Over 100 prominent Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) lay leaders and supporters from the United States and Panama, including a delegation from Philadelphia, were accompanied by over 50 IDF officers as they toured the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland as part of the ten-day FIDF "From Holocaust to Independence" journey to Poland and Israel.
The delegation visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, which was the largest of the Nazi's Concentration Camps. The delegation also listened to the personal story of a Holocaust survivor from Israel, Asher Aud, in Auschwitz 2-Birkenau, where mass exterminations of Jews took place throughout the war.
Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Israel to meet with Israeli officials this week. Secretary Kerry met with both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.
Before meeting with President Peres, Secretary Kerry spent Yom Hashoah — Holocaust Memorial Day — laying a wreath at Yad Vashem.
Before Secretary Kerry's meeting with President Peres he delivered remarks:
Well, Mr. President, thank you very, very much for an extraordinarily generous and warm welcome. It's really such an honor to be here today to share in Yom HaShoah and to be there at Yad Vashem to lay a wreath on behalf of the American people, but most importantly to simply share in the uniqueness of that expression of sorrow and honor for this remarkable moment in history that we marked.
For Yom HaShoah 5773, Holocaust Memorial Day 2013.
Anne Frank's death was tragic, but she was only one of six million Jews murdered by the Nazi regime. The Jewish population in each European country was decimated in a different way. Here are some novels for children and teenagers that represent the diversity of the horror — but adults can learn a lot from them as well. I have read each of these several times; my favorites are starred. The books are listed in order of reading level from youngest to oldest, although your mileage may vary.
Jews in Auschwitz being seperated to go to either labor or gas chambers
— by Marta Fuchs, MLS, MFT
I am a member of a generation that wasn't supposed to have been born, living proof that Hitler's Final Solution to whatever "Questions" he had about the Jewish people didn't succeed completely. I am also the grateful daughter of loving parents whose sense of optimism and belief in people miraculously prevailed despite it all.
I'm filled with gratitude for my parents' love and protection; for giving me a sense of family connection and continuity by telling me about life and people before; for recounting the sorrowful details of their Holocaust past while also honoring the individuals who showed them human kindness in those abandoned days.
Imagine a world without hate. The ADL produced a powerful 80 second video that you should watch and share, as well as a list of actions we can all take to fight bigotry.
— by Steve Sheffey
President Obama's trip to Israel left no doubt about his strong support for Israel. He emphasized America's unshakeable alliance with Israel. He told the world that Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust, but because of Israel, such a Holocaust will never happen again. He reiterated that the only path to Palestinian independence is through direct talks with Israel.
President Obama reaffirmed America's commitment to Israel's security and to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He reiterated that America stands with Israel because of shared values and because it is in our fundamental national security interest to stand with Israel.
A bill was introduced by State Representative Brendan Boyle. The bill would amend the Public School Code of 1949 to require all public and nonpublic schools in Pennsylvania to include in their existing curriculum age-appropriate education for grades 6-12 on the Holocaust and other
modern genocides.
The bill in the Education Committee and is coming up for a vote on April 8. We are urging everyone to contact Mr. Paul Clymer (chair of the Education Committee) He can be contacted by calling tel. 717-783-3154. Please leave a message indicating you support the bill. Also have your friends and relatives do likewise.
On Monday, the National Museum of American Jewish History again waived its admission fee and opened its doors on a day when it is usually closed to the public, and hosted a full day of programs in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The museum's new exhibit is "Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow," about the experiences of Jewish refugee scholars who were driven from Europe by the Nazis who found teaching positions at black institutions in the American South of Jim Crow laws. And, in keeping with the spirit of the day, the museum organized a screening of the documentary film that inspired the exhibit, as well as a discussion with one of the filmmakers, Steven Fischler, of Pacific Street Films. Up to 900 people visited that day.
