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Hundreds of Holocaust survivors pose with posters of Hamas hostages in a statement of solidarity

(New York Jewish Week) – As a docent and speaker at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Holocaust survivor Toby Levy has spent more than a decade sharing stories from her Polish childhood spent in hiding and deep fear.

Levy was once again at the museum in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday, but this time not to share her memories with visitors. Instead, she and more than 200 other survivors filed into the museum’s event space for “Images of Hope,” a powerful photo project in which each survivor posed for a portrait while holding a poster of one of the more than 240 hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas. 

“I felt a good feeling,” Levy, 90, told the New York Jewish Week after her portrait was taken by photographer Gillian Laub. “I felt as if I am a very lucky person. So if I feel I’m so lucky, I’m hoping that maybe, somehow, it will reach them inside the picture.”

Levy added that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel — and the subsequent explosion of antisemitism seen around the world since — remind her of her childhood “perfectly.” 

“I’m back there all over again,” she said. “This is how it started with the Germans.”

Maya, a Holocaust survivor, poses with the kidnapped poster for Aviv Atzili while Gillian Laub snaps a photo for the project “Images of Hope.” (Julia Gergely)

On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that antisemitism in the United States has reached “historic levels” in the wake of Israel’s war with Hamas. 

The museum event was pulled together in just two and a half days after it was conceived Sunday by Jack Simony, the director general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, a nonprofit based in Poland and New York that provides Holocaust education and humanitarian assistance to victims of mass atrocities.

The Holocaust survivors came together under various auspices, including the AJCF, as well as the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Claims Conference, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Coney Island, Boro Park Bikur Cholim and several other Jewish organizations that work with New York’s population of Holocaust survivors, which was estimated at nearly 40,000 statewide as of April 2022. 

The survivors heard speeches from various elected officials, including Jewish City Council members Eric Dinowitz, Simcha Eisenstein and Julie Menin and from Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. Also present were Carson Ruepke, the German deputy consul general; Aviv Ezra, a senior diplomat in the Israeli consulate and Rep. Dan Goldman. Each spoke of the survivors as symbols of resilience and strength for the Jewish people and proclaimed strong support for the State of Israel as well as the immediate, urgent need to return the hostages safely. 

Fay Malkin, an 85-year-old who survived the Holocaust in Poland by hiding on a neighbor’s farm, told the New York Jewish Week that she has felt “so much misery” since the Oct. 7 attack. “The most important message and the thing that will save us is strength and specifically the strength of Israel,” she said. 

Posters with the words “Never Again Is Now,” lined the walls of the room, and Ruepke, the German representative, repeated the phrase in his speech.

“I speak to you as the representative of a country that bears a historic responsibility for the worst imaginable crime, the crime committed by Nazi Germany: The Shoah. The systematic murder of 6 million Jews with the aim of eradicating Jewish life from Europe,” he said. “It is not easy to put into words what it means to me that so many Holocaust survivors are present here today in a show of solidarity with the hostages taken on October 7. You all have my deepest respect and admiration.”

The survivors heard speeches from local electeds. Speaking is Rep. Dan Goldman, (D-N.Y.) who was in Israel with his family when the war broke out. (Julia Gergely)

The assembled survivors sang “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, as well as “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (“Jerusalem of Gold”). They also said “Mi Sheberach,” a prayer for healing, for the hostages and injured people. 

Over the course of four hours, survivors were pulled aside individually to pose for a portrait holding a poster. As they waited their turn, they listened to the speeches, schmoozed with one another and ate a catered lunch of blintzes, wraps, pastries and fruit. The afternoon concluded with a group portrait.

The event was the latest addition to a massive global movement seeking to drawn attention to the hostages even as attention turns to Israel’s war against Hamas. “Kidnapped” posters have gone up around the world, as have billboards and public displays symbolizing the hostages’ absence, including empty Shabbat tables, strollers and beds. Relatives of the hostages have also embarked on a world tour, visiting the United Nations and elected officials in multiple countries to press for attention.

Simony said the room full of the survivors — the majority of whom are in their 80s and 90s — provided an “indelible image” that could add to the pressure and will stay in the hearts of the Jewish people at a time when they need it most. 

What exactly will happen with the portraits is undecided as of yet, organizers said. They plan to print them and hope they will be hung exhibits around the world, as well as distributed across social media and to families of the hostages. 

Seeing so many Holocaust survivors come together for the project is like “air,” Jack Kliger, the president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, told the New York Jewish Week. “Our survivors are our north star. Whenever I have a question of how we should approach something, I listen to my groups of survivors. The universal thing we heard from survivors is that they are so frustrated and they want to know what they can do and how they can raise their voices.”

