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As European nations celebrate their past, a US Holocaust envoy reminds them of its darker corners
WASHINGTON (JTA) — At a time when some European nations are seeking to revise their Holocaust histories to emphasize victimhood, a senior Biden administration official says the United States should keep reminding them of the dark corners of their past.
Ellen Germain, the State Department’s special envoy on Holocaust issues, said she has spent a lot of time recently engaging with leaders of countries who are seeking to venerate heroes who resisted Soviet oppression. The problem is that many of those figures also worked with the Nazis to persecute Jews.
Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this week, Germain framed her job as ensuring that countries take the totality of that history into account. She has repeatedly made the case for removing or at least modifying plaques, statues and other memorials to people who collaborated with the Nazis.
“I understand why they’re being glorified as national heroes after World War II, but you can’t just erase what they did during the war,” Germain told JTA.
Germain’s office was established in 1999, and she has served in the role since August 2021. The envoy’s role is to persuade countries to give financial restitution to families of Jews who were murdered and exiled during the Holocaust. In the late 1990s, many countries were still coming to terms with their long-overlooked obligations toward Jewish communities that had been persecuted and wiped out. Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S. deputy treasury secretary at the time, pressed the Clinton administration to create the position to show U.S. commitment to seeking restitution.
Since 2017, the office has written reports on how countries are implementing the Terezin Declaration, a 2009 agreement between 47 countries to pay restitution to survivors. The office also works closely with the World Jewish Restitution Organization to push countries to pass laws facilitating restitution. And it works with the State Department’s antisemitism monitor to track antisemitism and campaign against it, to promote education about the Holocaust, to preserve Holocaust-era archives and to organize Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations.
Germain, a career diplomat who has served in multiple posts in Europe, the Middle East and the United Nations, said most countries now have advanced restitution mechanisms, lessening the need for U.S. pressure. She added that some countries, including Poland and Croatia, still need to pass legislation to that effect.
Her focus more recently has been on pressing countries to more openly and honestly confront their roles in the Holocaust, a job complicated by states’ natural tendency to create heroic national myths. She would like to see monuments to perpetrators of atrocities removed, or at least modified.
More broadly, a resurgence of the far right has worried Jewish groups and the Biden administration. Poland has passed laws criminalizing accusations that some Poles collaborated with the Nazis, and others restricting restitution. Hungary’s approach to its role in the Holocaust has long been a matter of debate between the government and Jewish community. Far-right parties have made gains in recent elections in Austria, Germany and France, among other countries. Neo-Nazi marches also still make headlines across the continent.
“You get a certain amount of what we call revisionism or rehabilitation, like rehabilitation or glorification of people who are considered national heroes because they fought the communists,” she said. “They fought the Soviets after World War II, but they also participated in acts of Nazi genocide. During World War Two, they collaborated — sometimes they were directly involved in deportations or mass killings. There are figures like that in Lithuania, Ukraine, in Croatia, you’ve got street names named after some of them.”
Germain named Juozas Krikštaponis and Jonas Noreika in Lithuania; Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine; and Miklos Horthy in Hungary as examples of people memorialized for their anti-Soviet campaigns who also collaborated with the Nazis.
Germain has been having conversations about the resurgence of such memorialization in her travels. How receptive her interlocutors are, she said, depends on the country. Late last year, she traveled to Lithuania and Hungary, and in Germany she addressed a course on the Holocaust for diplomatic and security professionals from across Europe. In January, she accompanied Douglas Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, on his heritage tour of Poland and Germany.
Lithuanian officials were receptive to her efforts to get them to grapple with their Holocaust history, she said.
“I was really, really pleasantly surprised and impressed by how open everyone was in Lithuania to the discussion of this,” she said. “Everyone from the government to academics to journalists. “I did a panel event there that live-streamed and had 20,000 viewers, and the questions and comments just from the people in the audience about this — they were just much more open to saying, ‘Yeah, you know, we realized this is a problem and we need to figure out how to deal with it.’”
