Features
Defining antisemitism – a history of the “IHRA” definition
By SIMONE COHEN SCOTT Late last year I was asked by The Jerusalem Report to interview the Hon. Irwin Cotler, upon his appointment by Prime Minister Trudeau as Special Envoy for Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism. His responsibilities will cover domestic and international antisemitism, and Holocaust education at every level.
His first assignment was to head the Canadian Delegation to the plenary of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA, (pronounced eera). The meeting, hosted in Leipzig, Germany, was already in progress, but being virtual it was easy to jump in, except for the time difference. Until that assignment, the plethora of acronyms signifying organizations studying antisemitism and Holocaust had formed a sort of alphabet soup in my head. Ever since, like with a word you’ve just looked up, I notice references to IHRA all over the place, especially in connection with its definition of antisemitism. This is causing a lot of consternation among even more groups, with and without acronyms.
More about that later; first I’d like to focus on the two Winnipeg delegates at the plenary. When I spoke to Prof. Cotler, the meeting had just wound up, and when he learned I was from Winnipeg he mentioned how impressed he had been with Belle Jarniewski and David Matas. I made up my mind right then to pitch this article idea to Bernie; I believed it would be interesting to learn through these members of our community, what IHRA, the plenary, the definition, and the work, is all about.
David Matas, senior legal counsel at Bnai B’brith Canada, was one of the Canadian delegates at the original meeting in Stockholm in 2000, which drafted the founding document (Stockholm Declaration) that became IHRA. He attended again in 2007, 2008, 2018 and every year since. This recent plenary ran from November 24th to December 3rd, which meant attending a couple of weeks of meetings at 5:30 am Winnipeg time, 12:30 pm Leipzig time. Cotler joined the second week, from Montreal. Meeting electronically with the Canadian delegates was his first task as special envoy.
Belle Jarniewski, Executive Director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, was part of the national group bringing Canada into the International Task Force for Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, (which evolved to become IHRA). When Canada became the 27th member of IHRA, (on June 24th, 2009, according to the Canada and the IHRA websites), she became a member of that delegation.
When a country joins IHRA, among other criteria, it must establish a Holocaust Memorial Day, and commit to Holocaust education at a senior political level. Its archives for the years 1933-1950 must be open for research, allowing academic, educational, and public access to the examination of those years of the country’s history. IHRA currently has 34 Members, one Liaison country, seven Observer Countries and eight Permanent International Partners, studying the latest developments in the field of Holocaust education, remembrance and research. According to IHRA’s own report on the plenary, there were 250 delegates at the meeting.
I asked Jarniewski how she saw IHRA differing from all those other organizations (the alphabet soup). She explained “…IHRA is the only intergovernmental organization mandated to focus solely on Holocaust-related issues, bringing together government representatives as well as experts. In addition to the definitions on antisemitism, Holocaust denial and distortion, and anti-Roma discrimination, the IHRA’s academic research publications have contributed greatly to the field of Holocaust Studies. IHRA’s pedagogical experts continue to develop detailed resources in order to help educators keep abreast of the latest best practices in education on the Holocaust and antisemitism. IHRA also supports and helps fund projects and conferences in the fields of Holocaust remembrance, research, and education. This in turn provides guidance to policy-makers, educators, civil society, and researchers.”
Part of Cotler’s mandate in his new position will be to address Holocaust denial and distortion, together with enhancing the adoption and implementation of the IHRA definition. Anyone who has experienced antisemitism, even in a mild form, recognizes it and doesn’t need a definition, but so that scholarly folk can study and deal with it empirically, and so it can be applied in a practical sense, a working definition is necessary. The definition was first developed in 2005 by the European Union Monitoring Centre. After careful study and adaptation it was adopted by IHRA in 2016.
It consists of two parts. The first part reads as follows: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
The second part, accompanying the statement and forming an integral part of it, are 11 indicators of antisemitism. In total, the definition is meant to be a working tool, not legally binding, and it is gradually being adopted by governments, parliaments and communities at all levels, in efforts to combat this oldest hatred which irrationally metastasizes wherever it infects.
