*This was given as Keynote Speech at the 2nd Meeting of the Working Group on the Implementation of the Council Declaration on the Fight against Antisemitism European Commission to the Working Group on Antisemitism & European Jewish Congress December 2019, Brussels.* Antisemitism is not just one form of discrimination among others. It is not just… Continue reading “Antisemitism in Schools”
For decades, anti-Semitism has been a steady ideological feature of radical-right violence and terrorism in Germany. The suspect in the terrorist attack on a synagogue in the German city of Halle in October, 27-year-old Stephan B., was driven by anti-Semitism and a radical-right worldview. After the murder of Walter Lübcke in June, this was the second deadly… Continue reading “Anti-Semitism Continues to Be a Steady Feature Among Germany’s Radicals”
Trump refers to Hispanic migrants as if they are an infectious disease while he detains them in inhumane detention centers. We must learn from history. In an article published in 2007, Andreas Musolff, a scholar working in ‘critical discourse analysis’, showed how the metaphors employed by Hitler in Mein Kampf advanced the idea that the German nation was an… Continue reading “Holocaust Historian: Trump Needs To Stop Speaking Like A 20th Century Fascist”
Krakow 2016 – The Eagle Pharmacy © Chris Webb On June 4, 1942, it was the Jews of Krakow who faced the perils and uncertainties of a round-up. A Polish Catholic, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, witnessed the round-up from the window of his pharmacy – situated in Harmony Square at the very centre of the Krakow ghetto.… Continue reading “The Eyewitness Account of Tadeusz Pankiewicz and the Krakow Ghetto – June 1942”
How should we reconcile the historically low level of Americans’ negative feelings about Jews with the recent surge in attacks on Jews? The April 27 attack on the Chabad synagogue in Poway, a suburb of San Diego, California, set off alarms within American Jewish communities. The attack came six months after another lone-wolf assault that… Continue reading “Despite Recent Attacks, Anti-Semitism in the US Remains Low”
Roughly 80 Jewish graves were vandalised in Quatzenheim, France, this week. Eight British MPs left the Labour Party complaining of an entrenched culture of antisemitism. In the United States, where memories of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting are still fresh, vandals broke the windows of a synagogue in Brooklyn this week and the antisemitism scandal surrounding… Continue reading “Antisemitism: A Social Barometer of Historical Proportions”
If we assume that autumn 1941 saw the beginning of the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe, then this year we mark 78 years since the onset of the Holocaust, 86 years since the start of the Nazi regime (1933) and 74 years since the liberation of Auschwitz (27 January 1945). The scale of… Continue reading “Asking Too Much of Holocaust Education”
Eighty years ago, on 9 November 1938, an order was given by Nazi German authorities to terrorize and arrest German Jewish citizens, resulting in tens of thousands of people being sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, marked a violent escalation against Jewish people. This escalation of violence was a continuation… Continue reading “In remembrance of Kristallnacht”
For my September CARR Blog, there can be no other choice but to recall the events of September 1941, when the Germans murdered over 33,000 Jewish men, women, and children in Kiev, at the Babi Yar ravine, in just two days. On September 19, 1941, the German XXIXth Germany Army Corps and the 6th Army… Continue reading “Babi Yar: Mass Murder in Kiev”