The Hungarians, by contrast, appeared wary. Hungarian officials have sought to equate the Holocaust with Soviet-era repression and revive the reputations of figures like Horthy. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has unsettled many in the West with his hard-right turn and rhetoric that, at times, appears to cross over into racism and antisemitism.
“Hungary is a more difficult question,” she said. ”I didn’t find the same level of openness. But I did find a willingness to at least talk to me about it.”
She did not mention the opposite democratic trajectories of both countries: Lithuania, along with Estonia and Latvia, have eagerly turned toward Europe and the United States in recent years, particularly as the Russian threat looms directly across the border. Hungary, by contrast, has become more insular and hyper-nationalist.
Germain said she takes a nuanced approach to making the case for confronting the past. Some of the people she wants to see made accountable for their crimes were genuinely at the forefront of their countries’ struggles against the Soviets.
“They don’t have to be written out of history, and in fact, they shouldn’t be because people need to know what they did, both good and bad,” she said. “But the point is, make the history more nuanced and teach the citizens of these countries what the full story is, and if there are statues and memorials to some of these guys… either take it down or add some context to it.”
She cited “a plaque to Jonas Noreika on the National Library in Vilnius, in Lithuania, that just says that he was a great man.” Noreika was a high-ranking police officer who is believed to have personally overseen the murder of Jews. He is venerated in Lithuania as a hero for fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Germans.
Germain said understands the impulse to seek heroes to forge a national identity after the Soviets sought to negate the histories of the countries they dominated — and especially in the face of a resurgent imperialist Russia that has invaded Ukraine.
“I think it took a while for them to start sorting out their history,” she said. “And so, sometimes, there’s only in the last five or 10 years been real attention paid to the fact that some of these figures might not be as 100% heroic as they were initially thought to be.”
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The post As European nations celebrate their past, a US Holocaust envoy reminds them of its darker corners appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel approves $31.5 million plan to strengthen Jewish education in North America
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israel’s government has approved a NIS 100 million ($31.5 million) plan, initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to strengthen Jewish education in North America, a statement from his office said Wednesday.
Based on a partnership and joint investment with North American Jewish communities, the goal of the plan is to strengthen Jewish identity and ties to Israel among the next generation of Diaspora Jews in the United States.
The approval of the plan, which was developed with representatives of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), follows a government decision made in June.
It comes a day after Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was sworn in and two weeks after a national election left Netanyahu facing a battle to stay in power as his rival, Gadi Eisenkot, received the mandate to form the next government.
It also comes amid signs of growing disaffection among Diaspora Jews, particularly younger generations, toward Israel and the Netanyahu-led government. Recent polls suggest that support for Israel among Diaspora Jews, especially in response to its policies in Gaza and on matters of democracy, is slipping.
A February survey of American Jews by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only one-third of American Jews aged 18-34 identify as Zionist, even as nearly nine in 10 say they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.
A separate Pew poll in May examining American views of Israel found that Jewish attitudes have shifted since 2024. The survey found that 83% of Jews view the Israeli people favorably, down from 89% in 2024, while 47% view the Israeli government favorably, compared with 54% in 2024.
“The plan we approved today, in partnership with Jewish communities in North America, is an investment in the future generation of Diaspora Jews. Together, we will strengthen Jewish identity, deepen the connection to Israel and ensure that our heritage and values are passed proudly from generation to generation,” Netanyahu said in the statement.
“The future of the Jewish people depends on our ability to ensure that future generations know their heritage, connect to their Jewish identity and maintain their deep ties to the State of Israel,” he said, adding that Israel would not “stand idly by in the face of challenges,” such as antisemitism.
Under the framework of the plan, which will focus on increasing the number of students enrolled in Jewish educational frameworks, the Israeli government allocation will be matched 50% with funding from Jewish Federations and other non-governmental sources.
JFNA said in a statement that it welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision to invest in Jewish education across the U.S. and Canada, calling it an “unprecedented partnership between the Government of Israel and North American Jewish communities to strengthen Jewish identity and ensure a vibrant future for the Jewish people.”
“We are proud to launch this historic partnership with the Government of Israel to expand access and grow enrollment in Jewish day schools across North America,” said Gary Torgow, chair of the Board of Jewish Federations of North America.
