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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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Tucker Carlson Calls Trump a ‘Slave to Israel’ as Feud Escalates
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson repudiated US President Donald Trump as a “slave to Israel” in his morning newsletter on Monday, the latest rhetorical escalation in a growing public feud between the controversial podcaster and the commander-in-chief.
“President Trump is a slave to Israel,” Carlson wrote in his newsletter.
Carlson lambasted Trump for comments he made in a Sunday interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, in which the president condemned the Iranian regime for its reluctance to accept American conditions in ending the US-Israeli war with Iran. Carlson further criticized Trump for maintaining consistent communication with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the ongoing negotiation efforts with Iranian officials and accused the White House of presenting Tehran with an unfavorable set of demands.
“Reporting that uncomfortable fact brings us great pain, but it is the tragic truth. This weekend alone, America’s leader parroted Israeli talking points on Fox News,” Carlson wrote.
In the Fox News interview, Trump identified Iran’s unwillingness to abandon its nuclear program as the key sticking-point in negotiations between the two nations. Trump warned that Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would “use it on Israel and the Middle East.” Trump also lauded the “incredible partnership” between the US and Israel.
Carlson went on to criticize Trump for having purportedly “continued his daily ritual of reporting war updates to Benjamin Netanyahu as an employee does to their manager,” seemingly implying that the US was waging war with Iran under Israel’s direction.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren recently said the argument that Trump had been pushed into war by Israel ignored decades of Iranian hostility and repeated attacks on Americans.
“Every day since 1979, the Iranian regime swore to destroy the United States and, in pursuit of that pledge, sought to develop strategic weapons while committing hundreds of acts of war against Americans,” Oren told The Algemeiner last month. “President Trump did not need to be dragged into defending the American people from this looming threat and certainly not by a purportedly cunning Israeli leader.”
“Suggestions to the contrary … are deeply insulting to the president and patently antisemitic,” he added.
Still, anti-Israel commentators such as Carlson have repeatedly claimed that Israel “dragged” the US into the war with Iran.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Trump administration was providing daily updates to him about the war, noting that, the prior day, US Vice President JD Vance provided “in detail” the latest information on peace talks with Tehran. Critics of Israel immediately framed Netanyahu’s statement as evidence that the US government operates in a position of subservience to Israel, despite the fact that allies regularly maintain consistent lines of communication during wartime.
In his newsletter, Carlson said the White House “deployed JD Vance to present Iranian negotiators with peace demands everyone knows they would never accept.”
The White House has outlined a wide-ranging set of priorities in negotiations with Iran in exchange for winding down military operations, including that Tehran cease uranium enrichment efforts, reopen the Strait of Hormuz without installing any toll booths, implement restrictions on its ballistic missiles program, and end support for terrorist proxy organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
Carlson’s comments came after Trump described the podcaster, one of his longtime supporters turned outspoken critic, as unintelligent.
“Tucker’s a low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Trump said last Tuesday in an interview with New York Post national security reporter Caitlin Doornbos when asked about Carlson’s condemnations of his Easter message promising massive destruction on Iran.
“He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him,” Trump said of Carlson. “I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”
Two days later, Trump lambasted Carlson as well as other far-right podcasters critical of his support for Israel and tough stance on Iran as “stupid” people who support the regime in Tehran.
Carlson’s comments also came after a Newsmax interview in which he also called Trump a “slave” to Israel.
“I’ve always liked Trump and still feel sorry for him, as I do for all slaves,” the former Fox News host said during the Friday interview, adding that Trump “can’t make his own decisions” and that he is “hemmed in by other forces.”
During an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Carlson seemingly doubled down on his suggestion that Trump is operating at the behest of the Jewish state, saying, “I don’t think it is as simple as ‘he is under the control of Netanyahu,’ but you could certainly summarize it that way and you wouldn’t be totally inaccurate.”
Following 21 hours of negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan, last week, Vance announced that ceasefire discussions broke down after Iran refused to agree to Washington’s set of demands.