Recently in the JP&N, Jarniewski wrote an effective rebuttal to a complaint someone had sent the newspaper regarding some of the definition’s examples, which he said made it inconvenient for him to express certain of his ideas. In her rebuttal she stated… “The definition must be adopted holus bolus along with the examples”…a stipulation that she says has been “….repeated over and over again by the IHRA.” Here are the 11 examples, as stated on IHRA’s website:
—Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
—Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
—Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
—Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality, of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
—Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
—Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
—Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
—Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
—Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
—Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
-Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
There they are! Taken together with the earlier section, they define antisemitism. It must have been an emotionally wrenching exercise, putting this list together.
In November 2019, Matas presented a paper entitled “The IHRA definition of antisemitism: criticisms and responses” for a seminar at the Kantor Centre on Contemporary Antisemitism, wherein he methodically set out the extent of official acceptance of the definition, criticism of that acceptance, and proposed responses to the critics. In it he urges member states of the European Union to encourages its members that have not done so yet to “…endorse the non legally binding working definition of antisemitism employed by the IHRA, as a useful guidance tool in education and training, including for law enforcement authorities in their efforts to identify and investigate antisemitic attacks efficiently and effectively.”
Several EU members have indeed done so, and in fact the EU has recently put out a handbook for practical use of the IHRA working definition. I further asked Matas if the United Nations had endorsed the definition. He referred me to the remarks in November 2020 of Miguel Moratinos, High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations: “I plan to work on having an agreement on a definition of anti-Semitism within the UN, based on the IHRA definition which constitutes a basis to start from.” (I suppose it would be too much to ask that he incorporate the part about Israel?)
According to Matas, any organization can accept the definition of antisemitism. He told me that Bnai B’rith is proactive in getting organizations to endorse the effort, but any association can introduce discussion and begin the procedure…. sports organizations, service clubs like Kiwanis and Rotary, Police Departments, Community Clubs, synagogues, community newspapers. Jarniewski pointed out municipalities in Quebec and Ontario that have endorsed the IHRA definition include: Westmount; Cote Saint-Luc; Aurora; Newmarket; Markham; and Richmond Hill.
Notably, one of the accomplishments of the plenary this year has been the definition of “anti-Roma”. Between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma perished in the Holocaust, out of a pre-war population of between 1 and 1.5 million. As special delegate Cotler never tires of pointing out “…while it begins with the Jews it doesn’t end with Jews, and antisemitism is the bloodied canary in the mineshaft of global evil today.” I asked if there were Roma delegates to IHRA and Jarniewski told me there were, including in the Canadian delegation.
Features
I know exactly why leftists aren’t celebrating this ceasefire
Relief that the fighting may be at an end is one thing. Joy — after all this suffering — is another
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
“We can’t hear you, Zohran,” read one New York Post headline this week: “Pro-Hamas crowd goes quiet on Trump’s Gaza peace deal.”
“It seems awfully curious that the people who have made Gazans a central political cause do not seem at all relieved that there’s at least a temporary cessation of violence … Why aren’t there widespread celebrations across Western cities and college campuses today?” the article asked.
The Post wasn’t alone in voicing that question. A spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition posted on X that “The silence from the ‘ceasefire now’ crowd is shameful and deafening.” Others went so far as to imply that the protesters had been lying and never actually wanted a ceasefire — because what they really wanted wasn’t freedom and security for Palestinians, but the ability to blame Israel. If pro-Palestinian voices had really wanted a ceasefire, the thinking went, they would be celebrating.
I read these various posts and articles and thought of Rania Abu Anza.
I have thought of her every day since I first read her story in early March 2024. Anza spent a decade trying to have a child through in vitro fertilization. When her twins, a boy and a girl, were five months old, an Israeli strike killed them. It also killed her husband and 11 other members of her family.
A year and a half later, a ceasefire cannot bring her children, her husband, or her 11 family members back. They were killed. They will stay dead. What is there to celebrate?