Heartbreaking are the testimonies of Jews who sought every avenue of escape from Nazi-controlled Europe, but were foiled at every turn, with diplomatic and bureaucratic obstacles. They had limited access to accurate news. They had limited resources to buy their freedom and even the ones with means and the forethought found themselves victims of covetous maneuvers. Nazi regulations forbade bringing most valuables from the country and limited cash to 10 Marks or $10 per person.
Old wounds were opened for Holocaust survivors and those who care about them when art gallery owner, Martin Bryer, placed on show a painting made of ashes of the Holocaust victims' murdered at Majdanek extermination camp. He initially claimed his decision to have "no moral flaws" but ultimately succumbed to world-wide pressure to withdraw the painting from exhibition. This is the letter that I sent to him:
Dear Mr. Bryer:
In the 1980's in Vineland, a New Jersey Holocaust survivor went back to Auschwitz on a pilgrimage to visit the ashes of her entire family and reflect upon her experience. While sitting, her hand stroking some loose earth, she came upon a significant piece of jawbone. Distressed to the extreme, she put it into her pocketbook. Back in the states, she came into my office, when I was serving as a Jewish Federation executive, saying she'd not meant to remove it from the site, but in her distress had done so. She placed it on my desk asking what to do now.
Teddy Goldstein, who celebrated his 75th birthday last week, has just been awarded First Prize in the USA Best Book Awards (e-Book historical fiction category) for his novel, Toxic Distortions. Described by Roger Katz, (until recently manager of Hatchards of Piccadilly in London) as "A stylishly written and cunningly plotted Holocaust revenge thriller with a gripping narrative of retribution moving to a tense and shattering conclusion, which combines the time frame of a Tarantino movie with the pace and detail of an early Frederick Forsyth novel", the book also throws new light on the venality of the Nazis and raises important questions about the wording on Holocaust memorials and the morality of the Americans who used the results of SS doctors' camp experiments to save their own pilots during the Pacific War. The work was inspired by a chance meeting at the London Jewish Cultural Centre between the author and Marcel Ladenheim, a survivor who was hidden 'in plain view' at the age of 4 in occupied Paris and survived as a result of the courage of a young French woman. Copies may be obtained from amazon as well as on Kindle and other e-book formats.
END
Alexandra Bochova with Jewish War Veteran Paul Ouslander. Photo: Dan Benau.
Veterans Day Program Honoring African American Liberators of the Concentration Camps and the Special Unit Called "The Red Ball Express"
— by Lee Bender
It was an amazing contrast: a beautiful, mild Sunday afternoon outside on Veterans Day, November 11, 2012. But inside Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El, Wynnewood, was honoring some special heroes of World War II who liberated concentration camps in Europe and witnessed some of the most heinous crimes in human history. In an incredibly moving program, before an audience of 225, including many students and scouts, tribute was paid to the African American soldiers of the U.S. Army who liberated the camps, many of whom were members of a segregated unit known as The Red Ball Express. This program, as in past years, was the brainchild of Ed "The Sage" Snyder of TBH-BE, and co-sponsored with the Israel Advocacy Committee and Mens Club. Special guests in attendance were from the neighboring Zion Baptist Church of Ardmore, and many survivors, liberators and prisoner of war, war veterans, Jewish war veterans and American Legion.
Something is not right about a candidate for President of the United States ignoring a request from Elie Wiesel.
It's now been more than eight months since Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel asked Mitt Romney to "speak to his own church and say they should stop" performing posthumous proxy baptisms on Jews, including Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
The Huffington Post reported on February 14, 2012 that Wiesel, who has devoted his life to fighting intolerance, said that the posthumous baptisms were "not only objectionable" but "scandalous." Said Wiesel:
"I wonder if as a candidate for the presidency Mitt Romney is aware of what his church is doing. I hope that if he hears about this that he will speak up."
Even after the Boston Globe reported on February 29, 2012 that members of the Mormon Church posthumously baptized Daniel Pearl, the reporter killed by Islamic terrorists whose last words were an affirmation of his Judaism, Romney said nothing in response to Wiesel's request.