Simony concurred. “We call the generation that suffered through the Holocaust ‘survivors,’ not ‘victims,’ for they are the ones that truly embody endurance, courage, fortitude and strength,” he said in his remarks. “There is no more powerful voice on earth to carry a message of the image of hope.”

Levy, who lives in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, said she was “very scared” for her children and grandchildren and added that she was worried that the lessons of the Holocaust may now be falling on deaf ears. Yet she said would remain optimistic about the return of the hostages, only five of whom have gained freedom in more than three weeks.

“I took the picture because I believe in hope,” she said. 


The post Hundreds of Holocaust survivors pose with posters of Hamas hostages in a statement of solidarity appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Obituary: Ronald Weiss, 68, a musical doctor who performed a record-breaking 58,789 non-surgical vasectomies

Ronald Weiss was disciplined and determined, personal qualities that he applied to his first love of music—and then to his medical career. He was affectionately known as the “Wayne Gretzky […]

The post Obituary: Ronald Weiss, 68, a musical doctor who performed a record-breaking 58,789 non-surgical vasectomies appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Harvard Antisemitism Lawsuit Cleared to Proceed to Discovery Phase

Harvard University president Alan Garber attending the 373rd Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

A lawsuit accusing Harvard University of ignoring antisemitism has been cleared to proceed to discovery, a phase of the case which may unearth damaging revelations about how college officials discussed and crafted policy responses to anti-Jewish hatred before and after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.

The case, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (Brandeis Center), centers on several incidents involving Harvard Kennedy School professor Marshall Ganz during the 2022-2023 academic year.

Ganz allegedly refused to accept a group project submitted by Israeli students for his course, titled “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” because they described Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy.” He castigated the students over their premise, the Brandeis Center says, accusing them of “white supremacy” and denying them the chance to defend themselves. Later, Ganz allegedly forced the Israeli students to attend “a class exercise on Palestinian solidarity” and the taking of a class photograph in which their classmates and teaching fellows “wore ‘keffiyehs’ as a symbol of Palestinian support.”

During an investigation of the incidents, which Harvard delegated to a third party firm, Ganz admitted that he believed “that the students’ description of Israel as a Jewish democracy … was similar to ‘talking about a white supremacist state.’” The firm went on to determine that Ganz “denigrated” the Israeli students and fostered “a hostile learning environment,” conclusions which Harvard accepted but never acted on.

On Friday, Brandeis Center chairman and founder Kenneth Marcus told The Algemeiner that the latest development in this case, prompted by the judge presiding over it, is a step towards achieving justice for the organization’s Jewish clients.

“Attempting to halt discovery was Harvard’s best chance to convince the court that we didn’t have a case, and they failed,” Marcus said. “The court found that our claims stated violations of the law, and we now have an opportunity to substantiate them by asking for Harvard’s documents, interviewing interrogatories of Harvard, and finding other information about the university in other discovery means. The evidence we obtain will then be used at trial.”

Harvard University has fiercely fought the lawsuits brought by its Jewish students. Another filed by a group led by graduate student Shabbos Kestenbaum recently overcame an effort it to have it dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs lack legal standing. At least one elite college, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been successful in quelling the claims of its Jewish students by appealing to a similar argument.

The Brandeis Center and Kestenbaum cases cannot be so easily disappeared, Marcus said.

“Our complaint is much more detailed and laden with a greater number of incidents described in detail and show matters of real gravity, including physical assault,” he continued. “The Harvard Kennedy school matter is one which resulted in the university’s own independent investigator’s determining that Ganz’s actions constituted violations of Harvard’s rules. Harvard, meanwhile, had a significant amount of time to address these problems and has failed to do so, but it has repeatedly failed to do the right thing.”

The Brandeis Center is seeking injunctive relief “preventing defendant [Harvard] violating Title VI [of the US Civil Rights Act] going forward” and the awarding of attorneys’ fees.

According to court documents, the situation for Jewish students at Harvard worsened after Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught. Following the tragedy, while scenes of Hamas terrorists abducting children and desecrating dead bodies circulated worldwide, 31 student groups at Harvard issued a statement blaming Israel for the attack and accusing the Jewish state of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza. Students stormed academic buildings chanting “globalize the intifada,” a mob followed and surrounded a Jewish graduate student, screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” into his ears, and the Harvard Law School student government passed a resolution that falsely accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

High-level university officials and faculty also engaged in questionable conduct.

