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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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Syrian Security Forces Use Gunfire to Disperse Rival Protests in Alawite Heartland
Alawites gather during a protest to demand federalism and the release of detained members of their community, in Latakia, Syria, Nov. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Syrian security forces used gunfire on Tuesday to break up two rival groups of demonstrators in the coastal town of Latakia, heartland of the country’s Alawite minority, witnesses and officials said.
Syria has been rocked by several episodes of sectarian violence since longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, who hails from the Muslim Alawite minority, was ousted by a rebel offensive last year and replaced by a Sunni-led government.
Witnesses said hundreds of Alawite protesters had gathered to demand a decentralized political system in Syria and the release of men they say were unjustly detained by the country’s new authorities. Supporters of the government then gathered and began shouting insults at the Alawites.
About an hour into the Alawites’ rally, gunshots were heard in Agriculture Square, one of two town squares where the protesters had gathered, according to two witnesses and videos verified by Reuters. One of the verified videos showed a man lying motionless on the ground with a wound to the head.
There was no immediate official word on casualties.
Noureddine el-Brimo, the head of media relations in Latakia province, told Reuters security forces had fired into the air to disperse the rival protesters, and added that unknown assailants had also fired on civilians and on the security forces.
He gave no further details but witnesses said both protests had broken up by the afternoon.
‘THERE’S NO MORE SECURITY’
The rally had been called for by the head of the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council, Ghazal Ghazal, on Monday. He urged Alawites to protest peacefully.
“We demand to live in security, to go to school safely without kidnapping. This was the only place we used to feel security. Now there’s no more security and we’re exposed to kidnapping and fear,” said Leen, who attended the protest but declined to give her last name out of security concerns.
Nearly 1,500 Alawites were killed by government-linked forces in March after Assad loyalists ambushed state security. Reuters reported that dozens of Alawite women were later kidnapped, though authorities deny they were abducted.
Syria‘s President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former militant Islamist, has vowed to rule for all Syrians but the country’s nearly 14-year civil war and the bouts of violence over the last year have prompted fears of further instability.
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Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Ready to Move Forward With US-Backed Peace Plan
A rescuer walks next to a body of a resident killed by a Russian missile strike at a compound of the supermarket warehouse, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Nov. 25, 2025. Photo: Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Kyiv was ready to move forward with a US-backed peace deal, and that he was prepared to discuss its sensitive points with US President Donald Trump in talks he said should include European allies.
In a speech to the so-called coalition of the willing, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Zelenskiy urged European leaders to hash out a framework for deploying a “reassurance force” to Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv for as long as Moscow shows no willingness to end its war.
Ukraine had signaled earlier in the day support for the framework of a peace deal with Russia but stressed that sensitive issues needed to be fixed at a meeting between Zelenskiy and Trump.
Kyiv’s message hinted that an intense diplomatic push by the Trump administration could be yielding some fruit but any optimism could be short-lived, especially as Russia stressed it would not let any deal stray too far from its own objectives.
US and Ukrainian negotiators held talks on the latest US-backed peace plan in Geneva on Sunday. US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll then met on Monday and Tuesday with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi, a spokesperson for Driscoll said.
US and Ukrainian officials have been trying to narrow the gaps between them over the plan to end Europe’s deadliest and most devastating conflict since World War II, with Ukraine wary of being strong-armed into accepting a deal largely on the Kremlin’s terms, including territorial concessions.
“Ukraine – after Geneva – supports the framework’s essence, and some of the most sensitive issues remain as points for the discussion between presidents,” a Ukrainian official said.
Zelenskiy could visit the United States in the next few days to finalize a deal with Trump, Kyiv’s national security chief Rustem Umerov said, though no such trip was confirmed from the US side.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X that over the past week the US had made “tremendous progress towards a peace deal by bringing both Ukraine and Russia to the table.” She added: “There are a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details that must be sorted out and will require further talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States.”
Oil prices extended an earlier decline after reports of Ukraine potentially agreeing to a war-ending deal.
Underlining the high stakes for Ukraine, its capital Kyiv was hit by a barrage of missiles and hundreds of drones overnight in a Russian strike that killed at least seven people and again disrupted power and heating systems. Residents were sheltering underground wearing winter jackets, some in tents.
ZELENSKIY: WILL DISCUSS SENSITIVE ISSUES WITH TRUMP
US policy towards the war has zigzagged in recent months.
A hastily arranged summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August raised worries in Kyiv and European capitals that the Trump administration might accept many Russian demands, though the meeting ultimately resulted in more US pressure on Russia.