Henry Stern was one of the fortunate ones. In 1937, his family embarked on the last boat of Jewish refugees to leave Germany legally. They sailed for New York. The family settled in Opelika, Alabama. As news of the Holocaust trickled out, Henry never stopped hoping that some of the relatives left behind had somehow survived. In 2004, with the aid of the internet, he succeeded. Here is an amazing clip of Mr. Stern's reunion with his cousin Fred Hertz.
Philadelphia resident Ruth Kessler is featured in the new cookbook Miracles & Meals, a compilation of 115 stories and over 250 recipes collected from Holocaust Survivors around the world. Miracles & Meals may be purchased from her website.
Today is the Jewish festival of Tu b'Av, which after Tisha b'Av, brings the message that we can overcome trauma, live again and find. First, we have to love ourselves and have inner strength and conviction we merit existence and support. The photos chosen for this article show an expression of love, remembrance and resistance. I never thought a tattoo could bring me to tears again after seeing number tattoos on Shoah survivors. But these photos are powerful, too, because they are about resistance.
When Palestinian Authority presidential adviser Ziad Al-Bandak paid his respects recently at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called the Palestinian's visit there "a marketing of a false Zionist alleged tragedy."
A newly appointed Romanian government official, Dan Sova, averred earlier this year that "No Jew suffered on Romanian territory" during World War II. (Tens of thousands of Romanian Jews were killed on Romanian territory, and hundreds of thousands others deported to their deaths. The historian Raul Hilberg concluded that "no country, besides Germany, was involved in massacres of Jews on such a scale.")
We tend to get exercised by Holocaust denial, and for good reason. The refusal to accept the facts that part of the ostensibly civilized world went on a genocidal murder spree over the years 1938-1945 and that most of the rest of the world didn't much care implies a certain regret that the genocide failed.
In the end, though, deniers of that historical truth are-at least outside the Arab world-generally marginalized, recognized as either mentally deficient or depraved.
The stamp features the portraits of five diplomats awarded the honor of Righteous Among the Nations.
Perlasca is the first on the left.
— by Meir Deutsch
Did you know that this August is the anniversary of two great heroes of the Hungarian Jews? It is the 100th birthday of Raoul Wallenberg, and the 20th anniversary of the death of Giorgio Perlasca. Exactly who were they, and what did they accomplish?
Biographies of Raoul Wallenberg and Giorgio Perlasca follow the jump.
The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) today denounced Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage for doubling down on his stunningly inappropriate comments comparing the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo at a fundraiser Thursday morning. NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris said:
Comparing a long-standing federal agency to Hitler's secret police, especially in the context of providing millions of Americans with much-needed health care insurance is simply absurd. That this is LePage's second time doing so in the past week is completely unacceptable -- even with Monday's tepid apology. Trivializing the suffering and deaths of millions at the hands of the Gestapo is completely unacceptable, and the governor -- indeed any elected official -- should know better than this. LePage -- who is just the latest in an increasingly long line of Republicans who have crassly invoked the Holocaust for their own political purposes -- must give a true apology at once.
(NJDC) Once again, a Republican candidate for office has condoned — and even applauded — the use of offensive Holocaust rhetoric. Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith took the stage at the Blair County Tea Party FreedomFest 2012 where he praised a Tea Party speaker who he said spoke "eloquently"-despite the fact that he had just finished comparing President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler.
'As the gentleman that was speaking before me was so eloquently saying about so many things,' Smith said prior to giving a speech regarding Obama's energy policies.
Smith is challenging Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and has been backed by several national Tea Party groups including the Tea Party Express.
[Preceding spekaer Phil] Waite started by discussing what he called the history of various economic and governmental policies, including those that he deemed socialist. He said the Obama administration is employing socialist policies, similar to those employed by the Communists in the Soviet Union and Fascists in Germany.
