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How Montreal’s Jewish community helped create a new Uygher translation of Viktor Frankl’s famous Holocaust memoir
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing,” Viktor Frankl famously penned in Man’s Search for Meaning, one of the most impactful literary works of the 20th century, “the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
It was but one of many stirring passages that Kayum Masimov took in hand—and mind—when first reading Frankl’s book in Russian five years ago. A friend had recommended that Masimov, the Canadian representative to the World Uyghur Congress and a project coordinator for the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, read Frankl’s chronicle as a concentration camp prisoner, which has been translated into more than 50 languages and sold more than 60 million copies since first being published in 1946.
His reaction was immediate. “It’s a direct parallel to what I have experienced interviewing so many Uyghurs, especially those who came from concentration camps,” he told The CJN at the launch of a Uyghur translation of Frankl’s classic at the Montreal Holocaust Museum (MHM). The book debuted on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, marking the day in 1948 that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“What struck me personally was when I read that this has happened before us. It’s a must-read for our community, especially now. I hate doing parallels and comparisons with other tragedies, but I cannot but think and observe these commonalities between our communities.”
Frankl’s survival story has helped generations worldwide cope with suffering, said Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom’s Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, who added that many Jews today acknowledge that “nobody was there for us when this was happening to us, so how can we be silent when this is happening to anyone else?”
Since China invaded East Turkistan in 1949, more than a year before entering Tibet, the region was prone to violence and repression through forced displacement, slave labour, civil rights erasure, rape, incarceration and much more. China has intensified its efforts since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, says Masimov.
“Over the last 10 or so years, it became intolerable—all-out war against the community. And not only Uyghurs, but all native people living in the region, including Kazaks, Uzbeks, Tartars, predominantly Turkic-speaking Muslims.”
According to rights groups, some 7 million people have been subjected to so-called re-education in China. With some 2,000 Uyghurs in Canada, a community established over the last 20-plus years, Masimov says “not a single Uyghur Canadian family has not been affected by this. And I thought this book will be a good thing because our community is so deeply traumatized, and this will be a good starting point to initiate conversations.
“The fact that I’m here with you, at the Holocaust Museum itself, and talking about it, is a part of the trauma healing for myself, sharing my pain.”
While China declares the number of Uyghurs at 12 million, the Uyghur rights groups put the real population at about 20 million, with about 100,000 in the global diaspora. Canada’s community is among the smallest. (The largest diaspora is in Turkey, estimated between 50,000-80,000 refugees.) “We are the canary in the coal mine in Canada,” says Masimov, who himself has been subject to harassment, intimidation and even death threats as far back as 2007 as a result of his advocacy.
He’s lost track of many members of his own family for several years. “There are people who have heard nothing from 40 family members for a decade,” he says. “My story is not unique at all. We all live with this, every day.” He says post-traumatic stress disorder and intergenerational trauma are evident among Canada’s Uyghur community.
Having acted as interpreter to many ex-concentration camp detainees during Canadian parliamentary hearings, Masimov spoke of hearing accounts of widespread rape and torture, “all this unimaginable cruelty. And the big question looming over my shoulders and that I heard many times from survivors: Why God allows this? What did we do wrong?”
When transmitting the human rights legacy of the Holocaust, MHM president Jacques Saada says, “It is precisely moments like tonight that help accomplish this crucial responsibility. This launch highlights the tragic yet resilient connection between Jewish and Uyghur communities and the importance of allyship in confronting genocide today.”
The project took over a year to complete, spurred on by Masimov and activists Marc Grushcow and Phil Kretzmar, who secured the publication rights and a translator who is anonymously credited on the book for fear of reprisals against their vulnerable family in China.
Frankl, a psychiatrist, originally penned his prescription for survival in German, and its new Uyghur versions are written in both Latin and Arabic script, with a possible Cyrillic edition coming, Masimov said in discussion with Rabbi Grushcow.
Free electronic versions are available for download online for anyone wishing to read, share or help raise awareness of the Uyghurs’ plight. “It’s not about selling anything,” says the rabbi’s father, Marc Grushcow. “It’s about rachmones” (compassion).
“China became a victim of its own success,” Masimov said. “It was so successful in suppressing us and other communities that it came to the point that even outsiders began wondering what is happening and posing questions.”
Rabbi Grushcow says the book’s profound takeaway is not just about surviving oppression, “but about maintaining human dignity, meaning, about psychological autonomy in the face of systematic attempts to destroy those fundamental capacities of any human being.”
Rights groups believe at least one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in Chinese internment camps.
“This is the largest incarceration or detention of any ethnic group in the world since the Holocaust,” says Masimov, who also spoke of organ harvesting, nuclear explosions resulting in high cancer rates, environmental degradation and a mass inflow of Chinese migrants, boosting the presence of ethnic Chinese in the region from five percent to surpassing 40 percent today. He also listed the widespread use of slave labour in the production of clothing, solar panels, food and other products found globally.
