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Conservative donor’s Nazi memorabilia collection in spotlight amid revelations about his Clarence Thomas ties
(JTA) – A collection of Nazi memorabilia on display at the home of Republican megadonor Harlan Crow has come under renewed scrutiny following revelations that Crow lavished Clarence Thomas with expensive, unreported gifts.
Crow has for more than two decades treated Thomas, the conservative Supreme Court justice, to complimentary vacations and private jet and yacht rides, according to a recent investigation by the news organization ProPublica. Thomas subsequently acknowledged that he failed to disclose those excursions, which analysts say is a likely violation of federal laws. Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans to hold hearings on the issue, while Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has even suggested Thomas should be impeached.
Crow is a Dallas-based real estate mogul who founded the conservative activist group Club For Growth. The news about his deep ties to Thomas has drawn renewed attention to his home’s extensive collection of Nazi artifacts, including a signed edition of Hitler’s antisemitic manifesto “Mein Kampf,” two of Hitler’s own paintings and a set of linens emblazoned with the Nazi insignia. Crow also maintains a garden full of statues of Communist leaders he calls the “Garden of Evil.” His other historical artifacts reportedly include documents signed by George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower’s military helmet.
Crow’s collection of Nazi memorabilia has generated controversy in the past, including in 2015 when then-presidential candidate Marco Rubio held a fundraiser at his house on the eve of Yom Kippur. At the time, the National Jewish Democratic Council and the Democratic National Committee heavily criticized Rubio’s decision to hold the fundraiser at Crow’s house. This go-around, the Jewish Democratic Council of America said it was “deeply disturbing” that Thomas’ “donor friend proudly collects Nazi memorabilia.”
The Nazi artifact market is contentious, with laws prohibiting it in some European countries and criticism of auction houses that sell the items fierce in places where it is permitted. Much of the criticism centers on the idea that the people purchasing the artifacts are sympathetic to the Nazis, although one frequent purveyor of Nazi artifacts in the United States told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last year that his typical buyers “are NOT neo-Nazis, who are too poor and too stupid to appreciate any kind of historic material.” In 2019, a Lebanese-French buyer of Nazi paraphernalia revealed that he was gathering the items to keep them out of the hands of neo-Nazis and turned them over to Jewish groups instead; others have indicated interest in purchasing the items to destroy them.
Crow keeps them on display. In the past, he has maintained that his interest in Nazi artifacts is purely historical. His mother, Margaret Crow, told local news outlets she was a survivor of the S.S. Athenia, the first British ship to be sunk by Nazi Germany during World War II.
In the wake of the recent reporting on Crow, some conservatives have defended his collection. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish, suggested on his podcast that the collection may be a way “to remember the things that you hate.”
Current and former staffers at the conservative publication The Dispatch, which Crow funds, also defended his collection. “I know Harlan Crow and I’m proud to call him a friend,” tweeted the columnist Jonah Goldberg, who is Jewish. Crow’s “Garden of Evil,” Goldberg said, is “an attempt [to] commemorate the horrors of the 20th century in the spirit of ‘never again.’”
And New York Times columnist David French, a former senior editor of the Dispatch, tweeted, “The idea that he’s a Nazi sympathizer is utterly ludicrous. He abhors tyranny, from fascism to communism to everywhere in between.”
Others criticized the public display of the artifacts. NBC News reporter Ben Collins, who reports on the far right and said his grandfather fought for the United States in World War II, said his family had recently found war artifacts “including some Nazi stuff” in a basement. “He didn’t put it in a special little room to show guests because he didn’t find horrible things cute and fun,” Collins tweeted.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
The post Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.