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‘We have to be here fighting’: Deborah Lipstadt opens up on her Poland-Germany trip with Douglas Emhoff
BERLIN (JTA) — Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff made headlines late last month during a trip to Europe, where he met with other foreign leaders working to combat antisemitism and returned to his ancestors’ town in Poland.
But the trip was originally Deborah Lipstadt’s mission.
The historian, an authority on Holocaust issues and now the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, had planned to go to Krakow and Berlin on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration. The trip included a visit to the memorial and museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 78th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation by Soviet troops and, in Berlin, a meeting with special envoys and coordinators who, like Lipstadt, are charged with the task of countering hatred against Jews.
The itinerary fit perfectly with Emhoff’s own anti-antisemitism campaign, so he asked Lipstadt late last year if he could come along.
As she reflected in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after returning home, Emhoff was not the only one to get emotional on the trip.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
JTA: You met with special envoys on antisemitism from other countries, as you and Emhoff continue to work on a national plan to fight antisemitism at home. Did any concrete policy suggestions come out of those meetings?
DL: The meeting with the special envoys on antisemitism now is the third meeting we have had together.
But I think it was very important to send the message that we are all government appointees, and we speak government to government. So we have already gotten into that rhythm, and it was a very useful meeting. It was also a useful meeting because there were people there from the White House, from my staff, who are involved in this interagency process, and they got to hear from the people who are composing, writing, who have written national plans. And I think that was very helpful. So it was one of the most productive meetings.
You also attended an interfaith meeting with Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Muslim participants, hosted by the Central Council of Jews in Germany in Berlin. What came out of that?
That actually went very well. The groups tended to talk about what they do together. …One of the things I urged the group, and it may have been bringing coals to Newcastle, but it is a sort of a new effort on their part… is that [talking about things that affect multiple faiths] is a good way of building relations. For instance, [my office had] a meeting in October, convened by the EU but with very strong support from the State Department, from my office, on ritual slaughter. Which of course affects both Jews and Muslims, kashrut and halal. So here is a tachles [goal], a brass tacks area which we could work on together. And that was an excellent meeting, a whole day at the EU.
What do you see as the main challenges in fighting antisemitism and hate today?
You know, some people say this is just like the 1930s. It is not. Back then, you had government-sponsored antisemitism. Whether it was Germany, whether it was other countries, even in the United States. We didn’t have government sponsored antisemitism, but there was a failure of the [U.S.] government [to respond].
On Monday morning, we were sitting in Topography of Terror [Berlin’s museum and archive on the history of the Gestapo], and it was government officials discussing “how do we fight antisemitism?” And everybody around that table is paid by the government. They are government officials, officially appointed. That’s a big difference. That is a humongous difference. That is a sea change.
And then we had the second gentleman there who could easily have said, “We came into office, we put a mezuzah up at our residence. We had a Chanukah party, a Rosh Hashanah party, we had a seder…” [Instead, it] is really clear that he has taken to this issue. He has really said it a number of times… and his wife [Vice President Kamala Harris] says, “He didn’t find this issue. This issue found him.”
RELATED: We’re visiting Auschwitz because the fight against antisemitism didn’t end with liberation
On the first day I met him, which was before I was sworn into office, he said he wanted to meet me and I spent some time with him. He said, “I want to work with you.” And then in October, we had a sukkah event at Blair House [the state guest house], where the State Department brought a sukkah, and we invited ambassadors and deputy chiefs of mission from Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries. So sitting around the table were the Israeli ambassador, the Turkish ambassador, the Pakistan ambassador, the deputy chief of mission from Qatar, the deputy chief of mission from Saudi Arabia… And [the Second Gentleman] and I were standing in the kitchen waiting to be escorted into the room, when people took their seats. And he said to me, “Deborah, where are you traveling, where are you going?” I said “Well, in January I am going to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the 27th.” And he said “I’m in.” And that’s how it happened.
You have been to Auschwitz many times…
Dozens of times, I can’t keep count. You know I have been many times, but I work very hard so that it never becomes de rigeur. That it becomes “min haminyan” as you would say in Hebrew. … All you have to do is remind yourself of what happened there. And so it doesn’t matter if it’s your first time or your 15th time. If you are cognizant of what happened there, it sits with you.
