Six organizations will receive a total of $3.4 million to combat Holocaust denial and antisemitism, the Canadian government announced Jan. 27, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.

The funds are part of $5-million allocation for a new Holocaust remembrance program outlined in the 2024 budget, that committed $90 million to combatting antisemitism.

The announcements were part of observances for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, other world leaders and survivors travel to Auschwitz to observe the sombre event.

As we mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, we remember the horrors of the Holocaust and honour those that were taken away from us.

With antisemitism on the rise once again, we must stand united against hate to ensure “Never Again” truly means never again. pic.twitter.com/MRGhrd5rXs

— Rachel Bendayan (@RachelBendayan) January 27, 2025

In Canada, a memorial ceremony with politicians, foreign diplomats and survivors was held at the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa. MP Rachel Bendayan, associate minister for public safety, announced that a national summit on antisemitism would be held March 6. “All levels of government will commit to concrete solutions to address the alarming rise of antisemitic violence across our country,” she said.

These six institutions will benefit from the funding:

• Toronto Holocaust Museum: $379,000 to launch a social media campaign combatting online misinformation and hate.

• Canadian Society for Yad Vashem: $160,000 to enhance Holocaust education for teachers, school boards, professors and law enforcement personnel.

• Montreal Holocaust Museum: $495,800 to develop educational resources about antisemitism in Quebec.

• Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre: $467,300 to support three bilingual online learning programs on Holocaust remembrance and education.

• Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island: $124,000 for training for community leaders on antisemitism and the experiences of local Jewish Canadians.

In addition, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s program on Holocaust and Genocide Education received $1.3 million, which followed a $2 million initial contribution.

York Centre MP Ya’ara Saks, the associate minister of health, announced the grants for Toronto institutions after she and several other members of Parliament toured the Toronto Holocaust Museum. In her remarks, she reflected on the rising antisemitism and violence that been seen across the country and in her riding since the Oct.7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war.

🧵Through education, the Holocaust teaches us the power of humanity when we choose kindness and dignity over indifference and hate.

We’re funding two initiatives in #YorkCentre to increase Holocaust education in Canada & combat antisemitism.@thethmuseum @CdnSocYadVashem pic.twitter.com/fEwMjljoXl

— Ya’ara Saks יערה זקס (@YaaraSaks) January 28, 2025

“Oct. 7, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, has continued to have rippling effects in Jewish communities here in Canada and around the world. And it has led to a distressing rise in antisemitism, which shows us that the lessons of the Holocaust have never been starker. For many in our community, it has been a time of anxiety, a sense of not knowing where one is safe to take a bus, to go on a subway, to go to a hospital, to enter a cultural space.”

Holocaust education is one strategy in combatting antisemitism, she said in an interview with The CJN afterward.

“In the world we are in today, which is very much for young people an online world, we need to be able to give them the tools of discernment and understanding of what they’re seeing and hearing and reading, and also the power of survivor testimony, the power of the messages and the lessons learned of how the Holocaust happened are really important for young people to know today, how hate takes root.”

Students also need to learn how societies become polarized and how to be allies, she said.

“In this case, when we see Jewish students in the TDSB (Toronto District School Board) feeling that they are being isolated and marginalized because of the war between Israel and Hamas, more education is needed to make sure that Jewish students… any Jewish members of the community going to hospitals or any other public space, should be able to feel safe where they are and not be marginalized or isolated or ostracized,” she said. “And that requires education, that requires a deep dive in unpacking the misinformation and the disinformation that we’re seeing in hate online.”

Legislation to regulate the online world has been in discussion for years. The most recent proposal, the Online Harms Bill, was introduced in February, 2024, but has yet to be passed. Saks blamed the Opposition Conservatives saying they “chose to play partisan politics in the House,” delaying its passage.

Combatting online misinformation and hate is the goal of the Toronto Holocaust Museum’s project called ‘It’s critical to think critically,’ said executive director Dara Solomon.

The national social media campaign links to resources that explain how to fact-check sources, and understand how the emotional intensity of messages is designed to spread them further.