Carlson, one of the most popular conservative pundits in the US, has reinvented himself as a preeminent critic of Israel in the years following his unceremonious firing from Fox News.
Since launching his podcast, Carlson has relentlessly condemned Israel, issuing a series of blistering and false accusations that the country oppresses Christians, exerts immense influence over US politicians, and has committed “genocide” in Gaza. The provocateur has accused Israel of killing tens of thousands of children in Gaza “on purpose” without providing any evidence.
Carlson has also hosted a seemingly unremitting parade of anti-Israel figures on his podcast while rejecting offers by pro-Israel figures to appear as guests. He especially drew backlash for conducting a friendly interview with fellow podcaster Nick Fuentes, an avowed antisemite and Holocaust denier.
Carlson’s anti-Israel career pivot has drawn the ire of many of his former fans, including US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). In public remarks, Cruz accused Carlson of spearheading efforts to normalize antisemitism within the Republican Party and has called on fellow Republicans to distance themselves from the podcaster.
Further, Carlson has seen his once-chummy relationship with Trump publicly deteriorate.
The president issued sharp condemnation of Carlson, along with other Israel-critical personalities Candace Owens, Alex Jones, and Megyn Kelly, in comments made on Truth Social.
Trump called Carlson a “broken man,” adding that he has “never been the same” since his 2023 firing from Fox News.
“These so-called ‘pundits’ are LOSERS, and they always will be!” Trump added.
The public fallout between Trump and Carlson comes as the pundit has sharpened his criticisms of the president. Last week, Carlson rebuked Trump for purportedly offending Muslims, suggesting that his conduct was unbecoming for a world leader.
Although Carlson’s podcast remains highly popular, his ideological shift seems to have come at the cost of his reputation in the Republican Party. A recent YouGov poll revealed that Carlson’s approval rating within the GOP has cratered, falling from +54 favorability in March 2024 to only +7. This timeline aligns with Carlson’s intensifying attacks on Israel and Republican lawmakers.
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My father was in the Hungarian resistance. Orbán’s defeat reminds us why it mattered
My father resisted the Nazis in Hungary. I thought of him — and how he would have rejoiced — when the Hungarian people voted out Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Sunday, after 16 years of authoritarian rule.
Only a week before Hungarian voters made their choice, the outcome of the elections seemed far from certain. I remember watching in dismay last Tuesday, when Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest to try to help prop Orbán up. There, he spread the same kind of blood-and-soil nationalism that has haunted the history of Hungary, and helped enable the horrors through which my father lived.
In his campaign rally with Orbán, Vance decried “far-left ideology” as “a shared threat from within that both of our nations face,” adding that its followers “view the very foundations of our shared civilization as illegitimate.” He also said that Orbán had kept Hungary from being “invaded” by immigrants.
The second-highest elected official in the United States, the country that gave so many Jews refuge after the Holocaust, embraced an ethno-nationalist leader who has suggested that Hungary’s “enemy” is a group who “does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”
What would my dad have made of that blatantly antisemitic moment?
In 1943 and 1944, my father operated underground in Budapest and Bucharest. As part of an illegal religious Zionist youth movement, he helped organize rescue efforts for Jews under Nazi rule. He traveled to Hungarian villages, warning Jews of advancing German forces, and helped smuggle Jews from Hungary to Romania and onward to Mandatory Palestine.
My father lived in a time when ideas and rhetoric like those advanced by Orbán and Vance had existential consequences. He resisted a regime that hunted Jews and other minorities, stripped them of rights, and sent them to their deaths. For him, resistance meant survival.
My father risked everything — his safety, his freedom, his life. With Hungary’s model in front of us, all who live under the threat of authoritarianism today must ask: What will we risk?
While our reality is different from my father’s, we are nevertheless on a dangerous path — one we ignore at our peril. Across the globe, antisemitism is on the rise. Democracy, which has safeguarded vulnerable communities from fascism, is under assault.