This does not mean that the ceasefire is not welcome, or that it is not a relief. On the contrary: It is both. Of course it’s a relief that the families of hostages don’t need to live one more day in torment and anguish. Of course it’s a relief that more bombs will not fall on Gaza.
But celebration implies, to me anyway, that this is a positive without caveats. And in this situation, there are so many caveats.
The families of the surviving hostages will still have spent years apart from their loved ones, in no small part because their own government did not treat the hostages’ return as the single highest priority. The families of those hostages who were killed in the war will never again sit down to dinner with their loved ones, who could have been saved. And it is difficult to fathom what’s been taken from the hostages themselves: time spent out exploring the world, or with family and friends, or at home doing nothing much at all but sitting safely in quiet contemplation.
And a ceasefire alone will not heal Israeli society, or return trust to the people in their government. It will not fix some of the deep societal problems this war uncovered. A Chatham House report this August found that: “Israeli television ignores the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, while the rhetoric is often aggressive. Critical voices, from inside Israel or abroad, are attacked or silenced.” If the country is ever going to find its way back from Oct. 7 and this war, a ceasefire is a necessary precondition, but not a route in and of itself.
In Gaza, Palestinian health authorities have said that about 67,000 people — not distinguishing between combatants and civilians — have been killed by Israel’s campaign in response to Oct. 7. A full third of those killed were under the age of 18. The ceasefire cannot bring those children back to life.
It cannot turn back time and make it such that Israel admitted more than minimal aid to the embattled strip. It will not undo the damage that has been done to the people of Gaza who were denied enough to eat and drink and proper medical care. It will not give children back their parents, or parents back their children. It will not heal the disabled, or make it so that they were never wounded.
It will not change that all of this happened with the backing of the United States government. (This is to say nothing of the West Bank, which has seen a dramatic expansion of Israeli settlements and escalation of settler violence over the course of the war). And as American Jewish groups put out statements cheering the ceasefire, we should also remember that it does not reverse the reality that too many American Jews were cheerleaders for all this death.
Protesters calling for a ceasefire have regularly been denounced as hateful toward Jews or callous toward the plight of Israelis; American Jews who called for one were called somehow un-Jewish. (Yes, some pro-Palestinian protesters also shared hate toward Jews; the much greater majority did not.) The charge of antisemitism — toward those calling for a ceasefire, those calling for a free Palestine, and those who called attention to Israel’s abuses during this war — was used to silence criticism of Israel and of U.S. foreign policy. Some American Jews went so far as to call for the deportation of students protesting the war.
A ceasefire doesn’t change any of that. It can’t.
I have hopes for this ceasefire. At best, it will allow people — Israelis and Palestinians and, yes, diaspora Jews — to chart a new, better course going forward. But it almost certainly will not do that if we delude ourselves into thinking of this as a victory or a kind of tabula rasa, as though the lives lost and hate spewed are all behind us, forgotten, atoned for. The last two years will never not have happened. What happens next depends on all of us fully appreciating that.
This story was originally published on the Forward.
Features
New book about a man who helped to save the lives of 200,000 Hungarian Jews
Reviewed by BERNIE BELLAN I have to admit that, as much as I consider myself reasonably informed about the history of the Holocaust, I had never heard of Rudolf Vrba.
Further, when it comes to an understanding of what happened to Hungary’s Jewish population, it’s the story of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg that comes foremost to mind.
But now, after having read a new book by Canadian journalist Alan Twigg, titled “Holocaust Hero – The Life & Times of Rudolf Vrba,” I have a much better understanding of what happened to Hungarian Jewry.
There were approximately 800,000 Jews alive in Hungary at the beginning of World War II and, even though 63,000 Hungarian Jews had been murdered by their fellow Hungarians prior to Germany’s entry into Hungary in March 1944 (with the willing cooperation of Hungarian authorities), by the end of World War II only about 200,000 Hungarian Jews remained alive. Of the Jews who were murdered by the Nazis, 424,000 were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau – in a relatively short period of time: between April and July, 1944.