Eric D. Fingerhut, JFNA’s president and CEO, said the partnership “reflected the shared commitment of Israel and North American Jewry to strengthening Jewish identity and expanding educational opportunities for more families.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel approves $31.5 million plan to strengthen Jewish education in North America appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu called for unity. His anti-Arab speech to the Knesset may have made it impossible.
Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Israel’s newly sworn-in Knesset this week and called for a national unity government. By the time he finished speaking, he may have made such a government under his leadership all but impossible.
At an occasion associated with festivity, democratic continuity and national purpose, Netanyahu denounced members of the Israeli Arab parties as “terror supporters, haters of Israel” and declared that Ra’am and the Joint List “both agree that the Jewish state must be destroyed.” He questioned his opponents for contemplating a government dependent on their support, asking whether they were prepared to entrust the country’s fate to people bent, in his mind, on its destruction.
Neither Arab party’s platform calls for the destruction of Israel, although the Joint List certainly does challenge elements of the Zionist consensus. Netanyahu’s speech portrayed them as existential enemies, which prompted heckling from former premier Naftali Bennett, part of the leadership team forming a coalition with Gadi Eisenkot. And then Netanyahu called for national unity – as if the one-fifth of Israelis who are Arab citizens are not part of the nation.
Whatever his intentions, the effect was to remind a substantial part of the Israeli electorate why it has become so difficult to contemplate another government headed by Netanyahu.
“I sat and listened to the outrageous, divisive, hateful and disgraceful speech by the outgoing prime minister,” said Eisenkot, the former military chief who was tapped by President Isaac Herzog to form a new government after winning the recommendation of 67 out of 120 Knesset members. “I am even more convinced that he is unfit to remain in office for even one more minute … His continued rule is dividing Israel and endangering its security.”
Political history is full of speeches and interviews that acquire a significance far beyond the circumstances in which they were delivered. Sometimes they capture a leader’s finest qualities. Sometimes they expose weaknesses that opponents had long suspected. And sometimes they become defining moments precisely because they reveal a politician’s lack of self-awareness.
Hillary Clinton’s reference to Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” became an enduring symbol, evidence of the liberal condescension critics suspected of her. Mitt Romney’s privately recorded remarks about the “47 percent” of Americans he regarded as dependent on government came to encapsulate perceptions of an out-of-touch plutocrat. George W. Bush’s appearance beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner became a monument to the premature triumphalism of the first Iraq War. Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that “the lady’s not for turning” crystallized the determination that admirers celebrated and critics considered inflexibility.
A few words in a speech can come to define an entire political personality – and Netanyahu already has one such speech to his credit.
In March 2015, he addressed a joint session of the United States Congress to warn against the nuclear agreement the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran. It was a dramatic performance, greeted enthusiastically by Republicans and regarded by many Democrats as an extraordinary intervention in an American political dispute. The lasting significance was the deterioration of Israel’s relationship with Democrats – or at least Netanyahu’s.
Eleven years later, Netanyahu may have delivered another defining speech, this time with consequences much closer to home.
This week’s setting was the swearing-in of Israel’s 26th Knesset. Netanyahu had lost his parliamentary majority, backed by just 53 of 120 seats. Eisenkot had already begun coalition negotiations, and the possibility of a broad national unity arrangement remained part of the political conversation – until, it seems, the speech.
Netanyahu invoked Israel’s grave security challenges, particularly the threat from Iran, to argue that only a unity government could meet the moment. But he grounded that appeal with a vicious attack on the Arab parties and on those prepared to cooperate with them.
His rhetoric will undoubtedly resonate with some Israelis. Many Jewish Israelis, including some who voted for opposition parties, are uncomfortable with the prospect of a government dependent on Arab political support. That discomfort is not simply racism, it reflects a complicated history in which Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel share a country while often identifying differently with the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Arab Israelis share ethnic, cultural, religious and familial ties with Palestinians and with populations across a region whose states have, at various times, fought wars against Israel. In a country that has lived with existential fears since its founding, such ties have sometimes generated suspicions of divided loyalties. Objectively, they could be suspected of being a classic potential fifth column that works covertly with Israel’s surrounding enemies, who share their religion and ethnicity.
