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Q&A: Holocaust survivors Pinchas Gutter and Mariette Doduck talk about the state of Jew hatred after Oct. 7
Mariette Doduck and Pinchas Gutter have a lot in common. At ages 89, and 92, respectively, they are among the estimated 5,800 remaining Canadians who survived the Holocaust.
Both were children when the Nazis invaded their homes. Both have devoted their lives since coming to Canada as tireless Holocaust educators and community leaders in their respective cities of Vancouver, where Doduck eventually settled in 1947, as a war orphan, and Toronto, which has been Gutter’s permanent home since the 1980s. They’ve both joined March of the Living trips as educators. And just recently, on Dec. 18, 2024, the Governor General named both to the Order of Canada for their contributions to making the country a better place.
The nomination process began four years ago, started in secret by their friends and supporters. Now, the two honourees hope that their ongoing work to fight hatred, racism and antisemitism receives a big boost because the announcement of their awards came just ahead of this week’s 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
As world leaders joined a group of 50 survivors at the site of the notorious Nazi death camp in Poland on Monday Jan. 27, Doduck and Gutter remained at home, vowing to continue teaching the lessons of the Holocaust so they can fight their growing dread of a world with loud echoes of the social and geopolitical conditions of their own stolen childhoods.
“No child should live the five years that I lived in hiding,” said Doduck during an interview with The CJN Daily. “So I think this will be a way of maybe moving the awareness faster by this honour.”
When the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940, Doduck was five years old and living in Brussels with her widowed mother and some of her 10 older siblings. Doduck’s mother sent her into hiding with non-Jews, where she survived the war by remaining silent. The Nazis murdered her mother and two of her brothers at Auschwitz. Doduck also worked as a messenger for the resistance. She came to Canada together with three older siblings who had also survived. They settled in Vancouver. (Doduck’s sister Esther Brandt died in that city on Jan. 7.)
Gutter was a Polish boy of seven when the war started, living in Lodz with his Hasidic family of winemakers and his twin sister. The family moved into the Warsaw Ghetto but after the uprising in 1943, the Nazis deported the Gutters to Majdanek, where his parents and sister were immediately killed. He survived six concentration camps, including two where he worked as a slave labourer. It would be another four months after the liberation of Auschwitz until Gutter was freed by Russian and Czech troops, who opened the gates to Theresienstadt in May 1945. After the war, Gutter lived in Israel and South Africa before moving to Toronto in the mid-1980s. He was the first survivor to participate in the USC Shoah Foundation’s digital hologram program.
They both sat down to explain what receiving the Order of Canada means to them, and why they won’t retire, especially after Oct. 7. The interview took place over Zoom, and both survivors were wearing their new Order of Canada lapel pins.
Mariette Doduck: We decided to wear them because we’re supposed to wear them now. I got my first letter in the mail with the C.M. on it after my name. But it’s not complete, of course until we arrive in Ottawa/
Pinchas Gutter: There’s gonna be a ceremony. The ribbon and the whole order, where you get it. But of course, at the moment I think the Governor General is very busy with the Prime Minister resigning and things. So you know we should just be patient. We will be patient and wait.
MD: They told me it wouldn’t be, probably, till the end of 2025. I’m not worried about it. I’m not thinking about it, that we will be called in, but I am delighted, I’ve got to say.
Ellin Bessner: Do you know how you ended up getting nominated? Has anyone told you that they were the little birdies that did it?
MD: It was suggested by a girlfriend in Toronto who started the ball rolling, got in touch with my daughter, who just told me, and she did all the work with my friends. but they did it in 2020. It took 4 years. So that also was a surprise. I knew nothing about it. My children, my daughters never said a word. They did all the groundwork, So for me. It was a kind of a shock.
EB: Did you get a call from the Governor General?
MD: I was in Philadelphia visiting my newest great-grandchild. Benjamin. and I get this call, and this lady says ‘Congratulations!” and I said, ‘Excuse me. I think you’ve got the wrong number, and I hung up.’ Then she called me back, and she was laughing, and she said,’ Is this Mariette?’ She says, ‘It’s my first time on the job, and I’m being hung up on.’
