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German man accused of posing as a Jew and peddling fake, antisemitism-laced Holocaust story
BERLIN (JTA) – A retired teacher living in a tiny German island town has been promoting himself as a Jew under the mantle of an official program designed to introduce non-Jews to Jewish people and practices.
But Frank Borner is not part of the “Meet a Jew” initiative operated by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the organization says.
In fact, there is no evidence that Borner is Jewish at all — and yet he has been offering a first-person perspective on being Jewish in Germany to audiences with few such opportunities, making comments sometimes smacking of antisemitism.
“The damage done by such charlatans to such an important project is great,” the Central Council said in a statement.
Borner appears to be another iteration of the “costume Jew” who advertises a false Jewish identity and builds a career or public persona around it. The phenomenon has long simmered in Germany, where Jewishness sometimes holds unusual fascination because of the Holocaust. It has become a public fixation this summer after a high-profile case emerged: that of Fabian Wolff, 33, a journalist who recently revealed that he is not actually Jewish after functioning for years as a Jewish frontman for left-wing Israel critics.
Unlike Wolff, Borner did not reveal himself. Instead, he was outed by German Jewish journalist Henryk Broder in the Die Welt newspaper in late July after Broder attended a talk that Borner was delivering in the village of Petersdorf, on the island of Fehmarn. Broder raised concerns about inconsistencies, inaccuracies and gaps in Borner’s family story — and he noted that Borner invoked antisemitic stereotypes during his presentation.
For example, Broder noted, Borner said his family emigrated to the United States after the war: to “New York and Hollywood, both full of Jews, firmly in Jewish hands.” According to Broder, no one in the audience expressed surprise at this comment, which overlaps with antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power.
Reached via email for a comment, Borner referred the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian Bible: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
He later emailed an additional note. “During German fascism from 1933 to 1945, Germans hunted down Jewish fellow citizens,” he wrote. “In today’s Western democracy, Jewish people prey on other Jewish fellow human beings.”
The German Jewish journalist Henryk Broder, seen here in 2012, happened to be in the audience for a “Meet a Jew” presentation in Petersdorf auf Fehmarn, where he found the presenter’s story to be inconsistent. (Popow/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Borner also told JTA that he and his family have never belonged to an official Jewish community in Germany, although he insisted that he has Jewish ancestry. “We have always belonged to a liberal-political Judaism,” he wrote.
The case highlights the role of Jews in the German popular imagination. “This is a widespread situation, especially in Germany, that people make themselves out to be Jews or see themselves as such, although they are not,” German Jewish historian Julius Schoeps said in a report last month about “Jewish fake identities and the question of ‘why’” on Deutschlandfunk radio.
“I just think it’s a syndrome, a syndrome that is deeply rooted in German society,” Schoeps said. “It’s a problem that has to do with people suffering from the past. And this problem can indeed take on strange forms.”
Masquerading as a Holocaust survivor or as someone with Holocaust trauma in the family is not limited to Germany. The phenomenon is sometimes called the Wilkomirski Syndrome, after the Swiss author whose 1995 best-selling “autobiography” about surviving the Holocaust turned out to be a fake.
In another notable case, the late German historian Sophie Hingst composed a family tree of Holocaust survivors and victims and even sent 22 pages of testimony for nonexistent people to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and archive, before Der Spiegel magazine revealed that she had a Protestant background. Hingst died by suicide four years ago, shortly after the magazine made her story public.
Journalist Kirsten Serup-Bildfeldt pointed out in the Deutschlandfunk report that many such cases involve individuals who feel guilt and shame over the Nazi past and desire to be identified with the morally correct side of history.
Among the sensational cases she mentioned, without identifying the people by name:
The head of a small German Jewish community who resigned after Spiegel magazine published a story in 2018 that questioned his biography.
A man who posed as a survivor and told his story to school groups, including the detail that his father died in the Buchenwald concentration camp — when in fact, his father was a soldier in the Nazi army.
A woman who served as a Jewish community leader in a former East German city before German unification but whose claim to Jewish heritage was challenged.
A vocal critic of Israel who claimed to be the child of survivors but had a regular German housewife mother and a father who was a Wehrmacht soldier.