'I will not allow a group of Marxist, Socialist law professors, left-wing extremists to annihilate my country without a fight,' Waite said.
Waite launched into a diatribe about the Nazi Party and Hitler, saying that Obama and Hitler both wanted to centralize power and strip local governments' authority.
'All other parties were outlawed, all free elections were outlawed, 45 million dead people later, we ended that regime,' Waite said. 'Why? Because you had a slick, quick talker and someone who said 'you don't need to worry about responsibility, we'll take good care of you. Just walk the party line and smile.' And you know how that ended up.'...
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party was quick to condemn Smith and Waite.
'The speaker's comments were shocking, but it's not surprising that ... Tom Smith applauded the extremism of his fellow Tea Partier,' party spokesman Mark Nicastre said in an email. 'After all Smith is a self-proclaimed 'Tea Party guy', who founded his own local Tea Party. Throughout his campaign, Smith has embraced all of the extreme policies and extreme rhetoric of the Tea Party, and this is just the latest example of how out-of-touch Tom Smith is with middle-class Pennsylvanians.'
As we have said repeatedly, invoking the Holocaust to make a political point is never acceptable and the use of this type of language should be condemned by all. Period.
Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher (R-OH) campaign video offensively blames Holocaust on gun control.
— by David A. Harris
Using the memories of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust to make a political point is never appropriate, under any circumstances. For Ohio Republican House candidate Samuel Wurzelbacher to imply that these innocent lives were taken because of gun control laws is simply beyond the pale. Wurzelbacher — who is just the latest in a long line of Republicans who seem to think it is acceptable to use the Holocaust for political gain-must apologize and remove this offensive video immediately."
With this video, Wurzelbacher joins the ranks of other Republicans such as presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Representatives Allen West (R-FL), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and Trent Franks (R-AZ), WV Senate candidate John Raese and FL House candidate Adam Hasner who have shamefully abused the Holocaust to make political points.
Samuel 'Joe The Plumber' Wurzelbacher, the 2008 campaign microcelebrity and Ohio congressional candidate, has an interesting theory about the Holocaust. Yesterday, Mr. Wurzelbacher released a campaign web video in which he blamed the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide on gun control laws.
'In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917 one-point-five million Armenians, unable to defend themselves were exterminated,' Mr. Wurzelbacher says in the clip. 'In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated.'
Mr. Wurzelbacher's video features footage of him on a shooting rage blasting fruits and vegetables with a shotgun. As the clip draws to a close, Mr. Wurzelbacher, gun in hand, proclaims, 'I love America.'
The description of the video describes gun ownership as 'our last line of defense' from tyranny and poses a rather existential question about Mr. Wurzelbacher's produce shooting hobby.
'If you hunt or just like shooting guns, the 2nd Amendment will always be a good thing. History also tells us it's our last line of defense in the face of an out-of-control government,' the description says. 'And killing fruits and vegetables is... what?'
Now on display at the Free Library's main branch is a traveling exhibit from the Holocaust Memorial Museum on how the Nazis used science to justify their contemptible work, titled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. I was horrified to learn that all German geneticists believed in eugenics, including the Jewish ones such as Dr. Richard Goldschmidt (who re-established himself at the University of California at Berkeley). This felt devastatingly comparable to discovering in the permanent exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History that there had been rabbis of the American South who supported slavery.
President Obama was led on a tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and Museum Director Sara Bloomfield.
At the end of the tour, the President walked slowly and wordlessly into the Hall of Remembrance, a somber look on his face and Elie Wiesel keeping pace on his right side.
The two men, both in dark suits, walked up to the dais holding the eternal flame, and paused there in a moment of silent reflection. The President and Mr. Wiesel lit a candle and observed a moment of silence in the Hall of Remembrance. The President placed a candle in front of the Buchenwald section of the wall in memory of the concentration camp his great-uncle helped liberate at the end of World War II.
