

Poland Considering Exhumations at World War II Massacre Site Times of Israel, March 6, 2019 https://www.timesofisrael.com/poland-considering-exhumations-at-world-war-ii-massacre-site/

The Polish government said Wednesday it is considering carrying out exhumations at a World War II-era site where Jews were burned alive in a barn by their Polish neighbors, something which would violate Jewish religious law.

The matter concerns the 1941 pogrom in the Polish town of Jedwabne, where Poles burned alive more than 300 Jews during the German wartime occupation of the country.

An exhumation began in 2001 but was stopped at the time by then-justice minister Lech Kaczynski out of respect for Jewish law, which objects to disturbing buried remains.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told private broadcaster Polsat News on Tuesday that authorities are considering starting the exhumations again and that prosecutors will have the final say.

Moving forward with the exhumations would threaten new controversy following recent spats with Israel related to Holocaust memory. Poland was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II and six million of its inhabitants died during the conflict, including three million Jews.

Warsaw has long been at pains to state that Poland did not collaborate as a nation in the Holocaust, although individual Poles committed what the Polish ambassador to Israel recently described as “abominable crimes.” In 2018, the events at Jedwabne were at the center of a controversy over an article written by a Princeton University professor saying that Poles killed more Jews than Germans during World War II.

Polish prosecutor Michal Binkiewicz was demoted after he dismissed the investigation into the possible insult of the Polish nation by professor Jan Gross in October 2016 and June 2017.

The prosecutors’ office had opened a libel investigation against Gross operating under a section of the criminal code that says that “any person who publicly insults the Polish nation is punishable by up to three years in prison.”

In 2017 a historian in Poland sought the exhumation of bodies at Jedwabne, citing a witness that he said claims Germans organized the slaughter.

Descendants of ’s Jewish Dynasty Return to the Exclusion Zone By Christina Blau National Geographic, March 6, 2019 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/europe/ukraine/hasidic-jewish-ancestry-chernobyl/