But the actual record of Arab citizens’ participation in Israeli society tells a very different story from the one Netanyahu presented or what fear and conspiratorial thinking could suggest.
Arab Israelis are deeply embedded in the country’s institutions, professions and daily life. They constitute roughly half of Israel’s pharmacists and about a quarter of its doctors and nurses. Arab citizens have served as judges, including on the Supreme Court. Justice Salim Joubran, an Arab Christian, chaired Israel’s Central Elections Committee in 2015.
They are integral to the functioning of the Israeli state. And despite decades of conflict, the overwhelming majority of Arab citizens have pursued their lives and political aspirations through civic institutions rather than violence or subversion. Cases of terrorism or disloyalty have been extremely rare.
I am a frequent guest, interviewee and host at events run by Bokra, an NGO and news website run by Ghada Zhoabi, a champion of peace, integration and coexistence. I thought of this fine Israeli Arab leader, presently celebrating a successful get-out-the-vote campaign, besmirched by her prime minister.
There is a crucial distinction between rejecting Zionism as a political ideology, advocating a state of equal citizenship, supporting Palestinian national aspirations and seeking Israel’s violent destruction. Netanyahu’s speech erased those distinctions.
Indeed, Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, has gone further than many Arab politicians before him in seeking practical accommodation with the Israeli political system. His party joined the Bennett-Lapid coalition in 2021, an unprecedented step for an independent Arab party. Abbas has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to pursuing his constituents’ interests through Israeli politics. And he has accepted Israel as a Jewish state.
Responding to Netanyahu’s accusations, Abbas declared that his party was not seeking to establish either an Islamist or an Arab state in Israel. “We have defined ourselves within the State of Israel as citizens,” he said, reiterating his support for peace and a two-state solution. He also emphasized that his party condemns terrorism. He said the speech created danger to his life and to his family.
For a prime minister to respond to such overtures by portraying Arab political participation as a threat to the state’s very existence is to throw a grenade into a powder keg.
And that explains, in part, why the reaction to the speech was so swift and harsh.
Eisenkot’s Yashar party had scheduled a meeting with Likud representatives to explore coalition possibilities. Following Netanyahu’s speech, Eisenkot canceled it, describing the address as divisive and inappropriate for the ceremonial opening of the Knesset. Likud responded that Netanyahu stood by his remarks but remained committed to national unity.
Even Aviv Bushinsky, a former Netanyahu communications adviser, expressed bewilderment. He contrasted the performance with Netanyahu’s conciliatory appeal for unity in 2019 and recounted receiving calls from foreign ambassadors who had attended this week’s ceremony and wondered what they had just witnessed.
National unity requires something that cannot be measured in parliamentary seats: mutual legitimacy and a minimum of trust. Political adversaries must believe that cooperation will not become another instrument of their humiliation or marginalization.
For many Israelis who voted for parties opposed to Netanyahu, the central obstacle is not necessarily Likud, its voters or even its policy preferences. It is Netanyahu himself.
Years of political conflict, disputes over democratic institutions and the unresolved reckoning over Oct. 7 had already made his continued leadership unacceptable to many opposition voters. But the speech may have hardened that sentiment into something even less negotiable, offering a fresh illustration of the political behavior they had voted to end.
Netanyahu’s speech did not make a unity government under his leadership more plausible. It made it harder to imagine.
The post Netanyahu called for unity. His anti-Arab speech to the Knesset may have made it impossible. appeared first on The Forward.
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Pope praises the bond uniting the Catholic Church with the people of Israel
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s spiritual bond with the people of Israel during an interfaith gathering in Buenos Aires, a statement that drew particular attention from Jewish leaders amid growing antisemitism in Europe and elsewhere.
“Following the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, I wish to reaffirm the spiritual bond that unites the Church with the people of Israel,” and “our sincere respect for what is holy and true in the different religious traditions,” the Pope said Nov. 9 during a meeting with representatives of various religious communities at San Martín Palace, Argentina’s Foreign Ministry headquarters. The Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, shaped the church’s strategies for dealing with the modern era.