The President was introduced by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate & Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel. During his address, the President eloquently noted "'never again' is a challenge to reject hatred in all its forms, including anti-Semitism," and that "'never again' is a challenge to defend the fundamental right of free people and free nations to exist in peace and security" — including Israel. Indeed, the heart of the President's message is his pledge that "never again" must truly mean never again — and the American people and our government both have a role in translating this aspiration into reality. President Obama called for all of us to stand against indifference and ignorance, and to work together to prevent and end genocide in our time.
Obama's plan would allow the United State to impose sanctions against foreign entities, specifically in Iran and Syria, for using technology to carry out human rights abuses.
President Barack Obama also announced that he will award a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a former officer in the Polish Underground during World War II who was among the first to provide eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to the world. The Medal of Freedom is the Nation's highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
President Obama said,
"We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen-because so many people succumbed to their darkest instincts; because so many others stood silent. But let us also tell our children about the Righteous Among the Nations. Among them was Jan Karski-a young Polish Catholic-who witnessed Jews being put on cattle cars, who saw the killings, and who told the truth, all the way to President Roosevelt himself. Jan Karski passed away more than a decade ago. But today, I'm proud to announce that this spring I will honor him with America's highest civilian honor-the Presidential Medal of Freedom."
Last Thursday, Pres. Obama released a statement honoring the Jewish day of remembrance Yom HaShoah.
"On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I join people of all faiths across the United States, in Israel and around the world in paying tribute to all who suffered in the Shoah - a horrific crime without parallel in human history,"
Karski served as an officer in the Polish Underground during World War II and carried among the first eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to the world. He worked as a courier, entering the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi Izbica transit camp, where he saw first-hand the atrocities occurring under Nazi occupation. Karski later traveled to London to meet with the Polish government-in-exile and with British government officials. He subsequently traveled to the United States and met with President Roosevelt. Karski published Story of a Secret State, earned a Ph.D at Georgetown University, and became a professor at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. Born in 1914, Karski became a U.S. citizen in 1954 and died in 2000.
President Obama's words this morning exemplified his commitment to tikkun olam (repairing the world) by ensuring that the pledge of "Never Again" is fully realized.
Last week West Virginia Republican Senate Candidate John Raese made an insensitive comparison between the Holocaust and smoking restrictions:
I don't want government telling me what I can do and what I can't do because I'm an American. But in Monongalia County you can't smoke a cigarette, you can't smoke a cigar, you can't do anything. And I oppose that because I believe in everybody's individual freedoms and everybody's individual rights to do what they want to do and I'm a conservative and that's the way that goes.
But in Monongalia County now, I have to put a huge sticker on my buildings to say this is a smoke free environment. This is brought to you by the government of Monongalia County. Ok?
Remember Hitler used to put Star of David on everybody's lapel, remember that? Same thing.
Yesterday — which was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 19, 2012 — Raise doubled down defending his obscene remarks:
No, this is not a standard line, nor a misstatement. It is a loss of freedom. As Ronald Reagan once said, there is no such thing as partial freedom, there is only freedom.
Comparing smoking restrictions to the Holocaust is never acceptable on any day of the year. But for West Virginia Republican Senate candidate John Raese to apparently defend those comments on Holocaust Remembrance Day takes the insensitivity and callousness of his remarks to the next level. Raese-who is just the latest Republican to use this type of inappropriate rhetoric-must apologize immediately and quit defending his offensive remarks.
With this remark, Raese joins the ranks of other Republicans such as
Although I saw it over 48 hours ago, The Soap Myth, playing in New York City at the Black Box Theatre, through April 22, continues to haunt me. This is the theatre of witness at its best - provocative and morally ambiguous that raises more questions than it answers. Playwright Jeff Cohen and director of the National Jewish Theatre, Arnold Mittelman's The Soap Myth explores the claim that the Nazis made soap out of Jewish bodies.