…When I go to Auschwitz, especially when it was around my trial [after being sued by British writer David Irving for calling him a Holocaust denier], I had to look at things in a very forensic way, you know: How do we prove this, how do we show that. And that of course sits with me still. But I was well aware that this was [Emhoff’s] first time and what an emotional impact this was having on him. … The thing that always strikes me about Auschwitz, the thing that you hear resounding in your ears in a thunderous way, is the silence. The absence. The little kid that would have worn the shoes that you saw in the display. The people who wore the eyeglasses. The men who shaved with that shaving stuff.
So that is always there. And it hits me at moments and then I become the historian. Analyzing. But it was very powerful, and what was also powerful was, in a way, though this seems counterintuitive, going to Poland first, which was just laden with emotion, especially for him, he went to the town where his family comes from, and got a lot of information. And then going to Germany. One would have thought, go to Germany first and then go to Poland, but in a way the emotional part became the backdrop for the business meetings in Germany.
[Emhoff] very kindly at one point described me as his mentor. Well, if I am his mentor, he is an A1 student. He is really intent on showing not just his passion about the issue but in learning about the issue. He is an accomplished lawyer, an experienced lawyer, and he knows that feeling is not enough, you’ve got to have information, and he gathered that every place he went.
Do you really have the feeling that antisemitism is on the rise or is it just more acceptable to express it?
I think both. I am not out there crunching the numbers statistically, but certainly it is more acceptable. Certainly, it is increasingly normalized. Whether it’s among comedians, whether it is articles in the newspaper, whether it is at demonstrations, it is increasingly normal. And even becomes fodder for entertainers. So whether those same people felt the same before and didn’t say anything or they now suddenly feel that, I don’t know. But many people who might otherwise have been more reticent about expressing certain things previously seem to feel freer to say antisemitic things now.
If antisemitism keeps coming back, what gives you hope?
First of all, what gives me hope, what gives me strength, is I know what I am fighting for, I am not just fighting against. I have a very strong sense of my Jewish identity, I have a very strong sense of who I am, Jewishly. I am lucky, I had a great education, etc.
Earlier this year, I guess it was September, the president did a phone call, it was his practice during the vice presidency, before Rosh Hashanah, or between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to do a phone call with — this time I think it was 1,200 rabbis. And I came along after he spoke with them to answer questions. And one of the questions was what gives me joy and what gives me strength. And what I said to the rabbis was that I never want to become a “because of antisemitism Jew.” Driving me out of the woodwork because everyone dislikes me, hates me, or wants to harm me. Not everyone — but there are people who want to harm me.
On Monday when I was at all those meetings [in Berlin], it was Jan. 30, 90 years after Hitler came to power, right there where we were standing. Not far from there people were marching in the streets with tiki torches! Championing among other things “death to the Jews.”
And here we were, back: Yes, the good news is here we are back, openly talking about fighting [antisemitism], here we are back, government officials tasked with fighting it, someone at the ambassadorial level from my country, the second gentleman, anxious to help in this effort, but nonetheless we were back there fighting. So on one hand, you can say, “Great, we have the special envoy, great we have the second gentleman who was so open to taking this on. This is unbelievable.” But we are here fighting. We have to be here fighting.
What was your most memorable experience from the recent trip?
On Saturday night [in Poland], one of the members of the White House staff that was with us after Shabbos had hired a car to go to the little village, shtetl, whatever, that her family came from. She wanted to go to the cemetery to see if she could find any names. Now the chances of her finding the names, in the daylight, when it is 70 degrees out and comfortable [would be hard enough]. Here it was below freezing, snow was falling, the ground was icy, and it was pitch black. We were with a genealogist, but the cemetery was locked. So we thought we would have to climb the fences. I thought, “Oh my God, we are going to have an international incident!” But our driver got the key to the cemetery from the people across the street, and I asked, “How did you know?” And he said, “The people across the street always have the key.”
So we didn’t have to break in. She wanted to say a prayer, and she was totally capable of saying the prayer herself but obviously she was deeply moved, and she asked me to recite the “El Maleh Rachamim” [prayer for the soul of a person who has died] for her. And when I stopped, she gave all the names of the people, many of whom were buried there but we couldn’t find the exact places. And then I said “shenikberu” [“who is buried here”], and the person holding the flashlight for me, I couldn’t see, it was tiny print, and he’s Israeli, he said, “po.” Here, here, here! I had never said an “El Maleh Rachamim” for people who were caught up in this tragedy, here. In situ. It was very powerful.