For 30 years, New York native Yitz Twersky spent all his time and money researching his genealogy, connecting eight generations and over 50,000 people to their roots in Chernobyl, the site of catastrophic nuclear disaster in 1986. He funded hundreds of genetic tests to confirm distant relations, while combing through historical records of a prominent Jewish dynasty. Once satisfied with his life pursuit, Yitz traveled to the birthplace of his family in Ukraine for the first time, breathing fresh life into the surrounding contamination. Long before clouds of highly radioactive particles were released across Europe, sparking fascination and instilling fear of humanity’s fragility, Chernobyl consumed the region with a spiritual fervor. During the 18th century, this town around 100 miles northeast of Kiev became the cradle of a prominent Hasidic movement started by Yitz’s direct ancestor, Menachem Nahum Twersky, a disciple of the founder of Hasidism, the . “When the nuclear disaster happened everyone in Williamsburg or Borough Park or other [Orthodox Jewish] religious places–everyone knew Chernobyl,” Yitz says. The goal of Yitz’s epic genealogy investigation was to find this important ancestor and map all of his descendants. “This was my quest,” Yitz explained. “I went to Ukraine myself, when it was still under the Soviet Union to speak with anyone that would talk to me. There was no internet, no email. They would take out phone books and write to people.” (Here are eight tips to help find your family tree.) Yitz spent a lifetime traveling the world to study 18th-century census records housed in Kiev archives, KGB files, hundreds of testimonies from Holocaust survivors at Israel’s Yad Vashem, and the Y chromosome DNA tests of relatives living in 31 countries, discovering priceless artifacts along the way, like silver Passover plates, a rare, miniature Torah scroll, and historic photos of Grand . After such an extensive genealogy project spanning decades, Yitz decided the time was right time to make the journey. Hidden under the surface Pilgrims long sought answers from this storied land. Thousands flocked from around the region to hear the teachings and receive blessings from Mordechai Twersky, son of Menachem Nahum who continued as Grand Rabbe of Chernobyl, living in opulence with a court and finery from the tsar’s silversmith. All of his eight sons became rabbis around Ukraine, and so did their children, and so the Twersky dynasty continued. The Russian Revolution in 1917, the peasant pogroms of 1919, and the second World War devastated Chernobyl’s Jewish community, yet thousands of their descendants live today in Poland, the United States, and Israel. Ukraine has one of the largest numbers of Jewish heritage sites of any European country: around 1,500 have been identified, but the true tally certainly runs higher. Numerous companies–such as Poyechali, JUkraine, and Jewish Travel Agency–assist with genealogical research, organize group tours, and help individuals searching for answers about their ancestors. One significant ancestral site is the final resting place of Menachem Nahum Twersky, which sits within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the one-thousand-square-mile swath of contaminated land ringing the malfunctioned reactor, now encased by a steel barrier. (See photos taken on illegal visits to Chernobyl's dead zone.) Rabbi Sirkis Leibel of New York helped discover the exact site in 1988, only two years after the accident. “I needed special permission from Washington to enter,” he said. Penetrating radar equipment tested the earth to locate the mausoleum of the great mystic who published one of the first works of Hassidic thought, hiding just beneath the surface. “We go there to [Chernobyl] to sing songs, light candles, and say psalms. It’s a very special and emotional part of the trip,” says Rabbi Shmiel Gruber, from New Square, an all-Hasidic town in Rochester County, New York, modeled after Chernobyl by a succession of rabbinical leaders from the Twersky family. Many rely on Gruber for help to organize guides and translators. Over the past two decades, he’s taken more than 10 groups to the Old Synagogue and graves before continuing the itinerary of other Jewish heritage sites in the area–avoiding the estimated 60,000 annual tourists that explore the empty swimming pool, abandoned school, and memorials in the evacuated area. “The Grand Rabbes all originally come from Chernobyl, and many of us want to visit the grave of the first rabbe, but it’s very hard, the Ukrainian bureaucracy,” he laments. Documentation for all visitors to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and surrounding areas must be submitted to government authorities weeks in advance–easiest to arrange through a tour company. Apparently some visitors with the proper paperwork on Gruber’s trip still were denied entry at the checkpoint, forced to wait for the others to return. “Every time they come up with different requirements,” says Gruber. “I’m not sure why it’s a closed zone, and if it is, why they make it so hard.” Family reunion When Yitz Twersky finally made the journey with his wife to the place that occupied his mind for a lifetime, he carried the names of 50,000 people. “Of course I saw other Orthodox Jews there, and some of them I knew. Of all places to run into people you know: Chernobyl.” They also met with Italian photographer Pierpaolo Mittica, who visited more than 20 times since 2002 to document untold stories in the aftermath. “This situation was maybe the most uncommon I’ve seen in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. All these people with black hats during winter, talking and praying at the gravesites in front of a forest,” says Mittica. “That created an incredible atmosphere to photograph, but this is an exclusion zone, the most dangerous place in the world. The beauty contrasted the contamination.” One of his photographs captures a Jewish custom of offering petitions to the departed, asking them to intercede on their behalf. Yitz stands by the grave of his ancestors, holding papers with 50,000 names. “For me to put in these names and say to my ancestor, I did it. This is everyone. Please pray for the entire family,” says Yitz. “That’s why it was a very emotional visit for me, because it was like I finally came full circle.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Visit Israel Ahead of Elections By Marcy Oster JTA, March 6, 2019 https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-to-visit-israel-ahead-of-elections Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit Israel this month with the country in the throes of an election campaign. Pompeo will be in Israel on March 20 for a summit involving Israel, Greece and Cyprus, Axios reported. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters that Pompeo’s visit was not meant to influence the April 9 election. “Israel is an ally. We’re not going to get involved in the domestic politics of another country,” he said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing bloc are in a close race against the left-center bloc and a new party headed by former army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. Pompeo will meet with Netanyahu, but it is not clear whether he also will meet with Gantz. The visit comes as part of a regional trip that includes Lebanon and Kuwait. Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Washington days after the reported Pompeo visit to speak at the AIPAC policy conference and will meet with President Donald Trump. Israel Interior Minister Ripped As Racist for Tirade Against Soviet Immigrants By Marcy Oster JTA, March 6, 2019 https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/israels-interior-minister-regrets-the-large-number-of-immigrants-from-the- soviet-union

Israel’s haredi Orthodox interior minister was accused of racism after saying that he regrets the immigration of Israelis from the former Soviet Union because many are not Jewish.

“Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of Israelis who immigrated from the former Soviet Union in accordance with the Law of Return aren’t Jews according to halacha and they are here, to my great regret,” Aryeh Deri, who heads the Sephardic Orthodox Shas party, said at a campaign event Tuesday in the coastal city of Ashdod.

Halacha refers to rabbinic Jewish law, which holds that in order to be recognized as Jewish a person must have a Jewish mother or have been converted to Judaism.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union arrived in Israel under its foundational Law of Return, which grants citizenship to individuals with at least one Jewish grandparent.

Deri was responding to rumors fueled by Yisrael Beitenu party head Avigdor Liberman that the Interior Ministry performs DNA tests on immigrants from the former Soviet Union to determine if they are Jewish. Deri later clarified that such tests are not used and he is not planning to introduce them. Liberman, himself an immigrant from Moldova in the former Soviet Union, said in response that if he were interior minister he would “stop the racism and discrimination pushed by the ultra-Orthodox establishment against immigrants from the former Soviet Union.”

Another member of Liberman’s party, which holds the Immigration Absorption Ministry and largely represents immigrants from the FSU, accused Deri of “venomous racism against people who realize the Zionist vision and settle the Land of Israel.”

Deri also said that in the next government he wants to be the minister of immigrant absorption to make immigration more difficult for those who are not Jewish according to halacha.

“Today, you can’t go around the corridors of the Immigrant Absorption Ministry unless you speak Russian,” he said. “The ministry will no longer exist to serve immigrants from the Soviet Union. It will be for those who make aliyah from France, and will be a home for Jews from Ethiopia.”