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White House Defends Omission of Jews from Holocaust Statement

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By Michael Wilner and Tamara Zieve. The Trump Administration defended its decision to omit any mention of Jews or antisemitism from its statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, noting that Jews were not the only victims of Nazi slaughter.

“Despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” Hope Hicks, a communications aide for the president, said in a comment to CNN. In his statement, Donald Trump vowed to stand up against the forces of evil as president.

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust,” the US president said in the statement.

“It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”

The omission drew ire from the Anti-Defamation League, whose CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that it was “Puzzling and troubling @WhiteHouse #Holocaust- MemorialDaystmt has no mention of Jews. GOP and Dem. presidents have done so in the past.” (Read more from “White House Defends Omission of Jews from Holocaust Statement” HERE)

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German Muslim Students Protest Holocaust Remembrance, Attack Israel

By Benjamin Weinthal. Muslim students of Arab and Turkish origin protested participation in an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Germany, while their high school’s administration showed understanding for their criticism of Israel.

“Some Muslims students said they would not participate in the event,” said Florian Beer, a teacher at the school in the city of Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Der Westen newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Holocaust remembrance event was part of a global commemoration in which participants take selfie photographs along with a sign saying “I Remember“ or “We Remember.“ A blackboard at the school was defaced with the sentence: “F*** Israel, free Palestine.” The school was not able to identify the perpetrator.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday, “Muslims students are greatest in need of Holocaust education, so it would be unfortunate if they were excused from those activities.”

Zuroff, who is Wiesenthal’s chief Nazi-hunter, added, “Given that Holocaust consciousness is a central idea of civic identity in the Federal Republic, it is doubly important for families that come from countries with deep antisemitic traditions and no knowledge of the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry.” (Read more from “German Muslim Students Protest Holocaust Remembrance, Attack Israel” HERE)

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Remembering Auschwitz: Survivors Lay Wreath at Execution Wall in Memory of Holocaust Victims

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I’ve seen nothing close … to Belsen. The dead and the dying lay close together. I picked my way over corpse after corpse in the gloom, until I heard one voice that rose above the gentle, undulating moaning. I found a girl. She was a living skeleton. Impossible to gauge her age, for she had practically no hair left on her head and her face was only a yellow parchment sheet with two holes in it for eyes. She was stretching out her stick of an arm, and gasping something. It was ‘English, English, medicine, medicine.’ And she was trying to cry but had not enough strength. And beyond her, down the passage and in the hut, there were the convulsive movements of dying people. Too weak to raise themselves from the floor. They were crawling with lice and smeared with filth. … I had to look hard to see who was alive and who was dead. — Richard Dimbleby, reporter for the BBC, touring Belsen Concentration Camp just after it was liberated by the British, 1945

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, in memory of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, 72 years ago today, by troops of the Soviet Union. It’s more than that, though. It’s also in memory of the 6 million Jews (1.1 million at Auschwitz alone) who lost their lives during Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier pointed out that the name “Auschwitz” represents all the death camps and the whole of Nazi “persecution and murder machinery” that still stand as part of Germany’s history, reported The Telegraph.

During the height of Hitler’s regime, about 12,000 Jews were slaughtered daily by shooting and gassing — others died of starvation or disease. Dimbleby reported that thousands were dying from typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia, dysentery or childbirth fever and 25,000 were starving. There was a “smell, sickly and thick, the smell of death and decay, corruption and filth,” he said.

Today, inside the gate that says “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free), about 40 Auschwitz survivors placed wreaths at the execution wall, lit candles, prayed and remembered those who died there so many years ago. Survivors wore striped scarves, to commemorate the prison uniforms the Jews were given upon their arrival at the camp.

Janina Malec’s parents were killed at the execution wall. She survived the camp. Malec told the PAP news agency that, “as long as I live I will come here,” adding that the trip each year is a “pilgrimage.” The former Auschwitz concentration camp is now the world’s largest cemetery.