And then on the 30th [in Berlin] after our special envoy meeting, we all walked over to the [city’s] Holocaust memorial. And Felix [Klein, Germany’s special commissioner on antisemitism and Jewish life] had brought stones. And we were standing there, and to borrow a phrase from Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” there was this pregnant pause. And I said, “Would you like me to recite a prayer?” And I recited the prayer, another “El Maleh Rachamim,” and I became totally verklempt [overcome with emotion]. Because I was just a 12-minute walk, if that long, from where it was planned and carried out, and that was very powerful as well.
So the trip was pregnant with meaning, but I think more than just meaning, hopefully also impact.
—
The post ‘We have to be here fighting’: Deborah Lipstadt opens up on her Poland-Germany trip with Douglas Emhoff appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Norway Police Apprehend 3 Suspects in US Embassy Bombing
Police vehicles outside the US embassy, after a loud bang was reported at the site, in Oslo, Norway, March 8, 2026. Photo: Javad Parsa/NTB/via REUTERS
Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had apprehended three brothers suspected of carrying out Sunday’s bombing at the US embassy in Oslo, in an attack investigators have branded an act of terrorism.
The powerful early-morning blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) damaged the entrance to the embassy‘s consular section but caused no injuries, Norwegian authorities have said.
The three suspects, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with a family background from Iraq, police said.
“They are suspected of a terror bombing,” Police Attorney Christian Hatlo told reporters.
“We believe they detonated a powerful bomb at the U.S. embassy with the intention of taking lives or causing significant damage,” Hatlo said, adding that none of the suspects had so far been interrogated.
One of the men was believed to have planted the bomb while the two others were believed to have taken part in the plot, Hatlo said.
The brothers, who were not named, had not previously been subject to police investigations, he added.
A lawyer representing one of the three men said he had only briefly met with his client and that it was too early to say how the suspect would plead.
Lawyers representing the two others did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
“Although it is early in the investigation, it is important that the police have achieved what they characterize as a breakthrough in the case,” Norway‘s Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen said in a statement.
Images of one of the suspects released by police on Monday showed a hooded person, whose face was not visible, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag or rucksack.
Investigators on Monday said one hypothesis was that the incident was “an act of terrorism” linked to the war in the Middle East, but that other possible motives were also being explored.
Police are now investigating whether the bombing was done on behalf of a foreign state, Hatlo said, reiterating that they were also looking into other possible motives.
Europe has been on alert for possible attacks as the US and Israel conduct air strikes on Iran and Iran strikes Israel and US targets in the Middle East.
On Monday, a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege was damaged by a blast that authorities called an antisemitic attack. It was not clear who was behind it.
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Belgium’s Jewish Community Sounds Alarm on Rising Antisemitism After Liège Synagogue Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Just days after a synagogue in Liège, Belgium was struck in an apparent antisemitic bombing, the local Jewish community is sounding the alarm over a surge in hostility and targeted violence against Jews across the country.
In an interview with the local news outlet La Première on Tuesday, the president of the Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), Yves Oschinsky, called on government authorities to deploy soldiers to protect Jewish sites and institutions if police protection proves insufficient.
Following the attack on a synagogue in Liège, a city in the country’s eastern region, early Monday morning, Oschinsky warned that the Jewish community faces a far greater threat than authorities publicly acknowledge, emphasizing that Jewish institutions remain at heightened risk.
He also slammed the government for failing to appoint a national coordinator to fight antisemitism, while urging political parties and officials to take urgent, concrete action to protect the Jewish community.
Like most countries across the Western world, Belgium has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Belgian Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism and Discrimination (Unia), which tracks antisemitism nationwide, 192 reports of antisemitism and Holocaust denial were filed in 2025, following a record 270 cases in 2024 — marking two consecutive years well previous years.
Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, only 31 antisemitic cases had been reported in Belgium in 2022.
On Tuesday, the Brussels-based Jonathas Institute released a new report warning that antisemitic prejudices remain widespread and deeply entrenched in Belgium.
“The results are clear: the study highlights that the population of Brussels continues to hold many antisemitic stereotypes ‘inherited from the past’ of a religious or political nature,” the institute said in a statement.
The newly released report found that 40 percent of respondents in Brussels agreed with the claim that Jews control the financial and banking sectors, while one in four blamed Jews for various economic crises.
According to the study, these stereotypes are “sometimes expressed as obvious truths” without overt hostility, a pattern the report warns makes them especially prone to being trivialized, particularly online.
More than one in five Belgians believe Jews are “not Belgians like the others,” while 21 percent label Jews an “unassimilable race.”