“This biography was her way to get into the position of a supposed Jew in order to speak against Israel,” says Serup-Bildfeldt, who is not Jewish. “People who do this are doing enormous damage to the Jewish community. It is more of a psychological problem than a political one, but they also do political damage.”
In Borner’s case, the damage could come in the form of reinforcing antisemitic stereotypes at a time when they are seen to be on the rise. That trend is one reason that the Central Council of Jews in Germany launched the “Meet a Jew” initiative in 2020 and grew it to include 600 talks by 500 volunteers last year. The goal, the council said, was to shift attention away from the past.
The “Meet a Jew” project brings Jewish volunteers into classrooms to talk about their experiences. (Courtesy of Meet a Jew)
“Our idea is really to introduce modern-day Jewish life, and to give Jewish people a face and a voice,” Masha Schmerling, the program director at its launch, told JTA at the time.
Borner said little about contemporary Jewish life when he addressed groups twice in June at a citizens’ information center in the town of Petersdorf, saying, “Here on the island I am considered to be a Jew.” Broder was in the audience for the second session.
His talk focused on his family’s Holocaust history. In addition to his comments about Jewish control of Hollywood, Borner also repeated other antisemitic tropes. He said he was interested in “why the Jews went to the slaughter like sheep,” saying, “Why did the Jews do that? They were people with money, with international connections!” according to Broder’s report.
Borner also reportedly said that there was a special Jewish “capacity for suffering” connected with the “victim role” that clung to Jews “archetypically, like primordial slime.”
Broder wrote that the audience “neither questions nor disagrees” when Borner refers to Hollywood, and “listens in silence” as he discusses Jewish victimhood.
For Broder, red flags flew as Borner told his story. When speaking about the anti-Jewish pogrom of November 1938, Borner described its orchestrator — Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels — as “a philologist with a PhD who wrote very beautiful poetry.” The pogrom was “the first central experience for our family,” said Borner, adding that his grandfather — a doctor — was taken by surprise, even though one of his patients had warned him.
The German island of Fehmarn is home to vacation colonies and one man who is publicly advertising himself as a Jew despite not having any evidence to support his story. (Frank Molter/picture alliance via Getty Images)
As Broder points out, Jewish doctors were not allowed to have non-Jewish patients after the summer of 1938.
The question of whether Borner has any Jewish roots remains unanswered. He insists that he does, but he refused to tell Broder where his supposedly Jewish side of his family had lived and provided only sketchy details about their persecution under the Nazis.
When Broder asked where Borner’s Jewish family had lived, “he disposed of the question in the trash bin of history, with one sentence: ‘I don’t wish to say that now.’”
Broder identified three different stories that Borner had offered about his grandfather’s fate. At the “Meet a Jew” event Borner said he had been beaten to death during the Kristallnacht pogrom, known in Germany as Reichspogromnacht. In a Facebook post, Borner said his entire family survived the war because they fled the country. Finally, Borner told the Lübecker Nachrichten newspaper that his grandfather committed suicide in a concentration camp.
Broder reported that relatives contacted the newspaper later and told them the story was not true.
How Borner ended up back in Germany remained a mystery in his “Meet a Jew” talk, where he said he had been to Israel a few times with his parents, in the early 1950s. “Which is kind of astonishing,” Broder noted in his report, “since he said he was born in 1956.”
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Northwestern University Touts Progress on Addressing Campus Antisemitism Amid Federal Scrutiny
Signs cover the fence at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect.
Northwestern University on Monday touted its progress in addressing the campus antisemitism crisis, issuing a statement containing a checklist of policies it has enacted since being censured by federal lawmakers over its handling of pro-Hamas demonstrations which convulsed its campus during the 2023-2024 academic year.
“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the statement said. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”
The university added that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” it continued. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and across the world. Additionally, Northwestern said that it imposed disciplinary sanctions against several students and one staff member whose conduct violated the new “Demonstration and/or Display Policies” which regulate peaceful assembly on the campus.