Israeli Vice-ambassador Ruth Cohen-Dar attended a separate commemoration at Warsaw’s Ghetto Heroes Memorial. Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo wrote a letter to Friday’s participants in the ceremony, stating, “As each year, on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi-German Concentration and Death Camp, we bow our heads before the victims of Nazi terror and genocide, and unite in joint remembrance and mature responsibility for such events never to occur again.” She then paid homage to her countrymen who tried to save Jews from the concentration camps, calling them “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Cohen-Dar reminded attendees that 6 million Jews (1.5 million children) were killed during the Holocaust and it is “a duty to preserve the memory of the victims, also for future generations.” She wondered aloud, “We can only imagine what Poland and Warsaw would be like if they were all with us today.” (For more from the author of “Remembering Auschwitz: Survivors Lay Wreath at Execution Wall in Memory of Holocaust Victims” please click HERE)

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Head of Holocaust Research Group Reveals New Shocking Testimony From Warsaw Ghetto

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The oft-repeated notion that Jews went willingly to the slaughter during the Holocaust is completely unfounded, a Holocaust commemoration activist told The Algemeiner on Thursday, citing a number of documents which were recently uncovered by his organization detailing eye-witness accounts of Jews fighting back.

Jonny Daniels, founder and executive director of From the Depths, which works with Holocaust survivors, Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and the Polish government to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, said that one of several projects he is engaged in includes translating first hand accounts that have sat untouched for years in Poland’s governmental archives.

Daniels said his organization has “uncovered remarkable documentation that shows thousands of accounts of ‘fighting back’ from eyewitnesses” throughout the Holocaust, which he is working on cataloging, translating and publishing . . .

Daniels shared the story publicly for the first time with The Algemeiner:

A group of Jewish boys blockaded themselves in a building inside the ghetto and were shooting at Nazis walking past. One of the little known ways the Nazis would enter the buildings of the ghetto was by using a human shield, a Jew. One of the survivors told of the time that while blockaded inside the room, they suddenly heard a knock on the door. Sitting quietly, the boys heard the sweet old voice of an elderly Jewish man calmly call out to them in beautiful, poetic Yiddish: ‘My children, the time has come. I am knocking on this door asking for safe passage. Alas, behind me stands a group of Amalek (evil people). Shoot me and then kill them. Better I die by the bullet of Jewish heroes then by the bullet of evil.’ The young men did just that. By giving his life, the old pious Jew saved those young Jews fighting, allowing them to live another day.

(Read more from “Head of Holocaust Research Group Reveals New Shocking Testimony From Warsaw Ghetto” HERE)

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Doubts That the Holocaust Occurred

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By Jerusalem Post. Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday once again repeated provocative assertions about the Holocaust, defying the world on a day that it paused to remember the victims of the Nazi genocide in Europe.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released a video in which he said America “assists the fake Zionist regime” and that when “they say in their slogans that they are opposed to terrorism and ISIS they are lying,” according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Of the Holocaust, Khamenei remarked: “It is not clear whether the core of this matter is a reality or not. Even if it is a reality, it is not clear how it happened…This is the ignorance that exists in today’s world. We should be awake. [Muslims] should know that we can stand up against the ignorance.” “Who assists the fake Zionist regime,” Khamenei says in the video. “Who supports them, who clears the road for them, who stands behind them.”

“It is Western powers headed by America that are doing so. This is while they say in their slogans that they are opposed to terrorism and ISIS.” (Read more from “Iran’s Supreme Leader Doubts That the Holocaust Occurred” HERE)

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Obama Says ‘We Are All Jews’

By Eric Cortellessa. US President Barack Obama joined members of the American Jewish community Wednesday night for a ceremony honoring four individuals who were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, an honorific bestowed by the State of Israel on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews in the Holocaust.

The ceremony at the Israeli Embassy in Washington was the first of its kind to be held in the United States, and thus the first to be addressed by a sitting US president. Held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Obama said the unusual gathering was to “make real the call to ‘never forget.’”

Mere months after a tumultuous showdown with Israel’s government over his signature foreign policy priority — an Iranian nuclear accord that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blasted as a “historic mistake” that poses an existential threat to Israel — Obama sought to showcase the US’s enduring ties with the Jewish state, undergirded by a genuine solicitude for the Jewish people.

“We are all Jews,” he said, paying homage to one of the four individuals being honored.