Don’t blindly trust Aunt Sheila, verify for yourself.

Misinformation is everywhere – hidden in plain sight on social media. On IHRD, we’re reminded to prevent history from repeating itself.

Check out our guide to spot misinformation: https://t.co/L4ezXvmv1s pic.twitter.com/kJzB6ZF03h

— Toronto Holocaust Museum (@thethmuseum) January 27, 2025

“A disturbing number of people rely solely on social media for their news, and it increases as you get younger people who are getting almost 100 percent of their news online. And those people do not verify what they learn and we know there’s so much misinformation online, especially on platforms like Telegram and X but even on mainstream ones, like Facebook- we know that Meta is no longer going to do factchecking,” Solomon said. “That’s a huge problem and we know that it also contributes to the rise of antisemitism.”

The online campaign will enable the museum to broaden its reach beyond the students who visit the exhibits, Solomon said. “It’s really about countering this barrage of misinformation online and to give people tools to change their behaviours online.”

The post Grants to counter antisemitism and online hate announced for 6 organizations on International Holocaust Remembrance Day appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins opening the national Plaoghing Championship 2024 in Ratheniska, Co. Laois, Ireland, Sept. 17, 2024. Photo: Karlis Dzjamko/Cover Images via Reuters Connect

Irish Jews were forcibly removed from a Holocaust commemoration on Monday after silently protesting the country’s president for politicizing the event by launching a tirade against Israel’s war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — a move the country’s chief rabbi later told The Algemeiner was “a disgrace.”

Irish President Michael D. Higgins’s remarks at the National Holocaust Memorial in Dublin appeared to draw parallels between Israel’s war in Gaza and the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust and were met with immediate backlash.

Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder lambasted Higgins for using the memorial to single out Israel.

“Ireland’s National Holocaust Memorial ought to be a time to remember those who suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of the Nazis. It is deeply disheartening that President Higgins opted to politicize it by singling out this war and taking issue with Israel’s response to the atrocities of Oct. 7,” Wieder told The Algemeiner, referring to Hamas’s 2023 invasion of southern Israel. The brutal onslaught, which started the Gaza war, was the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Tensions flared on Monday when several attendees protested Higgins’s speech by either walking out or turning their backs on him, only to be removed by security. In one instance a woman was seen being dragged out of the event.

It’s disturbing that the president of Ireland, @PresidentIRL who already has a documented history of antisemitic comments, was invited to address a Holocaust memorial event at all. Despite the Jewish community in Ireland specifically requesting that he not do so, he went ahead… pic.twitter.com/j9A95jHvcK

— יוסף חדאד – Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) January 26, 2025

Wieder condemned the response, saying, “It’s no surprise that some in attendance chose to show their disagreement with his speech. They did so in silence, and they were not disrupting the event. The fact that anyone was manhandled and dragged out of the room by force is a disgrace. It was completely unjustified.”

Representatives of the Irish Jewish community had previously expressed their opposition to the decision for Higgins to deliver the main address at the Holocaust Day ceremony, which also coincided with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest and most infamous of all the Nazi concentration camps.

Wieder contrasted the removal of the protesters with Dublin’s permissiveness toward openly hostile demonstrations against Israel: “Masked protesters parade Hamas and Hezbollah flags freely in the streets of Dublin and call for Tel Aviv to be bombed, as happened this weekend. It’s a glaring, embarrassing contradiction.”

Higgins’s remarks, which included calls for an end to civilian casualties in Gaza and an increase in humanitarian aid, were criticized for equating Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis with Israel’s military efforts to dismantle the terror organization.

“The grief caused to families by the horrific acts of Oct. 7, and the response to them, is unimaginable. The loss of civilian lives, the displacement of people, the destruction of homes and institutions — all are beyond comprehension,” he said.

The Irish president went on to to say that the “long overdue ceasefire” that came into effect last week has been welcomed by “those in Israel who mourn their loved ones, those who have been waiting for the release of the hostages,” as well as the “thousands searching for relatives in the rubble” of Gaza.