“In closing, although Northwestern has made significant progress in the fight against antisemitism on campus, the university remains vigilant and will continue to do what is necessary to make our campus safe,” the statement concluded. “Importantly, the fight against antisemitism is NOT [sic] a zero-sum game. All members of our communities on campus — all religions, races, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, and political viewpoints — deserve to feel safe and know that our rules will be enforced to protect them against hate, discrimination, harassment, and intimidation. Northwestern is committed to this principle.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Northwestern University struggled for months to correct an impression that it coddled pro-Hamas protesters and acceded to their demands for a boycott of Israel in exchange for an end to their May 2024 encampment.
University president Schill denied during a US congressional hearing held that year that he had capitulated to any demand that fostered a hostile environment, but his critics noted that part of the deal to end the encampment stipulated his establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
The status of those concessions, which a law firm representing the civil rights advocacy group StandWithUs described as “outrageous” in July 2024, were not disclosed in Monday’s statement.
Northwestern University is not the only school creating distance between itself and the anti-Zionist movement, a step many colleges have taken in response to US President Donald Trump’s vowing to cut the flow of taxpayer funds supplementing their budgets should they refuse to crackdown down on illegal protests and antisemitism. Following the Trump administration’s cancelling of over $400 million in federals contracts and grants awarded to Columbia University, former interim president Katrina Armstrong proposed a list of reforms the school would agree to undertake — in areas ranging from undergraduate admissions to campus security — to restore the funds.
Armstrong later resigned from her position, saying in a statement which explained the decision that she wishes to return to her role as executive director of the university’s Irving Medical Center, as well as several other positions she holds.
Meanwhile, Harvard University recently fired a librarian whom someone filmed ripping posters of the Bibas children, two babies murdered in captivity by Hamas, off a kiosk in Harvard Yard and denounced him as “hateful.” Additionally, it paused a partnership with a higher education institution located in the West Bank, a move for which prominent members of the Harvard community and federal lawmakers had clamored in a series of public statements. The Trump administration initiated a review of $9 billion in taxpayer funds it receives anyway, prompting interim president Alan Garber to defend Harvard’s handling of the issue.
“For the past fifteen months, we have devoted considerable effort to addressing antisemitism,” Garber said. “We have strengthened our rules and our approach to disciplining those who violate them. We have enhanced training and education on antisemitism across our campus and introduced measures to support our Jewish community and ensure student safety and security.”
Northwestern University is in the Trump administration’s crosshairs too. It is one of 60 universities being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over its handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
“The department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite US campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in March. “US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers. That support is a privilege, and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Pressure Mounts on UN Members to Block Reappointment of Controversial Anti-Israel Official
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The United Nations is facing growing pressure to block the reappointment of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has an extensive history of using her role to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the terrorist group Hamas’s attacks against the Jewish state.
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is set to reappoint Albanese for another three-year term on Friday, despite calls from several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose her reappointment due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
In the months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, across southern Israel, Albanese accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.
She has also previously made comments about a “Jewish lobby” controlling America and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the United Nations launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and that they give her “hope.”
On Monday, US Rep. Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter to the president of the UNHRC, Ambassador Jürg Lauber, to express his strong opposition to Albanese’s reappointment.
In the letter, Mast claimed that Albanese has failed to act “in an independent capacity with a professional, impartial assessment, and maintain the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.”
“Ms. Albanese unapologetically uses her position as a UN special rapporteur to purvey and attempt to legitimize antisemitic tropes, while serving as a Hamas apologist,” the letter read.
“In her malicious fixation, she has even called for Israel to be removed from the United Nations while likening Israel to apartheid South Africa,” Mast wrote in a letter signed by six fellow lawmakers. “Regrettably, Ms. Albanese’s rhetoric has perverted the very institution and its foundational principles in which she was appointed to serve.”
Governments worldwide, including France, the UK, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, have condemned her statements as antisemitic and urged that she not be given another term in her role.
Last month, 42 members of the French Parliament publicly urged the government to oppose Albanese’s reappointment, arguing that it “would send a regrettable signal to victims, human rights defenders, and states committed to credible multilateralism.”