“The statement was a pleasant surprise to us, especially at a time when antisemitism is resurfacing, as it is in Europe,” Isaac Sacca, chief rabbi of the Sephardic Community of Buenos Aires, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “That is very meaningful to our people,” he said.
“The meeting was moving on several levels,” added Sacca, who also is the president of Menora, a Jewish youth organization. “All the different religious communities that coexist in harmony and peace in Argentina came together and showed themselves as they truly are before the pope.”
Addressing around 100 religious leaders, Leo highlighted Argentina’s history of religious and cultural diversity, describing the country as a meeting point of different peoples and traditions.
“Hearing those words from Pope Leo himself, just a few meters away, was very comforting,” Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff, commissioner for interreligious dialogue of the World Jewish Congress in Latin America, told JTA. “Moreover, his use of language about honoring the People of Israel struck me as significant, since I don’t think that terminology is commonly used in Church documents. It gives his approach an even greater sense of closeness. He is clearly continuing the strong legacy of interreligious dialogue established by Pope Francis, Benedict XVI, and especially John Paul II.”
Leo praised Argentina’s tradition of welcoming immigrants. “Argentina’s national identity has taken shape as a melting pot of races, cultures and religions, formed by its Indigenous peoples and the many immigrants from different parts of the world who arrived in this land over the centuries, bringing with them their dreams and their faith,” Leo said.
“At first, they were Catholics, Protestants and Jews, and later many others. Despite their differences, they all learned to work together, to form families and communities, and to build settlements and villages, in an admirable blending of their traditions with local customs,” he added.
Rabbi Ariel Stofenmacher, rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary, drew a connection between Nostra Aetate, the historic 1965 Vatican recalibration of the church’s relations with other religions, and Leo’s speech.
“The pope emphasized the need to strengthen relations with the people of Israel and with Judaism. He revisited the ideas behind Nostra Aetate, particularly the relationship between the Church and Judaism. He also expressed his gratitude for the spirit of brotherhood,” Stofenmacher said.
“I think Pope Leo is showing that he is a leader on a global scale, someone who is not afraid to address difficult issues and who puts social and family issues at the forefront,” added Stofenmacher, who is also rector of the Isaac Abarbanel University Institute.
In addition to religious authorities and leaders of rabbinical institutions, the pope also invited prominent representatives of Argentina’s Jewish community. Among those present were representatives of AMIA, the main Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and DAIA, the political umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community.
“The pope emphasized at the meeting that religions are guardians of human integrity — that is, each person’s dignity in its spiritual, social, and communal dimensions,” AMIA chief rabbi Eliahu Hamra said. “We are united in defending that dignity and in upholding the value of every human being.” The interfaith gathering opened with a live orchestra playing a tango song from iconic composer Astor Piazzolla as religious leaders assembled and waited for the pope. It was a distinctly Argentine musical choice, rather than music associated with any particular religious tradition.
“There was a tango performance at the beginning, so there were no religious elements in the ceremony, precisely out of respect for all faiths, as I understand it. The whole event was a real pleasure, ” Rabbi Sacca told JTA.
“I believe we must remain engaged in this effort,” said Rabbi Polakoff. “At the World Jewish Congress, we presented the document Kishreinu, which was conceived as a Jewish response to Nostra Aetate. That was in November 2022. I believe we must continue working along those lines, and I think we have an exceptional partner in Leo XIV to do so.” The meeting concluded with a minute of silence for world peace and the victims of violence.
Monday’s meeting followed two earlier events in Buenos Aires. Pope Leo XIV first visited a residential care facility for people with disabilities on the outskirts of the city. He then celebrated Mass at Palermo Park, drawing an estimated crowd of more than 2 million people.
The pope’s four-day visit to Argentina began Sunday, Nov. 8, following his visit to Uruguay. It continued Tuesday in Córdoba province, where he celebrated Mass before returning to Buenos Aires. On Wednesday, he plans to visit the city of Luján for another Mass before departing for Lima, Peru, the final stop of his South American tour.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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