The 28-point plan that emerged last week caught many in the US government, Kyiv, and Europe alike off-guard and prompted fresh concerns that the Trump administration might be willing to push Ukraine to sign a peace deal heavily tilted toward Moscow.
The plan would require Kyiv to cede territory beyond the almost 20% of Ukraine that Russia has captured since its February 2022 full-scale invasion, as well as accept curbs on its military and bar it from ever joining NATO – conditions Kyiv has long rejected as tantamount to surrender.
The sudden push has raised the pressure on Ukraine and Zelenskiy, who is now at his most vulnerable since the start of the war after a corruption scandal saw two of his ministers dismissed, and as Russia makes battlefield gains.
Zelenskiy could struggle to get Ukrainians to swallow a deal viewed as selling out their interests.
He said on Monday the latest peace plan incorporated “correct” points after talks in Geneva. “The sensitive issues, the most delicate points, I will discuss with President Trump,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Zelenskiy said the process of producing a final document would be difficult. Russia‘s unrelenting attacks on Ukraine have left many skeptical about how peace can be achieved soon.
“There was a very loud explosion, our windows were falling apart, we got dressed and ran out,” said Nadiia Horodko, a 39-year-old accountant, after a residential building was struck in Kyiv overnight.
“There was horror, everything was already burning here, and a woman was screaming from the eighth floor, ‘Save the child, the child is on fire!’”
MACRON WARNS AGAINST EUROPEAN CAPITULATION
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said an amended peace plan must reflect the “spirit and letter” of an understanding reached between Putin and Trump at their Alaska summit.
“If the spirit and letter of Anchorage is erased in terms of the key understandings we have established then, of course, it will be a fundamentally different situation [for Russia],” Lavrov warned.
A group of countries supporting Ukraine, which is known as the coalition of the willing and includes Britain and France, was also set to hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday.
“It’s an initiative that goes in the right direction: peace. However, there are aspects of that plan that deserve to be discussed, negotiated, improved,” French President Emmanuel Macron told RTL radio regarding the US-proposed plan. “We want peace, but we don’t want a peace that would be a capitulation.”
In a separate development, Romania scrambled fighter jets to track drones that breached its territory near the border with Ukraine early on Tuesday, and one was still advancing deeper into the NATO-member country, the defense ministry said.
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Hamas Attack Victims Sue Binance for Allegedly Allowing Payments to Terror Group
A logo on the Binance exhibition space at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 15, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Victims of Hamas‘s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel sued Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao, accusing them of facilitating millions of dollars in payments to the Islamist group and other US-designated terrorist organizations.
According to a complaint made public on Monday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange laundered money for Hamas even after pleading guilty in November 2023 and paying a $4.32 billion criminal penalty for violating federal anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws.
The plaintiffs include 306 American victims of Hamas‘s attack, including relatives of people killed, injured or taken hostage, and subsequent attacks by various groups.
They accused Binance of knowingly enabling Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to move more than $1 billion through its platform, including more than $50 million after the Oct. 7 attack.
Zhao pleaded guilty to anti-money-laundering violations in connection with Binance‘s plea and served a four-month prison sentence. US President Donald Trump pardoned him on Oct. 23.
“Binance intentionally structured itself as a refuge for illicit activity,” the complaint said. “To this day, there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model.”
In a statement, Binance declined to discuss the lawsuit but said “we comply fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws.” A lawyer representing Zhao in related litigation declined to comment.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and triple damages, among other remedies.
BIG TRANSACTIONS LINKED TO BRAZILIAN LIVESTOCK OPERATOR
According to the complaint, large sums of cryptocurrency went through accounts of people with no obvious financial means to explain them.
They allegedly included a Venezuelan woman who appeared to operate a Brazilian livestock-related company, Fazenda Amazonia, or Amazonia Farm in English.
Her account, opened in 2022 when she was 26, allegedly received more than $177 million in deposits, and more than $130 million in withdrawals were made, the complaint said.
“When a company chooses profit over even the most basic counterterrorism obligations, it must be held accountable – and it will be,” Lee Wolosky, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The complaint was filed in North Dakota federal court. It said at least two suspicious transactions went through online addresses in Kindred, North Dakota, which has about 1,000 people.
Binance and Zhao are separately defending against a lawsuit by other attack victims in Manhattan federal court. The lawsuit claims they provided a “clandestine” funding mechanism for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to raise money and transact illegal business for several years.
A judge rejected the defendants’ motion to dismiss that case in February.