And I said, “Are you playing a joke, is somebody playing a joke on me?” And she became very formal, and she says “We do not play jokes. I want to congratulate you on being bestowed this honour”. And I was like, in shock. I wanted to verify it. That thought, you know, I need papers. I needed documents, which she sent right away, and she said, “You must not tell anyone. You can tell your children, but you’re not to tell your family. Nobody. Not until December 18th when it will be announced.”
PG: I know several people who did that, but of course they don’t want me to tell anybody that they did so, but I knew that. One of them started actually, a few years ago. As Mariette told you, it’s a long process. It’s not something that happens overnight. They asked Eli Rubenstein (national director of March of the Living Canada]. Eli phoned me and told me that he not only did that, but he sent all the alumni from the March of Remembrance and Hope. You know mostly 95 percent of them are not Jewish people. They’re all from different universities doing their PhDs.
But I can tell you it’s the same thing that happened to me, Mariette. I got this phone call but I didn’t answer. I thought it was one of these scams and things like that, so I didn’t answer it.
The person said, “I’ve got a very important message for you and something, something.” And I thought to myself, this sounds like something genuine. So I better phone her back. And when I phoned her back the first thing she did was the same as what she said to Mariette. She said “Congratulations you’ve received the Order of Canada, and you can tell your children and your wife, but you mustn’t tell anybody else until the 18th of December”.
And we just waited, and that was it. And then subsequently [we received] a little packet, where you got the pin you can wear. And so I’ve just put it on my jacket, and I’m waiting now for them to contact me when the ceremony is going to be. But I’m not concerned. I’ve got the Order of Canada, and I’ve had, like Mariette, I’m sure she’s had 50 to 60 phone calls. I had some from everywhere.
MD: I was in shock to receive this prestigious award, for my work has always been for children and not depending on public recognition. I’m also the co-founder of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. So I have always worked with this. I don’t think we’ve done this for recognition. We just wanted to make the world aware.
And for me, when I arrived here in Canada, in 1948, as a war orphan, I was told that I would die by the age of 30. That I wouldn’t see my 30th birthday. The government official also said that I would amount to nothing. That I would be a burden to the community or to the government.
I’ve worked all my adult life to make the world aware. So for me, I will use this award as an opportunity to draw attention to racism, to intolerance and antisemitism. Also I’m accepting this in recognition of all immigrants and child survivors who have arrived in Canada, in a place that originally did not want us. Like the book “None is Too Many” [by the late Irving Abella and Harold Troper documenting Canada’s racist policies which kept Jewish refugees from Europe out the country during the government of wartime prime minister Mackenzie King].
EB: Why did they say you were going to pass away by the age of 30? Because of your deprivation, and your being in hiding, and your malnourishment?
MD: The thing was, the four of us (siblings) weren’t accepted [as war orphans] at the same time. We couldn’t have a cavity. We couldn’t have this. We couldn’t have that. There were rules that they gave. I was only 12 years old, and they made it so difficult.
So I wanted a better world for children… because we then have a world where no child should live the five years that I lived in hiding.
I am honoured to receive this (award). If this will teach more and then listeners become witnesses for us, to what happened to us children. Camp survivors that I’ve worked with, child survivors who are in their eighties and nineties, we’ve always with this. I’ve dedicated my adult life since I was really a kid to this. So I think this will be a way of maybe moving the awareness faster by this honour.
I happen not to like publicity. I am quite shy. I’m very easy to talk to. I can speak off the cuff, but I am not comfortable receiving something. So for me this was like a shock.
EB: Pinchas, we’ve heard how it sits a little bit uncomfortable for Mariette, but also a little bit, sort of, finally, like a circle for her. But how does this award land for you?
PG: My attitude was a bit different. I didn’t expect to receive this award. I am a person who kind of doesn’t believe that you get the awards and things like that. But what actually happened to me is different.