“The attack on the synagogue in Liège confirms that it is no longer just antisemitic speech that has been unleashed, but antisemitic acts as well. This aggressive antisemitism continues to rise,” the institute said.
The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents believe Jews form a “close-knit or closed community.”
In relation to the war in Gaza, 39 percent of Belgians claim that “Jews are doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.” This view is particularly common among 18- to 35-year-olds, who are more likely to compare Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis.
Within far-right circles, 69 percent believe Jews exploit the Holocaust, while 72 percent say Jews use antisemitism for their own interests.
Based on these findings, the Jonathas Institute urged authorities and policymakers to strengthen historical education, improve digital literacy, and remain vigilant against narratives that normalize or justify hostility toward Jews, warning that such discourse can ultimately spark real-world violence.
The institute also calls for formalizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, aiming to better distinguish “legitimate criticism of Israel” from “forms of anti-Zionism that revive antisemitic patterns.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
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Iran, Russia Push Disinformation to Spread Antisemitism, Undermine the West
Iranian protesters carry a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a Yemeni flag as they burn an Israeli flag during an anti-US and anti-British protest in front of the British embassy in downtown Tehran, Iran, Jan. 12, 2024. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Iran and Russia have both used propaganda and disinformation to promote antisemitic narratives as part of an effort to undermine the West, according to analysts who this week exposed some of their methods and the damage they have caused.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday hosted an online briefing with experts who laid out how the Islamic regime in Iran deploys a variety of propaganda as weapons. One day earlier, the Gino Germani Institute for Social Sciences and Strategic Studies published an in-depth report detailing the history of Russia’s disinformation expertise.
“There is the kinetic battlefield, of course, but there’s also the information battlefield, the war for hearts and minds. Modern wars are fought not only with missiles, but with memes, not only with military force, but with persuasion,” said Vlad Khaykin, executive vice president of social impact and partnerships at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, opening the briefing.
“The Iranian regime and the networks aligned with it across Russia, China, and various proxy movements have spent decades building a global propaganda architecture designed for moments exactly like this,” Khaykin warned.
Rachel Kantz Feder, a senior researcher at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, and Jacki Alexander, CEO and president for media watchdog Honest Reporting, offered their analyses of the subversive media techniques utilized by Tehran to advance the regime’s ideological objectives.
Speaking from Israel amid the current war with Iran, Kantz Feder prefaced her response by saying, “I hope I won’t have to run off for a siren,” referencing the warning that Israeli residents of incoming rocket fire receive telling them to seek shelter. In the briefing’s final 20 minutes, Kantz Feder had to do just that, apologizing and leaving to take cover from Iranian drone and missile fire.
Before the session’s interruption, Kantz Feder defined information warfare as “the strategic use of information and communications to influence perceptions and decision-making systems.” She said this can include “disinformation, cyber attacks, and good old-fashioned propagandistic efforts. And it is so central, I think, to Iran’s strategy right now because it’s so effective. And I think that the Iranian regime is seeing real yields from it, certainly in the realm of influencing certain media ecosystems.”
“We find that actually Iran started to forge ties with American figures from the far right and far left as well already by the end of the 1990s,” Kantz Feder noted, explaining that online dynamics today have roots going back decades.
One example she cited of this cultural diplomacy was the critical success of Iranian filmmakers in the 1990s, which the regime leveraged by holding international film festivals to try and influence Hollywood.
According to Alexander, the same online influencers who promoted falsehoods of Israel intentionally targeting civilians and committing a genocide in Gaza have now pivoted to comparable rhetoric about the current conflict with Iran.
“And these networks all work together to amplify each other. Each of their posts will get millions of views,” Alexander said. “And then ultimately that seeps into the podcast network. Tucker Carlson will pick it up. Candace Owens will pick it up.”
Owens and Carlson have emerged as two of the most prominent anti-Israel commentators in the US, often using their platforms to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The Honest Reporting chief also revealed Iran’s targeting of those who eschew the ideological extremes.
“You start having situations like mainstream Western American news unironically using things like Fars News Agency, Iranian state TV, as a legitimate source without letting their viewers know that this is actually Iranian state propaganda,” she explained.
Khaykin asked Kantz Feder to explain the role of antisemitism in both the Islamic regime’s ideology and its propaganda techniques. She described a recent development that “officially, Iran has tried to make a distinction between Zionism and Jews in its revolutionary ideology. This is actually something that in the past few years we’re seeing less of. This is new.”