This week, British Labour Member of Parliament David Taylor also objected to Albanese’s reappointment, saying “there is no place for such alleged antisemitism on the international stage.”
“Albanese’s response to the largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century was to describe it as ‘a response to Israel’s oppression,’” Taylor told the Jewish Chronicle. “She described Israel as being a ‘settler colonial conquest.’”
“Making statements of this nature in a UN capacity is abhorrent and does so much damage to communities already torn apart by horrific violence, going against everything the United Nations stands for,” Taylor said.
Human rights groups and NGOs have also campaigned to prevent the anti-Israel rapporteur from receiving a second term.
UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, has organized a petition against her reappointment, which has garnered over 83,000 signatures.
Last month, Maram Stern, executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress, sent a letter to the president of the UNHRC urging him to reject the renewal of Albanese’s mandate, citing what she described as the UN official’s history of anti-Israel animus and antisemitic statements.
“Ms. Albanese has repeatedly made public remarks that propagate harmful antisemitic tropes, question the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and employ rhetoric that undermines the credibility of the Human Rights Council itself,” the letter read. “Her persistent lack of objectivity and failure to uphold a balanced and impartial approach required of her as special rapporteur compromises her credibility as an independent expert.”
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) also urged UN Members to reject Albanese’s second term, saying she “has systematically demonstrated a troubling pattern of conduct and expression that is incompatible with the responsibilities, neutrality, and integrity expected of a UN special rapporteur.”
“Her actions not only betray the victims of terrorism and antisemitism but also are a stain on the credibility of the Human Rights Council itself,” the AJC wrote in a letter.
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Three Jewish Coaches Lead Teams in NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four
Florida Gators head coach Todd Golden and Auburn Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl talk before the game as Auburn Tigers take on Florida Gators at Neville Arena in Auburn, Ala., on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
The men’s 2025 NCAA Tournament Final Four bracket includes four No. 1 seed teams, three of which have Jewish coaches who will lead the way in the two national semifinals taking place on Saturday.
Auburn University Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl has contributed Auburn’s success in the NCAA in part to God and his Jewish faith. He described Israel as the “ancestral homeland for the Jewish people” and called for the release of American-Israeli Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity at a post-game conference last month. He also took the Auburn team on a trip to Israel, where they made stops at the Western Wall and Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
The Tigers will compete on Saturday in the NCAA Tournament Final Four against the Florida Gators whose Jewish coach, Todd Golden, is an Israeli citizen who previously played two years professionally for Maccabi Haifa in Israel.
In 2009, Golden was co-captain of the USA Open Team, coached by Pearl, that won gold at the Maccabiah Games, which is an international multi-sport event for Jewish and Israeli athletes. Golden has been the coach of the Tigers for two seasons, but prior to that he was the assistant coach at Columbia, the head coach at San Francisco, and even worked under Pearl. Golden was director of basketball operations for the Auburn staff for the 2014-15 season and was promoted to assistant coach for the 2015-16 campaign.
Duke and Houston also play each other on Saturday in the Final Four. The head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, Jon Scheyer, also formerly played in Israel and holds Israeli citizenship. He played professionally for Maccabi Tel Aviv from 2011-12. In October 2023, not long after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Scheyer commented on the conflict and said in part: “My heart breaks for the people in Israel — that have hostages, American lives that are taken, mourning loved ones.” Scheyer is leading Duke to the Final Four in only his third year as head coach.
The Houston Cougars – the fourth men’s team competing in the Final Four – do not have a Jewish coach, but they have a player who was born in Israel and played for Israel’s national youth squad. Guard Emanuel Sharp, who is the son of Derrick Sharp, was part of Israel’s under-16 national basketball team and also played for Maccabi Tel Aviv for over a decade.
This year’s Final Four have a combined record of 135-16. Since seeding began in 1979, this is only the second time in history that all four No. 1 seeds advanced to the Final Four. It previously happened in 2008. Larry Brown was the last Jewish coach to win the NCAA Tournament when he led Kansas to the victory in 1988.
The 2025 NCAA Tournament Final Four begins on Saturday, with two national semifinals taking place at the Alamodome in San Antonio, and ends on Monday with the national championship.
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