Israel’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, denounced Higgins’s comments as a “despicable provocation,” accusing him of using International Holocaust Remembrance Day to “echo Hamas’s antisemitic propaganda, leading Jews, descendants of Holocaust survivors, to walk out of the event.”

Higgins had “failed to rise above himself and resorted to cheap and despicable provocation,” Sa’ar wrote on X.

Referencing Ireland’s sordid history during the Holocaust, Sa’ar said world leaders should be made “acutely aware” of the “complicit actions of silence or the averted gaze of those who, by their indifference, allowed the Holocaust to be planned, prepared and to occur.”

This incident came against a backdrop of strained Irish-Israeli relations, exacerbated by Ireland’s decision last year to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state as a state as well as join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its support for redefining genocide in order to secure a conviction against Jerusalem. The move, along with Higgins’s consistent criticism of Israeli policies, has solidified Ireland’s reputation as one of the most openly anti-Israel countries in Europe.

Last month, Israel announced it was shuttering its embassy in Dublin, accusing the Irish government of undermining Israel at international forums and promoting “extreme anti-Israel policies.”

Ireland has “crossed all the red lines,” Sa’ar told reporters at the time, calling the Irish government’s actions “unilateral hostility and persecution” rather than mere criticism.

The announcement came after then-Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza, accusing the country of “the starvation of children” and “the killing of civilians” — remarks that Sa’ar slammed as “antisemitic” and historically insensitive. Sa’ar also noted how “when Jewish children died of starvation in the Holocaust, Ireland was at best neutral in the war against Nazi Germany.”

Those comments followed the Irish parliament in November passed a non-binding motion saying that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.”

In May, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting outrage in Israel, which described the move as a “reward for terrorism.” Israel’s Ambassador in Dublin Dana Erlich said at the time of Ireland’s recognition of “Palestine” that Ireland was “not an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More recently, Harris in October called on the European Union to “review its trade relations” with Israel after the Israeli parliament passed legislation banning the activities in the country of UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, because of its ties to Hamas.

Meanwhile, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli education watchdog group, recently released a report revealing Irish school textbooks have been filled with negative stereotypes and distortions of Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history. The findings showed that the textbooks help foster antisemitism by downplaying the Holocaust, portraying Judaism as a violent religion, and distorting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to make Israel out to be a villain.

In one example uncovered by Impact-se, a history textbook for eleventh graders describes Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Poland where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II, as a “prisoner of war camp” rather than an “extermination,” “concentration,” or “death camp.” In other textbooks — including Inspire – Wisdom of the World, a religious studies book distributed to students as young as 12 years old — Judaism is described as a war mongering religion which “believes that violence and war are sometimes necessary to promote justice.”

Irish curricula is perhaps most aggressive in discussing Israel and the Palestinians, according to Impact-se. Citing Inspire again, the report revealed that the textbook’s authors chose to propagate the misleading claim that Jesus Christ lived in “Palestine,” a piece of disinformation that has been trafficked by anti-Zionist activists both to diminish Jesus’s Jewish heritage and deny the existence of a Jewish state in antiquity.

“Historical references to Jesus living in ‘Palestine’ without appropriate context can contribute to narratives that challenge Israel’s legitimacy and undermine the Jewish historical connection to the land,” wrote Impact-se, which also noted that a textbook for younger children on the story of Jesus included a comic strip with the words, “Some people did not like Jesus.” The people shown  in the comic are visibly Jewish, wearing religious clothing such as a kippah.

“This portrayal aligns with antisemitic stereotypes that have wrongly blamed Jews collectively for the death of Jesus,” the group stated.

In recent weeks, the Catholic religious establishment in Ireland has come under scrutiny for targeting Israel. In a New Year’s message by Archbishop Eamon Martin, the most senior Catholic figure in Ireland lambasted Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “merciless” and a “disproportionate” response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.

Martin was not the first prominent Irish cleric to use his platform to castigate Israel in recent days.