“The distinction between Zionists as an enemy and Jews as the enemy of Iran is starting to erode as the regime looks for new ways to legitimize its rule and conjure up images of Iran’s enemies and what they’re facing,” she continued. “In terms of the influence operations directed abroad, this is essential.”
The Jew-hate acts as a glue, enabling what Kantz Feder described historically as how “Iran starts to position itself as a hub for transnational extremist far-right networks. And then so, of course, we saw that come to fruition with the Holocaust conferences.”
In 2006, Holocaust deniers gathered for a two-day event titled “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,” which organizers characterized as based in science. Attendees included former KKK leader David Duke, Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, and members of Jews United Against Israel. Duke said at the time that “it’s a shame that Iran, a country we often call oppressive, has to give this opportunity for free speech.” He also described Israel as “a terrorist state” and “the No. 1 terrorist state in the world.”
According to Kantz Feder, antisemitism, “whether it be the Holocaust denial or other forms of it,” is the “entry point and it binds together a lot of these different ideas, movements and ideological orientations.”
Agreeing with Kantz Feder’s emphasis on Iran’s role in promoting Holocaust denial, Alexander said that “what they’re doing is they’re poisoning the information, the information sources, the wells where people are getting their information.”
Alexander explained the downstream impacts of what she called antisemitic “poisoning of information,” noting that “61 percent of adults worldwide are getting information increasingly from AI, and 36 percent of those are using it weekly … And there has been a movement for about 15 years to poison the source that AI then goes to for information that most prominently is Wikipedia, though not entirely.”
Describing Iran’s Wikipedia infiltration efforts, Alexander said that Iran is “now paying a new group of editors on Wikipedia to start changing even further information that is there so that when you go to AI to ask it a question, you’re going to get a garbage answer. And it will be things like Holocaust denial or erasing Jewish sovereignty and history from the state of Israel going back 3,000 years ago.”
Alexander described how a prominent Russian disinformation narrative since the 1970s had begun to recirculate online. “You know what narrative has started trending again? ‘Zionism is racism,’” she said. “We’ve gone back 50 years, and it’s because Russia has a deep connection to this.”
In November 1975, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism — the national movement of the Jewish people to reestablish a state in their ancient homeland — with “racism,” reflecting long-standing antisemitic stereotypes and anti-Israel agendas pushed by the Soviet Union. The measure was ultimately overturned in 1991
For understanding the connection, Massimiliano Di Pasquale, an associate researcher at the Gino Germani institute and director of the Ukraine Observatory, wrote “Antisemitism and Russian Active Measures From the Tsars to Putin,” a 141-page report three years in the making.
Translated from Italian, the Gino Germani Institute described how the study “traces the direct link between the tsarist and Soviet eras and the regime of Vladimir Putin in the specific evolution of instrumental antisemitism and demonstrates how the Kremlin continues today, in its cognitive war and in its active measures, to use false historians and conspiracy theories, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to feed hatred, distort perceptions and destabilize Western democratic values and systems.”
According to the Institute, “Di Pasquale shows how Russian antisemitic narratives come to justify military aggression in Ukraine, or how, after the Oct. 7 attack, Moscow instrumentalized the Israel-Hamas conflict to pursue three main objectives: strategic distraction, erosion of Western cohesion, double-standard accusations.”
Di Pasquale’s report details the history of Soviet Russia’s disinformation turn against the Jewish state, noting the 1967-1982 period under Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which “was characterized by a period of heated antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism. It was during this period that Moscow helped sow the seeds of the current anti-American and anti-Israeli hatred in the Arab and Muslim world — hatred that resurfaced in full vehemence after Oct. 7, 2023 — both through a series of sophisticated and covert KGB operations and through a massive international propaganda campaign that began in 1967 and continued until 1988.”
Di Pasquale writes that in the 16 years (1967-1982) during which Yuri Andropov, future general secretary of the party, headed the KGB, “Zionism was second only to the United States in terms of the Kremlin’s active measures.”
According to the report, the five antisemitic propaganda narratives Andropov chose to unleash around 1967 were “Jews (Zionists) are responsible for antisemitism; Zionist organizations worldwide are involved in espionage activities; Zionism is a Trojan horse for imperialism and racism in the Third World; Jews collaborated with the Nazis during World War II; and reversal of the Holocaust, i.e., Israelis as Nazis.”
The report cites Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, highest ranking defector from the Soviet bloc and former spymaster to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, who called Andropov “the father of a new era of disinformation that revived antisemitism and spawned international terrorism against the United States and Israel.”