Americans Roddie Edmonds of Knoxville, Tennessee; Lois Gunden of Goshen, Indiana; and Polish citizens Walery and Maryla Zbijewski of Warsaw were the four recognized by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust remembrance and education organization. (Read more from “Obama Says ‘We Are All Jews'” HERE)

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After Amazon Stops Selling Confederate Flags, California Rabbi Tells Amazon to Stop Selling Holocaust Denial-Books

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A week after Amazon stopped selling Confederate flags in the wake of a deadly shooting, Jewish organizations are calling on Amazon to ban books denying the Holocaust.

Sacramento Rabbi Mendy Cohen is leveling serious charges against Amazon for selling books denying the Holocaust.

Blatant anti-Semitism,” he said. “To deny the Holocaust is another mask of blatant anti-Semitism.”

The books say the stories of gas chambers and ovens in World War II Nazi Germany are made up . . .

Amazon has a list of offensive products it refuses to sell, which they say includes products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance. But Amazon officials did not respond to CBS13 for the story. (Read more from “California Rabbi Calls on Amazon to Cease Selling Holocaust Denial Books” HERE)

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Iran Holds Holocaust Cartoon Contest, Draws Nearly a Thousand Entries

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Photo Credit: Steve Deace

Photo Credit: Steve Deace

We’ve learned an invaluable lesson in our global community this week: that we’ve evolved beyond free speech.

For centuries, even the most enlightened minds in the world considered freedom of speech (and the proto-freedoms of conscience and thought) to be sacrosanct, too valuable to be infringed, and too essential to be gainsaid. For indeed, what ideas are so dangerous that they cannot even be freely discussed and debated in the search for truth?

We’ve found a few–the ones that offend protected classes. And always remember, dear citizens: you are not a protected class.

That’s why when a cartoon offends an Islamic jihadist, who then decides to violently attack masses of innocent people, our thought leaders place the blame where it now belongs…on the people who spoke out. Because Charlie Hebdo deserved it.

Yet before the recent attack at Garland, Texas, the same elite opinionati were aware of another cartoon contest, courtesy of our new allies in Iran. The Second International Holocaust Cartoons Contest.

Secretary Masud Shojaei-Tabatabaii told Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency that 839 works had been submitted to the Holocaust Cartoon Contest, a cynical sequel to a much derided 2006 competition making light of the slaughter of 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II.

Intentional, systematic slaughter of millions of innocent people? Surely the cartoons just leap off the page.

The contest was announced in response to the international support for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France. Obviously, the world got that one wrong (even Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, huh?).

Organizers putting on the contest say it is designed to highlight the world’s double standard in defending caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, whose depiction is taboo in Islam.

The works are also meant to question why Palestinians are “oppressed in compensation” for the Holocaust and warn of other Holocausts, including Gaza, according to a website for the contest. (See “Iran Holds Holocaust Cartoon Contest, It Drew Nearly a Thousand Entries”, originally posted HERE)

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Holocaust Survivor Reunites With His Liberator After 70 Years

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Photo Credit: History Channel On April 29, 1945, a group of U.S. Army soldiers marched into Dachau to liberate the concentration camp where more than 35,000 people had been cruelly murdered by the Nazis. They forced their way into some barracks where several prisoners were hiding in the latrines, uncertain whether the soldiers were there to help them or kill them.

One of those soldiers was Daniel Gillespie, a machine gunner with the 42nd “Rainbow Division.” The first person Gillespie saw as he entered the barracks was a Hungarian Jew by the name of Joshua Kaufman. Gillespie helped Kaufman outside and then they tearfully parted ways, not believing they would ever see each other again.

However, almost 70 years to the day since that emotional meeting, they were given the chance to do just that. German director Emanuel Rotstein, who is filming a documentary for the History Channel about the liberation of Dachau, arranged a meeting between the two gentlemen who were unknowingly living only about an hour apart from each other in southern California.

The meeting was an incredibly emotional one. As the two men approached one another, Kaufman saluted Gillespie, kissed his hand, and then fell at his feet, saying, “I have wanted to do this for 70 years. I love you, I love you so much.”