The archivist at Brandenburg found, among the legal documents, a personal letter to my father from a friend of his, Oskar Gellman, dated January 17, 1936, with an extra note by Erna, whom I assume to be his wife.
His friend not only decided to appraise him of the mundane events of his acquaintances during the time her was in prison, but also to entertain him and keep his spirit up. Why the wardens would have kept just this letter, I have no clue, but the writer is so very vivid and ascerbic in his wit, that perhaps they kept it as an example of how funny these Jews could be. His writing verges on the Rabelaisian and he pokes sharply at his friends and acquaintances.
It is a window on the mood of Jews in the early years of the Hitler reign, as the Nuremberg laws were taking effect while the ultimate horror awaiting them was something as yet unimagineable...
(NJDC) Anti-choice activists and pundits have a long and clear record of invoking the Holocaust to protest a woman's right to choose. Lately, many of those same forces have been attacking the mandate for health insurance companies to provide no-cost contraception to women contained in the Affordable Care Act. As their rhetoric continues to get nastier, at least one member of the anti-choice side has opted to invoke the Holocaust to protest women's access to contraception.
According to NARL Pro-Choice America's Blog For Choice, conservative pundit Eric Metaxas invoked Nazi Germany during a debate on MSNBC's "Jansing & Co." Apparently:
Metaxas called contraception and women's health "side issues"-and then likened the no-cost birth-control rule to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s:
In [my] book, you read about what happened to an amazingly great country, called Germany. I'm half German. Uh, in the early '30s, little things were happening where the state was bullying the churches. No one spoke up. In the beginning, it always starts really, really small. We need to understand as America, as Americans, if we do not see this as a bright line in the sand, if you're not a Catholic, if you use contraception, doesn't matter. Because eventually, this kind of government overreach will affect you. If we don't speak up, we're gonna be in trouble.
As we have said repeatedly, invoking the Holocaust to make a political point is never acceptable. Doing so devalues the significance of the Holocaust and disrespects the memories of those who perished. We demand that thoseseeking to restrict a woman's right to choose — including Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum — cease using such insensitive language immediately.
The National Jewish Democratic Council urged presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) to repudiate the Holocaust reference made by Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL), in which he invoked Martin Neimöller's famous poem First They Came... to shield Romney from attacks surrounding Bain Capital. NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris said:
It is absolutely unfathomable that Governor Rick Scott-who leads the state with the third largest population of Jews-would invoke the Holocaust to shield Mitt Romney from criticism over his record at Bain Capital. As we have said before, it is never acceptable to invoke the Holocaust to make a political point. This display of insensitivity towards the legacy of the Holocaust-and using Martin Neimoller's powerful words-is just the latest example of a Republican official abusing the memory of the Holocaust and inappropriately inserting this rhetoric into civic discourse. All who understand and respect the sanctity of the memory of the Holocaust must condemn Scott's tactless remark, and especially Mitt Romney, for whom Scott was stumping. Romney must make it clear that this sort of language will not be tolerated on the campaign trail. Failure to do so will make him the latest Republican to betray American Jews and the memory of those who perished by giving a free pass to this unacceptable use of this language.
The governor paraphrased a famous saying by Martin Niemoller, a German Protestant pastor....
'We shouldn't be allowing candidates to attack people in business,' he said. 'We should be saying, gosh, that's us.'
Scott then paraphrased the Niemoller saying, which he has on a plaque in his office.
'We've got to defend the freedom of the free market,' he said after paraphrasing the quote. 'If we don't defend the free market, they'll pick on somebody. Now they're picking on Bain Capital, then they'll pick on somebody else.'
Bain Capital is the private equity firm founded by Romney.
Scott later told reporters he used the Niemoller quote to say that capitalism should always be defended.
'I have the quote in my office, and the reason is I have it is, we all have to think about watch(ing) what's going on out there,' Scott said.