Hungarians pushed back against rising authoritarianism on Sunday, ousting Orbán in a true feat of resistance. In doing so, they dealt a blow to the network of European far-right leaders who trade in antisemitic tropes and beliefs. And they rebuffed Vance and President Donald Trump — who dispatched Vance to campaign in Hungary, having closely allied himself with Orbán — and an increasingly influential circle of American intellectuals who promote antisemitism-tinged arguments about civilizational decline and hidden elite influence.
How should we respond to this normalization of antisemitic language and imagery?
My father’s story taught me not to take the easy route. It’s tempting to retreat, at least temporarily, into private life, focusing only on our families and communities. We may want to minimize what we see, to convince ourselves it isn’t as bad as it seems. We may grow insular or fatalistic.
But disengagement will only postpone the danger to a later date, leaving us exposed and unprepared. It is the opposite of resistance. My father understood this, and bet on the power of resistance and perseverance.
Real resistance — to authoritarianism, to antisemitism, to the forces that feed both — means using the tools of democracy that are still available to us: voting, organizing, and speaking out to hold leaders accountable. It means using our power as citizens to stand behind our values — just as the citizens of Hungary did yesterday.
Real resistance means rejecting dangerous ideas carried by far-right movements into positions of power, amplified by the highest offices in the land. Those same movements are simultaneously assaulting the very democratic institutions that have made America one of the safest places Jews have ever lived.
Real resistance means standing up when democratic norms are eroded; when Jews and other minority communities are cast as threats; and when governmental institutions employ rhetoric with unmistakable antisemitic resonance — all phenomena that unfolded in Hungary under Orbán, and are unfolding in the U.S. under Trump. It means standing in the way of unchecked power and opposing legislation and policies that limit constitutional liberties and academic freedom. It means strengthening the ties that bind us together — building alliances against all forms of hatred, between communities targeted for their religion, ethnicity, identity or beliefs. It means staying in coalition to fight for a strong democratic future, even when doing so can be uncomfortable.
Orbán, Trump, Vance and their fellow proto-authoritarians have bet that we will ultimately comply. With Orbán’s defeat, they have new reasons to fear that we won’t. That’s as it should be, and my father would be proud.
My father had every chance to escape the Nazis. But after each mission, he came back to rescue more. He never stopped fighting for a better future for his fellow Jews. Neither should we.
The post My father was in the Hungarian resistance. Orbán’s defeat reminds us why it mattered appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel Reprimands Spain Over Blowing Up of Netanyahu Effigy
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a press conference after attending a special summit of European Union leaders to discuss transatlantic relations, in Brussels, Belgium, Jan. 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel said on Saturday it had reprimanded Spain‘s most senior diplomat in Tel Aviv over the blowing up of a giant effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Spanish town this week.
The seven-meter (23-foot) figure was packed with 14 kilograms (31 lbs.) of gunpowder in El Burgo, a small town near the southern city of Malaga, in a decades-old ceremony on April 5, its Mayor Maria Dolores Narvaez told local television.
“The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government’s systemic incitement,” Israel‘s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X which highlighted a video clip.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the video.
“The Spanish government is committed to fighting against antisemitism and any form of hate or discrimination. As such we totally reject any insidious allegation which suggests the contrary,” a Spanish Foreign Ministry source said in response.
El Burgo’s Mayor Narvaez said the town has previously used effigies of US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the annual event.
Spain has been an outspoken critic of the US and Israeli military campaigns in Iran and Lebanon, despite US threats to punish uncooperative NATO allies.
Spain and Israel have been embroiled in a long-running diplomatic row which began over the Gaza war. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said a Spanish ban on aircraft and ships carrying weapons to Israel from its ports or airspace due to Israel‘s military offensive was antisemitic.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares accused Israel of violating international law and the two-week ceasefire after a massive wave of airstrikes across Lebanon this week. Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire and Israel‘s military was continuing to strike Hezbollah with force.
Sanchez, who has emerged as a leading opponent of the Iran war, has closed Spanish airspace to any aircraft involved in a confrontation he has described as reckless and illegal.
Iran has repeatedly praised Spain in recent weeks for its hostile posture toward the US and Israel.