Let me tell you a story. When I was liberated in 1945, by the Russian army on the 8th of May, the last day of the war, in Theresienstadt, after a death march from Germany to Czechoslovakia, we arrived there about 2-3 weeks before we were liberated. Those people who could still stand, ran out. Because the gates were open. The Czech gendarmes who were guarding us disappeared. And we saw Russian infantry with bandoliers with rifles and bullets, and they had Mahorka, which is tobacco, in one boot. They had these white boots. They had food in the other boot. They were chasing Germans out. And there were women with prams and little babies, and young girls and old men, and they were being beaten. They were being abused.
I was at that time going on 13, and I come from a Hasidic frum home. So I knew nothing about relationships between men, women, or sex, or anything like that. But I saw these Russians or Czechs or whoever grabbing young women, taking them away, and really being very nasty. and I felt compassion.
After five years and six concentration camps, and losing my extended family and my immediate family in Majdanek. My sister and my father and my mother were murdered the day we arrived in Majdanek, and there I felt compassion because I couldn’t feel anything else. I saw people suffering, and I felt compassion. And from that time on, whenever I feel people that need help, I try to do that.
And Mariette spoke about children. And when I came to Canada the first thing I did was I helped elderly people. Why? Because people don’t want to be volunteers at old age homes. People dribble. They don’t look very nice. You don’t want to see yourself when you get old, so it’s very difficult to get people to volunteer. So that was my first job, and it had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
And since then I’ve started doing a lot of Holocaust education. But I did it together with others: I worked with Indigenous people. I worked with Black people. I worked with all kinds of different people. I always worked with people that needed help, and it didn’t really make any difference to me.
So I was very apprehensive about getting [the Order of Canada] and I felt extremely honoured that I got it. I really felt that it would create a climate where other people would try and do the same thing. If one person can do it, another person can do it, and every person that does just a little bit can make the world a better place. You don’t have to go and solve all the problems of the world. It’s impossible. But you can do a little bit, and a little bit is important because it adds up, it adds up, and it adds up, and makes the world a better place.
EB: You see what Canada is like now since Oct. 7th, where antisemitism is tolerated in the highest levels of academics, of unions, of government, of police who are trying to do whatever they do. But it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a good job. So I’m wondering when you talk to your Jewish audiences, how can your life and your legacy be effective now? When we’re living in this world where Jew hatred for your great-grandchildren is back.
MD: The question you’re asking about tolerance is understanding. Intolerance is ignorance. That’s what it means to me. I don’t know if that’s possible. We are trying to use tolerance because in our whole life, tolerance and patience and teaching is an important fact, and the teaching in our Judaism has always been about learning and teaching.
During all the years, just before COVID, I didn’t speak. Not on Zoom, not on anything, because I felt “What did we change?”
During COVID, I re-lived Europe because I was locked in.
Then came Oct. 7. I couldn’t breathe. With every IDF soldier that is dying out there, it’s like I’m losing a child.
Going back to tolerance and intolerance, I would say we made a niche. The Vancouver Holocaust Educational Centre, for example. It took us almost 50 years to get Holocaust education taught in Grade 6 and Grade 11 right now. The school board doesn’t want that. The B.C. government has agreed to put in a Grade 10 Holocaust education module. It’s been a fight uphill in Canada to teach about the past, about the Second World War.
But, I find I’ve got a bright light. I find my students today are better educated in history and I find their questions much more involved. Some. I’m not saying all those children ask me questions, but I mean when I speak, or even teachers when they’re asking
Oct. 7 didn’t just make the Jews hated. All children in the world were affected by it, by the news, by their parents talking about the hate that happened. So I’m saying now, again, the education [is key]
I find that in my symposium and everything there’s a long line up, and the questions are much better than they were just before COVID. So I have to say we are a light in the educational department of hate. Antisemitism has been an undercurrent our whole life, for 2,000 years we’ve had this current.