'Look at what's happening in our society,' he added. 'I believe the free market is good for families. And I believe we should defend the free market. When you see somebody being attacked because they believe in the American Dream, we need to go out and say, gosh I would like to live the American Dream. All of us would like to live that American Dream.'
Press secretary Lane Wright further clarified the governor's remarks.
'He's making a point, not an exact comparison,' Wright said. 'The quote illustrates a principle: Stand up for what's right. If you don't, no one else will. It would be reading too much into it to think he is comparing to the Holocaust.'
Or, in other words, 'If you're attacking capitalism, who's next?' Wright said.
The Last Survivor explores the idea of genocide in the 21st century as a platform for social action.
— by David Felder, Nancy Strong and Sharon Shore
The term "genocide" is of relatively recent origin. It was first coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, in 1944. Lemkin's idea of genocide as an offense against international law was widely accepted by the international community and was one of the legal bases of the Nuremberg trials.
While most of us would prefer to think of genocide as something that belongs to another place and time, it is in fact, an evil that has occurred on nearly every continent in every century, and affects us all as human beings.
On January 28, 2012, Congregation Beth Hamedrosh of Wynnewood will present a program on genocide in the 21st century. The program will be informative and practical, focusing on specific actions that can be taken by individuals and organizations to help survivors of genocides in the 21st century. It will include a showing of the powerful documentary film, The Last Survivor, and a presentation by Dr. Henri Parens.
Gratz College launched a new Master of Arts degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the only one of its kind that can be completed entirely online.
The new program is particularly aimed at teachers, for whom it will provide a tool for combatting racism and intolerance, often accompanied by violence, pervasive in our schools. Full-time public and private school educators will benefit from a substantial tuition discount. The program is also directed at museum educators, social workers, and members of secular and religious community organizations.
This is the latest entry in " Courage of the Spirit: The Story of the Jews of Europe in the 20th Century" based on first hand accounts and documents from my father, Rabbi Dr. Wilhelm( William Weinberg), the first Chief Rabbi of Hesse and Frankfurt region after the Shoah, and my mother, Irene Weinberg, who survived under Aryan identity in Lwow and Warsaw during the Shoah. It covers the family origins in Galicia, then my father's youth in Vienna, Zionist politics, political studies in Vienna and Rabbinic studies at the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums, imprisonment under the Nazis, flight to the Soviet Union, and return to Austria and Germany rebuild the lives of the Survivors inthe aftermath of the Shoah. For my mothers account, it covers coming of age in Lwow and Bolechow, survival as an Aryan Lwow and Warsaw, escape into Vienna after the war.
You can follow the first entries in:
http://karmisheli.blogspot.com
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— by Talia B.
— by Hannah Lee
— by 
Today is the Jewish festival of Tu b'Av, which after Tisha b'Av, brings the message that we can overcome trauma, live again and find. First, we have to love ourselves and have inner strength and conviction we merit existence and support. The photos chosen for this article show an expression of love, remembrance and resistance. I never thought a tattoo could bring me to tears again after seeing number tattoos on Shoah survivors. But these photos are powerful, too, because they are about resistance.
— Rabbi Avi Shafran
— by David Streeter
(NJDC) Once again, a Republican candidate for office has condoned — and even applauded — the use of offensive Holocaust rhetoric. Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith took the stage at the Blair County Tea Party FreedomFest 2012 where he praised a Tea Party speaker who he said spoke "eloquently"-despite the fact that he had just finished comparing President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler.
By Hannah Lee
President Obama said, 
Karski served as an officer in the Polish Underground during World War II and carried among the first eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to the world. He worked as a courier, entering the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi Izbica transit camp, where he saw first-hand the atrocities occurring under Nazi occupation. Karski later traveled to London to meet with the Polish government-in-exile and with British government officials. He subsequently traveled to the United States and met with President Roosevelt. Karski published 
— by Lisa Grunberger
The 
— by Mindy Blechman