In December, former Harvard president Claudine Gay told a US congressional committee that calling for a genocide of Jews living in Israel would only violate school rules “depending on the context.” In February, Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine — a spinoff of a student group allegedly linked to terrorist organizations — shared an antisemitic cartoon on social media which showed a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David, containing a dollar sign at its center, dangling a Black man and an Arab man from a noose. The group’s former leader, history professor Walter Johnson, later participated in a “Gaza encampment” protest in which students clamored for a boycott of Israel.

Harvard president Alan Garber, installed after Gay resigned from office after being outed as a serial plagiarist, has, experts have said, been inconsistent in managing the campus’ unrest.

During summer, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it suspended for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, a reversal of policy which defied the university’s previous statements regarding the matter. Unrepentant, the students, members of the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), celebrated the revocation of the punishments on social media and promised to disrupt the campus again.

Earlier this semester, however, Garber appeared to denounce a pro-Hamas student group which marked the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks by praising the brutal invasion as an act of revolutionary justice that should be repeated until the State of Israel is destroyed, despite having earlier announced a new “institutional neutrality” policy which ostensibly prohibits the university from weighing in on contentious political issues. While Garber ultimately has said more than Gay when the same group praised the Oct. 7 massacre last academic year, his administration’s handling of campus antisemitism has been ambiguous, according to observers — and described even by students who benefited from its being so as “caving in.”

Now, committed to fighting lawsuits it could have settled with terms favorable to the alleged victims of discrimination — a course of action taken by Columbia University and New York University — Harvard’s handling of antisemitism may be decided by a judge.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Harvard Antisemitism Lawsuit Cleared to Proceed to Discovery Phase first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘F—k Israel’: Monument in France Honoring Nazi Victims Defaced With Antisemitic Graffiti

Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

A monument honoring victims of the Nazis located in eastern France was vandalized over the weekend with graffiti reading “Nique Israël,” or “F—k Israel” in English, continuing a surge in antisemitism over the past year that has devastated the French Jewish community.

The vandalism in Bron, a suburb of the city of Lyon, was discovered on Saturday afternoon, according to French media.

The defaced World War II memorial pays tribute to 109 Jews and anti-Nazi resistance fighters, detainees at Montluc prison in Lyon, who the Germans took to Bron and murdered in August 1944 before leaving the area. Days later, Montluc — which the Nazis used to intern, torture, and kill people during their occupation of France — was liberated.

In a post on X/Twitter, the prefect of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the region that includes Bron, lambasted the defacement and said law enforcement had launched an investigation into the incident.

“The act of vandalism committed on the monument in homage to the dead of Montluc, victims of Nazi barbarity in Bron, is despicable,” the prefect wrote. “The [police] made the findings and opened an investigation under the direction of the judicial authority.”

So far, the perpetrators have not been identified, according to the regional French newspaper Le Progrès.

Saturday’s incident came as France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7. Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes in France have continued to skyrocket.

Last month, for example, a man wearing a sports jersey with the words “Anti-Jew” written in French was photographed riding the Paris metro, prompting an investigation by law enforcement and outcry from Jewish leaders who lamented what they described as public indifference to surging antisemitism in France.

Days earlier, a visibly Jewish teenager was assaulted by two youths as he was leaving a metro station in the northwest suburbs of Paris.

That incident followed three men brutally attacking a Jewish woman at the entrance to her home in Paris on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities. The victim stated that the assailants threatened her with a box knife, made antisemitic threats, and mentioned the events of last Oct. 7.

In September a kosher restaurant in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, was defaced with red paint and tagged with the message “Free Gaza.”

The incident came days after French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.

Two months earlier, an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”

In another egregious attack that garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.

Around the same time in June, an Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports.

In May, French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened law enforcement in the city of Rouen.

One month earlier, a Jewish woman was beaten and raped in a suburb of Paris as “vengeance for Palestine.”

Such incidents are part of an explosion of antisemitic outrages across France that has continued since last Oct. 7.

In August, then-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community spiked by about 200 percent since Jan. 1.

“Two-thirds of anti-religious acts … are against Jews,” he added, according to French broadcaster BFM TV.

Darmanin’s comments followed him stating weeks earlier that antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year. In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, he said.

Amid the wave of attacks, France held snap parliamentary elections in July which brought an anti-Israel leftist coalition to power, leading French Jews to express deep apprehension about their future status in the country.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’ Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the New Popular Front (NFP), a coalition of far-left parties. “We fear for the future of our children.”

The largest member of the NFP is the far-left La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) party, whose leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel.

Despite widespread concern among French Jews, senior officials including Macron have repeatedly said they are committing to combating antisemitism and supporting the country’s Jewish community.

The post ‘F—k Israel’: Monument in France Honoring Nazi Victims Defaced With Antisemitic Graffiti first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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