In February 2021, Canada’s parliament acknowledged the genocide and, in 2023, it launched an initiative to resettle 10,000 Uyghur refugees from third-party states, the first of whom arrived in Canada this week.
Asked what would happen if the world continues to do “almost nothing,” Masimov shared a sobering prognostic: “Within 20 to 30 years, we are facing the extinction of a 25-million-strong ethnic group.”
He says there is no long-term solution for China to keep its existence “as it is, as a political system. The first victims of the Chinese Communist Party are Chinese people themselves, right? It will come to the point that they will decide that it will be done. It’s not sustainable in the long term. I am optimistic on that… But the question is, will our community—along with others like Tibetans, Mongols—survive that? Because at the current rate, it is quite possible that within 20-30, years we will be gone as a group, which is a loss not only to us, but to Chinese civilization and the world.”
The Montreal Holocaust Museum has worked closely with Canada’s Uyghur community over the last few years to discuss pedagogical matters, says MHM head of communications Sarah Fogg. “We’ve done some beautiful bridge-building. We were there to show them what’s possible, how we handle exhibitions and artifacts.” Executive director Daniel Amarsays such collaborationis part of the mission “to strengthen links with other communities who suffered genocide (such as the Rwandan and Cambodian communities).”
Fogg says that part of the mission remains a challenge. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that people are not aware of this type of work that we do, as our core mission is still to educate anyone and everyone about the Holocaust and its legacy and teach about the dangers coming from unchecked antisemitism and unchecked hate.”
What stunned Marc Grushcow “was the parallel of the Jews of the 1930s in Germany into the war and the Uyghurs in China. Starting with the exclusion from society, family separation and forced assimilation. Uyghurs are subject to incarceration and forced labour, documented rape, forced sterilization of women, and it’s all part of China’s stated policy to erase Uyghurs through assimilation.”
Rabbi Grushcow recalled that the Jewish community must do “as much as we need to, to help each other, especially these days. We turn inward, of course, but there is also part of our tradition that says, ‘Remember the stranger, because you were a stranger.’ That we should not just look out for ourselves, but others.”
The situation of the Uyghurs is a grossly under-reported atrocity, she said, “and ‘genocide’ gets thrown around so much in terms of Israel and Palestine, wrongly. But in this case the markers of genocide and what is being done in China is so clear and how China has managed to keep this out of the headlines.”
On Oct. 10, 2023, she recalls, Canada’s Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project came out with a strong condemnation of the terrorist attacks on Israel, adding, “Anything we do with other communities, sometimes it’s strategic: we stand for you, you stand for us… That’s all well and good, but sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.”
Kasimov lauded the support of Canada’s Jewish community in his community’s plight and efforts. “Unfortunately, this has not been matched by our co-religionists,” noting that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas declared his support for China’s policies last year, “and said China’s re-education camps and everything they are doing are just.”
Indeed, in a June 2023 statement, the PA stated China’s policy toward Muslims in Xinjiang has “nothing to do with human rights and are aimed at excising extremism and opposing terrorism and separatism.” Abbas also characterized criticism of China’s treatment of Uyghurs as interference in internal affairs. That elicited a reminder from MHM president Jacques Saada, who noted, “Abbas also wrote a book in which he justified the Holocaust, so we are again sharing a common point here.”
That’s why collaboration with the city’s Holocaust museum and its “outward-looking element, sharing that legacy about education” is so important, says Rabbi Grushcow. “We have so much history that matters with what’s going on with the Uyghurs.”
Showing compassion and support is no zero-sum game, she agrees: “Morally, it’s incumbent on us to do the right thing. The fact that it’s Victor Frankl, it’s extraordinary that this Jewish human memoir found its way into the hearts of the Uyghur community.”
The post How Montreal’s Jewish community helped create a new Uygher translation of Viktor Frankl’s famous Holocaust memoir appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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ADL Research: 24% of Americans Believe Recent Violence Against Jews Is ‘Understandable’
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim who were shot and killed as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, pose for a picture at an unknown location, in this handout image released by Embassy of Israel to the US on May 22, 2025. Photo: Embassy of Israel to the USA via X/Handout via REUTERS
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report on Friday revealing American attitudes about antisemitic violence following the targeted attacks earlier this year against Jews in Boulder, Colo., Harrisburg, Pa., and Washington, D.C. The watchdog group found a sizable minority (24 percent) found the attacks “understandable” while 13 percent regarded them as “justified.”
The ADL surveyed a representative sample of 1000 Americans on Thursday, ensuring the group matched accurate proportions of the country’s demography. The findings showed disparate views across age groups and partisan affiliations while also a clear, majority consensus on many questions.