There would have been many more Hungarian Jews who would have been sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, however, were it not for the heroism of two individuals who actually managed to escape from Auschwitz in April 1944: Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler.
While there have been many books written describing how those two brave men managed to escape Auschwitz (and there were only six individuals who managed to do that the entire time Auschwitz was in existence as the largest death camp in the history of the world), Rudolf Vrba’s story is one that should be of particular interest to Canadians because Vrba actually lived in Canada for 31 years of this life, when he was a very well respected professor of biochemistry at the University of British Columbia.
Now, with a recently released book by a well known Canadian historian and journalist by the name of Alan Twigg, a much more complete account of Vrba’s story, beginning with his childhood in Slovakia and ending with a long interview with Vrba’s second wife, Robin Vrba, is available.
Here are the first two paragraphs taken from Twigg’s introduction to the book, which describe in a nutshell why Vrba deserves to be celebrated: “This first volume of a two-volume biography asserts there was much more to Rudolf Vrba than his escape from Auschwitz and his subsequent report that saved 200,000 lives. An outstanding medical researcher, Vrba submitted testimony at the Eichmann trial, pursued war criminals, served globally as a riveting public speaker and combatted Holocaust denialists.
“Under his birth name Walter Rosenberg, he survived…24 near-death experiences over a three-year period as a teenager… At 20, he fought in ten life-threatening battles as a Partisan in the mountains of Slovakia and became a decorated war hero. Rudolf Vrba was a Jew who fought back.”
Twigg explains that this book deals mostly with Vrba’s life up to 1946 and that a second volume will explore his quite successful career as a biochemist.
What emerges though, from Twigg’s account of Vrba’s life is unbridled admiration for Vrba’s brilliance – as someone who could make instant assessments of life or death situations and, no matter how fraught with danger the wrong choice could entail, retained his composure and thought his way through to survival.
Born Walter Rosenberg, Vrba was eventually given the alias Rudolf Vrba by Jewish authorities in Slovakia, which is to where he escaped from Auschwitz with Wetzler in April 1944. Rather than reverting to Walter Rosenberg following the war he kept the name Rudolf Vrba.
Twigg provides a great deal of information about Vrba’s early life throughout the book, but what is sure to grab the reader’s attention and want to make even someone who might not be all that interested in reading something about a Holocaust survivor is the introduction in which Twigg lists the 24 different experiences that Vrba survived as a teenager, each of which – had they gone the wrong way, could very well have ended with his death.
The fact that Vrba was one of only six Jews to have escaped Auschwitz is amazing in itself, but it is what he – along with Wetzler, did after escaping that makes one wonder why he hasn’t received greater recognition in Canada – and which leads Twigg to want to correct that grave injustice.
Vrba and Wetzler wrote down what they had witnessed happening in Auschwitz-Birkenau in a 20-page report that was given to Slovakian Jewish authorities and which became known as the “Vrba-Wetzler Report.” It provided detailed information about the large scale extermination of what the report calculated were 1,765,000 Jews between April 1942 and April 1944, all of whom had been murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Vrba had an incredible memory for detail and it was the figures that he entered into the report that came to be accepted as quite accurate when they were later corroborated by the testimony of others, including the most notorious commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss (or Hoess).
Although Vrba only arrived in Auschwitz in June 1942, he based his calculations on what he saw transpiring every day that he was there, when he witnessed the number of trains arriving daily, how many boxcars were part of each train (45 on average), and how many people were stuffed into each boxcar (60 on average).
While the report did receive dissemination among various Western European and American authorities, Twigg argues that it was deliberately suppressed by leaders of the Hungarian Jewish community – who had been well aware of the report around the same time mass deportations of Hungarian Jews began in April 1944. Germany had not entered into Hungary until March 1944 and the Hungarian Jewish community was the last Jewish community to be largely extinguished during the war.
