anti-Semitism

2 Nov, 2014

Arbeit macht frei gate stolen

The iconic gate at the Dachau concentration camp, with the inscription that translates to Work makes free, is stolen. Security officials note that whoever took the 75-by-37-inch gate – which is set into a larger iron gate – during the night would have had to climb over another gate to reach it. The camp’s Memorial director explains the gate’s significance:

…the central symbol for the prisoners’ ordeal

The Yad Vashem Holocaust centre says the motive is unknown but the theft is significant:

[T]he theft of such a symbolic object is an offensive attack on the memory of the Holocaust.

The Work makes free sign at the Auschwitz concentration camp was stolen in 2009, with a Swedish man with neo-Nazi ties found responsible for instigating the theft.

17 Sep, 2014

Sobibor gas chamber discovered

Poland0 Comments

Yad Vashem Holocaust researchers announce that the Sobibor gas chamber has been uncovered at the end of an eight-year archeological dig in Poland. The center says that 250,000 Jews perished at the site between April 1942 and October 1943. Dr. David Silberklang:

It is important to understand that there were no survivors from among the Jews who worked in the area of the gas chambers. Therefore, these findings are all that is left of those murdered there, and they open a window onto the day-to-day suffering of these people.

Researchers discover thousands of personal effects of prisoners at the site, as well as a water well used by the Jewish inmates that was filled with waste while the Nazis were dismantling the camp. Dr. Silberklang:

We will now be able to know more precisely what the process of murder was in the camp, and what the Jews went through until they were murdered. Additionally, finding the gas chambers and their capacity will enable us to estimate more precisely the number of people murdered in Sobibór.

10 Sep, 2014

Yeshiva school builds ‘bomb-proof wall’

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The Flood Street Yeshiva Centre in the Bondi district of Sydney builds a bomb-proof wall to protect its yeshiva school, which offers education from kindergarten to senior high school. The complex also includes a synagogue and the Chabad Youth New South Wales facility. Aside from the concrete wall, added security measures following verbal attacks on the school’s students in what is described as a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Sydney’s eastern suburbs include closed-circuit television cameras, intercoms and bomb-proof windows installed using Israeli anti-bomb techniques. The wall is funded by private donations and A$519,000 of taxpayer funds. Director Rabbi Dovid Slavin says the wall is designed to withstand the force of a car bomb left outside:

Australia is a great, very welcoming country that has given many minorities great opportunities. We who live in Australia need to be extremely grateful, but at the same time we never want to be complacent or irresponsible when dealing with young people’s lives.

8 Sep, 2014

‘Planned Paris attack’

France Mehdi Nemmouche0 Comments

Four French journalists who allege that Nemmouche was their ISIS captor in Syria say he was planning a much bigger attack than the Jewish Museum shooting in Brussels, for which he is the prime suspect. French-language Liberation newspaper reports that the journalists say he planned the attack to take place on the Champs Elysees boulevard on July 14 to coincide with Bastille Day celebrations, and hoped to do much more damage than the March 2012 Toulouse attacks targeting Jews and soldiers that left seven dead and five injured.

[He planned] at least one attack in France, in the heart of Paris, which would be at least five times bigger than the attacks in Toulouse.

8 Aug, 2014

Newsweek cover

2014 Gaza Conflict European Union France Israel Magazine Cover0 Comments

Newsweek devotes its cover story to Jewish emigration from Europe, which it says is being driven by anti-Semitism. Author Adam LeBor:

The mob howled for vengeance, the missiles raining down on the synagogue walls as the worshippers huddled inside. It was a scene from Europe in the 1930s – except this was eastern Paris on the evening of July 13th, 2014. LeBor says the 2014 Gaza conflict is partly to blame, but the rise in ‘the world’s oldest hatred’ predates the war:

One weekend in May seemed to epitomise the darkness. On May 24th a gunman pulled out a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and opened fire, killing four people. The next day the results of the elections to the European parliament showed a surge in support for extreme-right parties in France, Greece, Hungary and Germany.

American Jewish journalist Jeffrey Goldberg:

At what point do the Jews of America and the Jews of Israel tell the Jews of Europe that it might be time to get out?

7 Aug, 2014

‘More profound’ than opposition to Gaza conflict

2014 Gaza Conflict France Israel0 Comments

Leaders of Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France say heightened anti-Jewish threats, hate speech and violent attacks in Europe are less attributable to reaction against specific Israeli government policies or issues than previous rises in anti-Jewish sentiment such as during Israel’s three-week Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008 and 2009, when 66 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in France. Crif president Roger Cukierman:

They are not screaming ‘Death to the Israelis’ on the streets of Paris. They are screaming ‘Death to Jews’

Crif vice president Yonathan Arfi on whether the anti-Jewish sentiment is caused by the 2014 Gaza conflict:

They have laid bare something far more profound.

‘Worst times since the Nazi era’

2014 Gaza Conflict Israel0 Comments

The president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews says anti-Semitic incidents such as hate speech, threats and violent attacks are at their highest level in decades. Central Council of Jews president Dieter Graumann:

On the streets, you hear things like ‘the Jews should be gassed’, ‘the Jews should be burned’ – we haven’t had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those slogans isn’t criticising Israeli politics, it’s just pure hatred against Jews: nothing else. And it’s not just a German phenomenon. It’s an outbreak of hatred against Jews so intense that it’s very clear indeed.

He says that by comparison:

These are the worst times since the Nazi era

3 Aug, 2014

Fairfax cartoon withdrawn

2014 Gaza Conflict Gaza Israel0 Comments

Fairfax Media apologizes for a cartoon considered anti-Semitic by Jewish groups that the Sydney Morning Herald published in its daily and online editions, and withdraws the online version. The cartoon, which showed an old man sitting alone in an armchair wearing a kippah skullcap and controlling the 2014 Gaza conflict by remote control, drew criticism from the New South Wales Board of Jewish Deputies due to its use of Jewish symbology and the fact that the old man has an unusually large nose, a genetic trait often associated with Jews. SMH:

It was also significant that the cartoon had its genesis in news photographs of men seated in chairs and lounges, observing the shelling of Gaza from the hills of Sderot. One of those photos depicted an old man, wearing a kippah, reclining casually as part of a group – with Mr Le Lievre seeing comparisons between this and someone watching their television

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies say the editorial ‘unreservedly apologising for the publication of an antisemitic cartoon’ means the matter is now closed.

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