Photo Credit: History Channel Photo Credit: History Channel Photo Credit: History Channel

Gillespie told Kaufman how horrified he had been to see the prisoners at Dachau. “It was the most profound shock of my life. Its liberation changed my life forever,” he said. “We could not understand it. I grew up in California where we had everything in abundance. We didn’t get how people could let other people starve. They murdered them or just let them die. Again and again the questions moved through my head. And at the same time I was just incredibly angry.” (Read more from “Holocaust Survivor Reunites with Liberator” HERE)

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The Day a Holocaust Survivor Got Revenge on His Tormentor

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

He survived the savagery of the Holocaust, made it to America with barely a penny and became a world-famous tailor in Brooklyn, dressing celebrities and presidents. In his new memoir, “Measure of a Man,” Martin Greenfield tells the story of his extraordinary life. In this excerpt, he explains how the concentration camps nearly stripped him of his humanity at age 16 — and the day he got it back.

While at Buchenwald, the SS assigned me to work in the munitions factory. But early one morning after roll call, a soldier placed me on a 12-prisoner team to perform repairs outside the camp in nearby Weimar.

Working in the city was a welcome distraction from camp life. Sometimes you got lucky and spotted a potato in a field or smuggled a trinket to trade for food. Either way, it was a chance to see the sky, escape the stench of rotting corpses, and confirm that there was still a world beyond the barbed wire.

We loaded our gear and marched the few miles to Weimar. The soldiers stopped us in front of a bombed-out mansion, home to the mayor of Weimar. A big black Mercedes sat out front. The soldiers commanded us to sift the rubble, clear the debris, and begin repairs on the mansion.

I walked alone to the back of the estate to assess the damage. Dusty piles of broken bricks lay scattered across the yard. Seeing the cellar door ajar, I slowly opened it. A shaft of sunlight filled the dank cellar. On one side of the space sat a wooden cage wrapped in chicken wire. I walked closer and noticed two quivering rabbits inside the cage.

Read more from this story HERE.

'We are Looking at the Beginnings of a Holocaust'

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Photo Credit: YOEL BALINKO / ISRAELI-JEWISH CONGRESS

Photo Credit: YOEL BALINKO / ISRAELI-JEWISH CONGRESS

The situation facing European Jewry is “simply intolerable, unacceptable and inexcusable,” Israeli Jewish Congress president Vladimir Sloutsker told MKs and foreign diplomats at a special session of the Knesset Immigration Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee on Monday.

Calling the rise in anti-Semitic incidents accompanying Israel’s invasion of Gaza an “SOS situation,” Sloutsker warned that if left unchecked, such behavior could lead to another European genocide.

“Never before since the Holocaust, have we seen such a situation as today,” he said, referring to the continent-wide demonstrations by pro-Palestinian activists, a number of which have degenerated into violence and many of which have featured racist rhetoric. “We are potentially looking at the beginning of another Holocaust now.

These events will only grow in scale across Europe.”

Addressing legislators and representatives from a number of European governments, including those of Denmark, Holland and France, the oligarch and former head of the Russian Jewish Congress called for Jewish communities across the continent to “unite and consolidate.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Synagogue Vandalized In NE Miami-Dade

By Maggie Newland.

For the second time in just a few days messages of hate targeted members of South Florida’s Jewish community.

Early Monday morning, spray painted swastikas and the word “Hamas” were discovered on the pillars of the Congregation Torah Ve’emunah, at 1000 NE 175th Street, in northeast Miami-Dade.

“This is absolutely a desecration of something holy. It’s a disgusting thing to see,” said Michael Katz who worships at the synagogue.

A member of the community watch discovered the vandalism around 1 a.m.

“As I was rolling by I noticed some coloring on the wall,” said Yona Lunger. “I back up again, looked again and I said ‘Wow, it’s a swastika’…It’s very disturbing, very disturbing.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Author Who Made Up Holocaust Memoir Told to Repay $22.5 MN

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Photo Credit: AFP / Olivier Laban-Mattei

Photo Credit: AFP / Olivier Laban-Mattei

The author of a global best-selling Holocaust memoir who later admitted it was pure fantasy has been ordered by a US court to repay $22.5 million to her publisher.

US-based Belgian writer Misha Defonseca’s “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years” told the supposedly true tale of a Jewish girl who was cared for by a pack of wolves and killed a Nazi soldier during World War II.

Published in 1997, it became an instant hit in Europe, was translated into 20 languages and made into the 2007 movie “Surviving With Wolves.”

But in February 2008 Defonseca, whose real name is Monique de Wael, admitted that most of the events were false, including that she was not Jewish, but Catholic, and that she was never forced to leave her home in Belgium during the war.

Read more from this story HERE.