The survey showed that 87 percent of respondents believed the three recent antisemitic attacks to be unjustifiable while 85 percent called them morally wrong and 77 percent assessed them as antisemitic. Eighty-six percent regarded the violence against Jews as hate crimes. However, nearly a quarter of respondents said the attacks were “understandable.”
More Republicans (15 percent) than Democrats (11 percent) regarded the attacks as justified, while more Republicans (79 percent) than Democrats (77 percent) saw the attacks as antisemitic. Partisan differences also manifested in support for increased government action against antisemitism with 74 percent of Republicans in favor compared to 81 percent of Democrats.
In presenting their research findings, the ADL emphasized the broad agreement in American opposition to antisemitic violence and conspiracist tropes before noting the presence of a distinct minority of “millions of people who excuse or endorse violence against Jews—an alarming sign of how anti-Jewish narratives are spreading.” For example, 67 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans agree that antisemitism is a serious problem.
Smaller numbers among the Democrats (25 percent) and Republicans (23 percent) will acknowledge antisemitism as a concern in their own party. The ADL poll suggests the legitimacy of such suspicions, finding that “28 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats agreed with tropes such as Jews have too much influence in politics and media.”
Partisan affiliations correlated with where respondents saw the most significant antisemitic threats. Republicans expressed a 3.6 times greater likelihood of worries about left-wing antisemitism compared to Democrats who were 4.4 times as likely to focus on right-wing antisemitism.
The pollsters found that attitudes toward the severity of the antisemitic threat differed according to age.
While 80 percent of silent generation respondents saw antisemitism as a serious problem, that number fell to 65 percent for baby boomers and members of Generation X. The rates dropped again for millennials (52 percent) and Gen-Zers (55 percent).
Perceptions of antisemitism in local communities also differed by generation. While 19 percent of Americans overall report having witnessed antisemitism in their communities, that figure jumps to 33 percent for Gen-Zers and 20 percent for millennials. Among the boomers it drops to 10 percent and for Silent Generation respondents it reaches 17 percent.
Large numbers saw the threat of popular protest slogans “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” with 68 percent seeing the phrases as potentially fueling violence, a view held even among 54 percent of those who favor protests against Israel.
Researchers also observed a correlation between Israel support and perceiving the seriousness of antisemitism in America. While 74 percent of those favorable to Israel saw domestic antisemitism as significant, only 57 percent of those with negative views of the Jewish state agreed.
Nearly a quarter of those polled—24 percent—expressed the conspiratorial view that some group had staged the attacks to provoke sympathy for Israel. A second report also released by the ADL on Friday showed the rise in discussions of “false flag” attacks on the Reddit website in response to the antisemitic violence.
The ADL warned that “these beliefs are especially dangerous because they justify holding Jewish Americans responsible for the actions of the State of Israel, effectively viewing them as collectively responsible for international politics—making them greater targets.”
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Sen. Bernie Sanders Calls on Democrats to Stop Accepting Money From AIPAC
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the media following a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, US, July 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), took to X/Twitter on Monday to call on all Democrats to stop accepting political donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the influential pro‑Israel lobbying entity.
In his tweet, Sanders wrote that AIPAC has aided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in waging an “illegal and immoral war being waged against the Palestinian people.” Sanders continued, claiming that “NO Democrat should accept money from AIPAC” while asserting that the organization helped “deliver the presidency to Donald Trump.”
Sanders’s post came in response to comments by former Obama administration foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes, in which Rhodes urged Democrats to reject all future donations from AIPAC. Rhodes argued that AIPAC has influenced Democrats to take immoral stances on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“AIPAC is part of the constellation of forces that has delivered this country into the hands of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, and you cannot give them a carve out,” Rhodes said on an episode of the podcast Pod Save the World. “We need to have this fight as a party, because these are the wrong people to have under your tent.”
Tommy Vietor, another former Obama administration official and podcast co-host, agreed, accusing AIPAC of “funneling money to front organizations that primary progressive Democrats.”
AIPAC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying firm in the US, has historically backed pro-Israel candidates from both parties. The organization does not specifically lobby against progressive candidates. AIPAC has aided the campaigns of pro-Israel progressives such as Ritchie Torres.
Sanders has long held an acrimonious relationship with AIPAC. In November 2023, he repudiated the group for supposedly having”supported dozens of GOP extremists who are undermining our democracy,” and urged his fellow Democrats to stand together in the fight for a world of peace, economic and social justice and climate sanity.”
Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser under President Obama, has emerged as a vocal critic of Israeli policy, particularly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His skepticism is rooted in years of diplomatic frustration during the Obama administration, especially surrounding failed peace negotiations and Israel’s settlement expansions in the West Bank. Rhodes has often framed Israel’s hardline stance as a major obstacle to a two-state solution, and he has been critical of what he sees as unconditional U.S. support that enables right-wing Israeli policies. His stance reflects a broader shift among some American progressives who advocate for a more balanced U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sanders has long been a staunch critic of the Jewish state. Sanders has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “collective punishment” and “apartheid” against the Palestinian people. Although the senator initially condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel by Hamas, he subsequently pushed for a “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group. Sanders also spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to implement a partial arms embargo on Israel in 2024.
In the 20 months following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, relations between the Democratic party and the Jewish state have deteriorated. Democratic lawmakers have grown more vocally critical of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, sometimes arguing that the Jewish state has recklessly endangered lives of Palestinian civilians. Moreover, polls indicate that Democratic voters have largely turned against Israel, intensifying pressure on liberal lawmakers to shift their tone regarding the war in Gaza.
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Iranian National Charged in Plot to Subvert US Sanctions Against Islamic Republic
Iranians participating in a memorial ceremony for IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists in downtown Tehran, Iran, on July 2, 2025. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl via Reuters Connect.
Federal law enforcement officials have arrested an Iranian national after uncovering his alleged conspiracy to export US technology to Tehran in violation of a slew of economic sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic, the US Department of Justice announced on Friday.
For May 2018 to July 2025, Bahram Mohammad Ostovari, 66, allegedly amassed “railway signaling and telecommunications systems” for transport to the Iranian government by using “two front companies” located in the United Arab Emirates. After filing fake orders for them with US vendors at Ostovari’s direction, the companies shipped the materials — which included “sophisticated computer processors” — to Tehran, having duped the US businesses into believing that they “were the end users.”
The Justice Department continued, “After he became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in May 2020, Ostovari continued to export, sell, and supply electronics and electrical components to [his company] in Iran,” noting that the technology became components of infrastructure projects commissioned by the Islamic Republic.
Ostovari has been charged with four criminal counts for allegedly violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), under which conducting business with Iran is proscribed due to the country’s human rights abuses, material support for terrorism, and efforts to build a larger-scale nuclear program in violation of international non-proliferation obligations. Each count carries a 20-year maximum sentence in federal prison.
Ostovari is one of several Iranian nationals to become the subject of criminal proceedings involving crimes against the US this year.
In April, a resident of Great Falls, Virginia — Abouzar Rahmati, 42 — pleaded guilty to collecting intelligence on US infrastructure and providing it to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“From at least December 2017 through June 2024, Rahmati worked with Iranian government officials and intelligence operatives to act on their behalf in the United States, including by meeting with Iranian intelligence officers and government officials using a cover story to hide his conduct,” the Justice Department said at the time, noting that Rahmati even infiltrated a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that possesses “sensitive non-public information about the US aviation sector.”
Throughout the duration of his cover, Rahmati amassed “open-source and non-public materials about the US solar energy industry,” which he delivered to “Iranian intelligence officers.”
The government found that the operation began in August 2017, after Rahmati “offered his services” to a high-ranking Iranian government official who had once been employed by the country’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, according to the Justice Department. Months later, he traveled to Iran, where Iranian agents assigned to him the espionage activity to which he pleaded guilty to perpetrating.
“Rahmati sent additional material relating to solar energy, solar panels, the FAA, US airports, and US air traffic control towers to his brother, who lived in Iran, so that he would provide those files to Iranian intelligence on Rahmati’s behalf,” the Justice Department continued. Rahmati also, it said, delivered 172 gigabytes worth of information related to the National Aerospace System (NAS) — which monitors US airspace, ensuring its safety for aircraft — and NAS Airport Surveillance to Iran during a trip he took there.
Rahmati faces up to 10 years in prison. He will be sentenced in August.
In November, three Iranian intelligence assets were charged with contriving a conspiracy to assassinate critics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as then US President-elect Donald Trump.
According to the Justice Department, Farhad Shakeri, 51; Carlisle Rivera, 49; and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, acted at the direction of and with help from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an internationally designated terrorist organization, to plot to murder a US citizen of Iranian origin in New York. Shakeri, who remains at large and is believed to reside in Iran, was allegedly the principal agent who managed the two other men, both residents of New York City who appeared in court.
Their broader purpose, prosecutors said, was to target nationals of the United States and its allies for attacks, including “assaults, kidnapping, and murder, both to repress and silence critical dissidents” and to exact revenge for the 2020 killing of then-IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq. Trump was president of the US at the time of the operation.
All three men are now charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy, and money laundering. Shakeri faces additional charges, including violating sanctions against Iran, providing support to a terrorist organization, and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Powers Act, offenses for which he could serve up to six decades in federal prison.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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