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Anti-Israel Protesters Disrupt Holocaust Remembrance Day Event at Auschwitz
People with Israeli flags attend the International March of the Living at the former Auschwitz Nazi German death camp, in Brzezinka near Oswiecim, Poland, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Anti-Israel protesters on Monday disrupted an event at Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Poland, commemorating the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust by the Nazis.
The International March of the Living, an annual Holocaust education program founded in 1988, brings people from around the world to Poland each year for Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day — known as Yom HaShoah — to march on the path leading from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II.
Survivors of the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel joined 55 Holocaust survivors in this year’s march. However, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and the coinciding record surge in global antisemitism, anti-Israel protesters gathered near the grounds of Auschwitz, sparking outrage.
Local police put up a barricade to prevent dozens of demonstrators from approaching the marchers, who passed by as the protesters shouted slogans including “stop the genocide.”
Anti-Israel protesters hold flags on the route of the annual International March of the Living, outside former Auschwitz Nazi German death camp, in Oswiecim, Poland, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Marchers, many of whom carried Israeli flags, responded by changing, “Free Gaza from Hamas!” and singing “Am Yisrael Chai.”
If you would have told me a year ago, that there would be protesters outside Auschwitz while Holocaust survivors are commemorating the Holocaust Memorial Day I would say you’re crazy.
pic.twitter.com/vASGX7llxE
— Elad Simchayoff (@Elad_Si) May 6, 2024
Danit Ben David, 87, said she was “outraged” at the scene.
“How dare they come here, on this day,” she told The Algemeiner.
For many of the thousands of marchers this year, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day has taken on less of a historic tone and more of a current one, in light of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that launched the war in Gaza.
“I have always feared for Jewish existence in the face of antisemitism,” Phylis Greenberg Heiderman, president of the International March of the Living, told The Algemeiner. “But never has the fear and dread of the Holocaust been more palpable in our times.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 253 others during their invasion of Israel in what was the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Following the onslaught, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, antisemitism incidents skyrocketed to record highs in the US and several other countries, especially in Europe.
Doron Almog, chairman of the Jewish Agency, noted in a briefing with media from Israel that the scenes the Jewish state witnessed on Oct. 7 amounted to nothing less than a “pogrom.”
Others were more reluctant to draw direct comparisons.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog told the crowd in a video message: “Although the Holocaust stands alone in the history of human crimes, we have been grieving deep tragedy over the past months. The sickness of blind hatred has been unleashed once again, in our own world and time.”
Hershel Greenblat, an 83-year-old survivor from Atlanta, GA who accompanies students and highschoolers on the march, said he would not visit Auschwitz if it wasn’t for a sense of duty to educate the next generation.
“I don’t come to relive the past. The only reason I come is to be here with the students. To try to educate.”
Greenblat’s parents — from Poland and Ukraine, respectively — were both in the resistance against the Nazis. The octogenarian found his grandmother, for whom he was named, listed in Auschwitz.
Beyond survivors of the Holocaust and Oct. 7, several Arab and Muslim delegations from Israel and around the world also joined the march. Among them was a delegation organized by Sharaka (“Partnership” in Arabic), a nonprofit organization founded by leaders from Israel and the Gulf following the signing of the Abraham Accords, a series of historic peace agreements between Israel and Arab states brokered with the help of the United States.
The post Anti-Israel Protesters Disrupt Holocaust Remembrance Day Event at Auschwitz first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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