In November, Reverend Canon David Oxley came under fire for delivering an antisemitic memorial sermon in which he suggested that Israelis and Jews see themselves as a “master race” that justifies “eliminating” other groups “because they don’t count.”

Oxley delivered the sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin during a Remembrance Sunday service attended by Irish Higgins and other high-ranking dignitaries.

Regarding Higgins’s latest address, Wieder accused the president of “neglecting even to acknowledge the scourge of contemporary antisemitism in Ireland, let alone do anything to address it.”

“It is so important that Irish politicians and public figures come together to honor the memory of victims of the Holocaust. Yet the awful irony is that many of them are turning a blind eye to a troubling increase in anti-Jewish hatred in Ireland today.”

The post Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Blasts President for Conduct, Anti-Israel Tirade During National Holocaust Memorial first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A drone view of the “Arbeit macht frei” gate at the former Auschwitz concentration camp ahead of the 80th anniversary of its liberation, Oswiecim, Poland, Jan. 10, 2025. Photot: REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

The Jewish community in Italy decried the surge in antisemitism sweeping across their country as they marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, noting that antisemitic incidents have increased drastically while knowledge of the Nazis murdering six million Jews during World War II has plummeted.

“We are deeply concerned by the growing denial, distortion, and trivialization of the Holocaust,” Dario Disegni, president of the Jewish Community of Turin, said during a ceremony honoring military personnel and civilians who were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Disegni emphasized that, as Holocaust survivors pass away, the risk is that “this terrible period” will soon be remembered only in history books.

“It is therefore up to us to be witnesses of the witnesses,” he said.

Disegni also denounced a “dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents,” which he said were “up 400 percent compared to previous years.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazis’ largest and most infamous concentration camp where over a million people were killed.

During Monday’s ceremony, 37 honorary medals were awarded posthumously to the families of those imprisoned in Nazi camps after Sept. 8, 1943, and forced into labor, La Repubblica reported.

“These medals represent the most important legacy, the greatest legacy, the most precious legacy, made of suffering, resilience, and the ability to endure so much pain and deprivation,” Turin Prefect Donato Cafagna said, addressing the families of those who suffered under Nazi persecution.

Turin Mayor Stefano Lo Russo also commemorated the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, recalling how the Soviet army freed those imprisoned.

“A moment that has gained immense significance, a symbol of a dark period in our history that we have the duty to remember: while so many witnesses of those terrible years are unfortunately no longer with us, it is up to all of us to carry forward their precious legacy,” Lo Russo posted on his Facebook account.

Meanwhile, the Jewish community of Milan withdrew from the main municipal Holocaust commemoration ceremony, citing concerns that it could be exploited to promote anti-Israel rhetoric accusing the country of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Dialogue with the younger generations requires sharing and serenity, conditions lacking in last year’s event as well as on other occasions due to excessive politicization of some of the associations,” the group wrote in a statement.

Davide Romano, director of the Museum of the Jewish Brigade in Milan, told JNS that the new leadership at the National Association of Italian Partisans’ branch in Milan — a key co-organizer of Holocaust commemoration events — has taken the organization in an anti-Israel direction.

However, the Milan branch’s current president, Primo Minelli, rejected the concerns of the Jewish community.

“We don’t take orders from anyone, and we don’t let ourselves be intimidated. The battle against antisemitism is a fundamental battle for us, which we fight not only on Jan. 27 but 365 days a year,” Minelli told the Italian news outlet ANSA.

Romano explained that the decision to abstain from this year’s event stemmed from the fact that, since Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, numerous individuals and some participating associations have been making accusations of genocide against Israel in Gaza.

“It’s unacceptable to co-organize Holocaust commemoration one day, and celebrate as friends of Hamas and Hezbollah the next day,” he said, referring to two Iran-backed Islamist terror groups that openly seek Israel’s destruction.

Like many countries around the world, Italy has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents since the Hamas atrocities of last Oct. 7.

The post Jewish Groups in Italy Decry ‘Dramatic Increase’ in Antisemitism While Marking Holocaust Remembrance Day first appeared on Algemeiner.com.