Even the first time I learned about the phrase “Jew them down” when I came to Canada. I said to my Canadian-born husband [Sidney Doduck]—I wasn’t going to marry a survivor—I said, ‘What does that mean?’
He had to explain to me. I didn’t know these slangs that people use.
PG: Every 100 years there’s a change. And there is this kind of uptick. In the 1930s nobody wanted to take refugees. Jewish refugees were anathema. They were not accepted anywhere except in one place in South America. They accepted a few people, and then there was this Evian conference, and everybody said, “Yeah, yeah, we feel sorry for them, but we don’t want them.”
Things have changed. I mean, the world has changed. I mean, according to the news, Canada has taken in 30,000 Syrian refugees that ran away. Then they took refugees from other places. Germany, who hates refugees, they have taken in first of all the Turks, and then they recently taken in Syrians and and others. So there is a change in the sense that people are actually doing things for refugees. You know. They put up tents. They give them some food. As bad things are, there is a change. So we do continue changing for the better.
I am a great believer. I was always an optimist. At the moment, I am a bit despondent, because, you know, things are going the other way from that point of view. But I still believe. And this is what I try to achieve in my teaching. And that’s why I don’t stop. I believe… the most important thing is not to be a bystander.
And that is why I’m not going to stop. I mean, like Mariette, there’s a limit to how much I can do nowadays. And, Dorothy, my wife, wants me to kind of do as little as possible, because she sees how much [mentally] it takes out of you. Of course it takes it out of you. People don’t realize you get liberated from the Holocaust, but you don’t get liberated from the Holocaust. The Holocaust is always inside you.
We’ve got my great grandchildren, who live in Pittsburgh… and a few weeks ago we were in Pittsburgh, and spent four or five days together with our grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was a Mechiya as they say in Yiddish, you know, it was really fantastic. And that’s basically what I want to do. I want them to enjoy themselves. I want them to grow up, and not to have any kind of suffering.
I’m scared for them, I am. I wasn’t scared in the Warsaw Ghetto. I was all of eight or nine or ten years old. I did everything that they didn’t allow you. I went to an underground cheder with seven other children, when my father could still have a Melamed to teach us, and we studied the Talmud. I wasn’t scared of the Germans. I was fearful of something that they’re going to do to me, but I wasn’t scared inside me. Nothing at all. Today, I feel that I don’t want my children to have any kind of fears about it.
MD: I feel the same way. I have six great-grandchildren, and we are expecting my seventh. Only from three married grandchildren. So I’m lucky. So I’ve got a lot to live for. But I’m also fearful for them. We’ll keep on doing this, for them, to make their life a safer place.
I never was afraid. The students asked me, “Are you afraid”? I left home and I was four and a half years old, and I didn’t come out till 1945. I knew about life. When I came to Canada at 11 and a half, I was in a child’s body, but in an adult mind. When I tell the teachers “I don’t want your children to live in fear.”
I’m not fearing about Canada. I’ll tell you a story. My grandson-in-law, and granddaughter are a young Zionist couple. They have 3 kids. When Oct. 7 happened, they wanted to go to Israel.
I said, ”John, you were born in Canada. We are the front line people. You have to stay in Canada. We have to fight here. The IDF will always fight for us, but if you are thrown out of Canada, today you have a place to go, as I didn’t when I was a child. So you are safe. You must stay in Canada.
We are the front line. We must stay and fight here in our country. In every country in the world, people shouldn’t run away. They should stay in the country where they are, and fight their government and fight their newspapers, fight the computers, all lines of communication. Because we are the front line. We are helping the IDF. Those are my last words.
The post Q&A: Holocaust survivors Pinchas Gutter and Mariette Doduck talk about the state of Jew hatred after Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation

A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.
The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.
On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”
“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.
The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”
Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”
Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.
Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.
Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”
Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.
In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.
Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.
“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.
In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.
Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.
Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.
However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.
This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.
Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.
The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.
The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.
“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”
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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’

Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect
The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.
On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.
This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.
“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.
“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.
This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.
The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.
For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.
Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.
Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.
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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says

Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.
“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.