A major part of Twigg’s book deals with Vrba’s contention that one man in particular, Rudolf Kastner, who was head of what was known as the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, and who was well aware of the Vrba-Wetzler Report, could have used his influence to warn Hungarian Jews about their impending fate at the hands of the Nazis but, for whatever reasons he may have had, chose not to do so. (Twigg does describe though, a deal Kastner made with Adolph Eichmann, who was in charge of Germany’s extermination program in Hungary, to save the lives of 1600 Hungarian Jews, many of whom were either friends or relatives of Kastner.) The contempt with which Vrba and, in turn, Twigg, held for Kastner and those who came to his defense – including one of Israel’s most respected historians, Yehuda Bauer, emerges clearly in the book.
Eventually, however, and in no small part, due to the failure of leaders of Hungary’s Jewish community to warn their fellow Jews what fate awaited them if they followed orders to board the trains, over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to their slaughter. With the total cooperation of Hungarian authorities, Jews – as they were in every other jurisdiction where they were ordered on to trains, were misled into thinking that they were simply being deported, not headed for extermination.
It was only after the Vrba-Wetzler Report gained wide dissemination, a process which Twigg describes in some detail, that pressure began to mount on Miklos Horthy, the “Regent” of Hungary, to stop assisting the Germans in the deportation of Hungarian Jews. (After reading other information about Horthy, however, it is not clear the extent to which Horthy was aware Jews were being sent to their deaths prior to the publication of the Vrba-Wetzler Report. Twigg does not enter into that debate.)
While “Holocaust Hero – The Life & Times of Rudolf Vrba” does tell a fascinating story, at times it does lose momentum. Perhaps because Twigg makes quite clear from the outset that he is a journalist and a historian, not a novelist, he relies upon previously written accounts, including Vrba’s own autobiography, to cobble together a narrative from a variety of different sources. What results is a book that will probably be of great interest to students of history, but not as much to those who might prefer to read a story laden with graphic imagery.
There are many instances throughout the book where Twigg takes great pains to offer substantiation for what he says happened to Vrba during the Second World War – which was undoubtedly horrifying, but because the author is so dispassionate in his writing, what Vrba endured does not come across as chillingly as one might expect.
Reading about stacking bodies in advance of their being taken to a crematorium or of sorting through the possessions of the victims – all of which Vrba did, doesn’t quite deliver the gut punch that we’ve come to expect when we see actual visual representations of the same experiences – whether it be through documentary footage or dramatizations in such films as “Schindler’s List” or , to my mind, the most riveting film ever made about what life in Auschwitz was truly like – “Son of Saul,” a Hungarian film that won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 2015.
The book contains quite a bit more information than perhaps the average reader might need to know, including a very lengthy transcript of an interview Twigg had with Vrba’s widow, Robin Vrba. While it’s somewhat interesting to read about their life together, it’s hardly germane to the story how important a role Vrba ultimately played in saving the lives of 200,000 Hungarian Jews.
Still, as we approach the anniversary of Kristallnacht, which happened 87 years ago, and which was the harbinger of what was to come for European Jewry, reading a book that describes how one individual in particular, Rudolf Vrba, not only survived the Holocaust when almost anyone else in the same situations he repeatedly encountered would have succumbed to the easy way out and accepted death, it reminds us that stories of heroism on an unimaginable level can make us realize that whatever hardships we may face in our own lives pale in comparison to what someone like Vrba endured.
“Holocaust Hero – The Life & Times of Rudolf Vrba”
By Alan Twigg
153 pages
Published by Firefly Books, September 2025
Features
Bitcoin Price Volatility: WOA Crypto – Why Cloud Mining Becomes a Safe Haven for Investors
(Posted Oct. 10, 2025) Bitcoin once again attracted market attention today, with the price around $122,259, with an intraday high of $124,138 and a low of $121,141. Driven by capital flows, ETF inflows, and macroeconomic factors, Bitcoin recently hit a new high, but encountered retracement pressure today and fluctuated widely between $121,000 and $124,000 during the initial decline.
There have been no major structural changes in capital flows. For most investors, the best way to deal with volatility is not to try to precisely time peaks and troughs, but to let assets generate returns both in the ups and downs.
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WOA Crypto Mining: Making Cloud Mining Practical
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