Friday, November 09, 2018
Natan Sharansky: All People Want to Be Free and They Want to Belong
Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident, refusenik, Israeli government minister and chairman of the Jewish Agency, spoke this week with the Jerusalem Post about national identity. Sharansky asserts that not all populist parties should automatically be rejected by Israel, and that there are objective tests by which such parties can be evaluated.
"Do they support Holocaust deniers? Do they support legislation against Jewish life, ritual slaughter and circumcision? Do they use anti-Semitic stereotypes?" He points to his three Ds definition of anti-Semitism - demonization, delegitimization and double standards toward either Jews as people or the State of Israel - as a good barometer.
"After the Second World War, there was a lot of anger against nationalism, and it turned into a philosophy that nationalism brings about fascism, and that we in Europe had a few hundred years of religious wars and then national wars, and that the time had come to be above religion and nationalism. The dream was a world where there was nothing to fight over and nothing to die for, but it meant that there was also nothing to live for."
"We must remember that all people have two basic feelings: they want to be free and want to belong, and we should not weaken their feeling of belonging. Patriotism, nationalism and religious belief can be very positive and a very necessary part of building our liberal world. When we take it away from our liberal world, then at some moment liberalism will become a hated word by everybody who is looking for their national identity."
"The reaction to the First World War and the Second World War was to erase all identities, and the result was a decadent society with almost no values. Now there is overreaction to reestablish identity, and you're afraid of every foreigner, and there is a danger there [as well]. The sooner we will bring these two extremes together and people will be able to enjoy a liberal-democratic, national world, the better."
Melanie Phillips: As I see it: How Pittsburgh has deepened the chasm dividing American Jews
For Diaspora Jews, the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre has felt like a family bereavement.Pittsburgh Penguins raise $350,000 for synagogue shooting victims
Among Jews in America, the trauma has been profound. Their sense of inviolability has been shattered. The fact that Jews were gunned down in the sacred space of a synagogue service has caused even greater torment.
Yet in the midst of the communal grief, something has surely been overlooked. In 2014, six were gunned down and murdered in Jerusalem’s Har Nof synagogue. Attacks on Jews in Israel are relentless. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has said it foiled 480 terrorist attacks in the last year.
Of course, an atrocity nearer to home always feels worse. But there are other echoes.
Israel is subjected to relentless lies, selective reporting and twisting of events. Much the same has been done to President Trump after the Pittsburgh atrocity. And just as with the demonization of Israel, some of those responsible for this have themselves been Jews.
Peter Beinart is a journalist who attacks Israel through distorted, hate-fueled writing. After Pittsburgh, he did the same thing to Trump.
Beinart claimed that the antisemitism which fueled the Pittsburgh shooter, Robert Bowers, was “an inevitable byproduct of the nativist conservatism being championed by President Trump.”
To support this claim, he made two leaps of logic: That Trump’s “nativism” was racist, and that this racism provokes antisemitism. Both assertions are false.
The Pittsburgh Penguins donated nearly $350,000 Thursday to the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to benefit victims and families of the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill, the professional ice hockey team announced.
The team, its foundation, fans and corporate partners have been raising money through its "Stronger Than Hate" campaign since the Oct. 27 shootings. Eleven people were killed and six others were injured.
The Penguins committed $50,000, then raised the rest through auctions, sales of "Stronger Than Hate" patches, a text-to-donate program and an in-arena collection.
In all, the team so far has raised $348,705.
In addition, the team has pledged $200,000 to the newly created Public Safety Support Trust Fund in the city, which will benefit first responders.
Ruthie Blum: ‘Real Time’ Jewish America and Trump
Weiss was correct in her description of the values that the Jewish people and America share. She was way off-base, however, in asserting that such values are being lost under Trump.Rod Liddle: ‘My journey into the darkest depths of British antisemitism’
In the first place, Trump supporters, other than the radical fringe, believe in those values. This is not something that can be said, however, for many of Trump’s extremist enemies, who are smack in the mainstream, occupying prominent positions in the media, academia, Hollywood and Congress. Such people claim the moral high ground while fighting against all of the virtues—chief among them “equality under the law” and “respect for dissent”—that make America the most enviable country and desirable destination in the world.
In the second place, to believe that a single president can undo all that is valuable in the United States—all that the country stands for—is to dismiss democracy in general and American democracy in particular. Washington is not Tehran, Cairo, Ankara or Moscow. America’s political system and society do not undergo chaotic upheaval with every changing of the guard. Republicans and Democrats tend to torture one another on the pages of newspapers or on Twitter. Anyone who physically attacks a rival is arrested for assault.
Cesar Sayoc, the pro-Trump mail-bombing suspect, is behind bars until his trial and faces 50 years in prison. Robert Bowers, the anti-Trump synagogue shooter, potentially faces the death penalty. This is as it should be, and Trump would be the first to agree.
A society cannot be judged on the basis of its criminal, psychotic or evil members, but rather, on how it responds to them. The same goes for its anti-Semites. America—yes, Trump’s America—passes this test with flying colors. Weiss need not worry about Jews “trading” their values for Trump’s pro-Israel policies. Jewish voting habits are as old as anti-Semitism and die equally hard.
Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered. You can’t tell the truth about Palestine because Jews control the media. They run the government.Yes, Anti-Semitism Is a Problem Again. No, It Is Not 1939
And Jews, don’t forget, were the architects of capitalism. And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge), the Facebook posts from Labour lefties asking: what have Jews ever done for the world?; or demanding that Israel be demolished and maybe set up in the USA; Ken Livingstone suggesting that Hitler was a Zionist, the only point of such a ludicrous statement being to equate Zionism with Nazism.
Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more. The bigotry spewed out every day, on the hour.
It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement. It took me a few years to realise it and I guess you lot knew it all along. So, please: forgive me. It’s just that it was something that seemed hard to believe –in my caring, Socialist, party.
But don’t forgive them. Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite.
That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.
I don’t mean to trivialize the hatred expressed when someone scrawls a swastika, or retweets a vicious anti-Jewish meme, or spews bile at a Jewish journalist. Recent attacks on Orthodox Jewish men in Brooklyn were despicable. The demonization of George Soros is ominous.The Pittsburgh massacre has shattered the illusion that our synagogues are havens from an ugly, dangerous world.BDS Activists Celebrate Celebrity Chef’s Withdrawal from Israel Event
But we shouldn’t grant more power to the hate-mongers than they deserve. The coast-to-coast gestures of solidarity and acts of kindness that followed the Pittsburgh massacre are far more typical of America than the acts of a deranged subculture. The Pittsburgh massacre is not a sign that Jews have lost their bargain with America, but that hatred by a disgruntled and alienated minority has been encouraged and allowed to fester — by cynical politicians, by feckless social media companies, by apologists who are willing to condone bigotry so long as it is directed at groups they don’t like.
Often when I raise this issue, someone will ask, “But what about Europe?” Jews in many European countries feel under siege, both from a resurgent right and from Islamists. Jews in Belgium and Paris were targets of vicious anti-Semitic terrorism in recent years. European Jews will tell you that if they don’t yet plan to emigrate to Israel, they are keeping a bag packed. Or they’ll say that they don’t dare wear their yarmulkes on the street.
But that’s the point: The United States is not Europe. American Jews don’t live their lives that way. America has not broken its promise, and saying so is a misdirection. If you throw up your hands and say “it’s 1939 all over again,” if you tell your own story as one of siege and constant threat, you might reach for the very worst remedies. You’ll overlook the advantages, political and cultural, that actually give you the power to fight not just anti-Semitism, but bigotry in all its forms. For example, perhaps what we can offer Jews in Europe is the American example of embracing diversity — and suggest that America has flourished because it encourages the integration of people of different faiths and colors and national origins.
If anti-Semitism is a chronic disease, it is one that we can fight whenever it erupts. But that means looking for the right treatment. Fatalism is not the cure.
Celebrity chef Gabrielle Hamilton withdrew this week from a planned culinary event in Tel Aviv, delighting anti-Israel activists.
Hamilton, an award-winning chef and the owner of Prune, had been set to feature at the upcoming Round Tables tour. Round Tables, now in its fourth year, is an annual culinary festival held in Israel. Sponsors include private organizations like American Express and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Hamilton would not comment on her decision to withdraw.
In comments to the Jerusalem Post, Round Tables co-founder Yair Bekier explained that this year’s event would highlight the role of women and their contributions to the culinary world:
This is the fourth year in which we have held the exciting meeting of chefs from all over the world, the local culinary endeavor and the creation of fascinating cultural ties that strengthens Israel’s status as a gastronomic capital on a global scale. This year, we decided to bring the women to the forefront of the stage, to raise awareness of the importance of women in the field and to create a bridge of creativity, one that combines the best chefs with raw materials, local culinary trends, and of course the most talented artists in the world.
Activists from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement praised Hamilton for her decision. The BDS movement aims to isolate Israel politically and economically in an effort to delegitimize its government and derail its policies. It promotes accusations of Israeli "occupation" and "apartheid."
BDS organizers took credit for the decision, pointing to their earlier calls for Hamilton and other chefs to withdraw.
Trudeau on BDS antisemitism: "Jewish students still feel unwelcome on some of our university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation. And out of our entire community of nations, it is Israel whose right to exist is most widely—and wrongly—questioned." https://t.co/gZBNNzXhwF
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) November 8, 2018
"I don't have an antisemitic bone in my body."
— The Mossad (@TheMossadIL) November 9, 2018
- @rogerwaters pic.twitter.com/0o66PBzDk7
Unbridled Jew Hatred: This is QNN
Quds News Network, the Facebook page that spends 24/7 demonizing the Jewish state, recently got sloppy and allowed its inner Jew hater to shine.After outcry, Macron says France won’t honor Nazi collaborator general
For the record, I have not seen any angry reactions to his appointment. I think Nisreen AlKhatib, the person behind Quds News Network, is projecting.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday there would be no official homage to Nazi collaborator Philippe Petain as part of World War I ceremonies this week, a day after sparking outrage by saying his inclusion would be “legitimate.”French PM says anti-Semitic acts in country up 69% this year
“It was never a question of celebrating him individually,” Macron said in Maubeuge as he toured WWI sites in northern France this week ahead of the 100th anniversary of the armistice on Sunday.
Petain was hailed as a national hero after WWI for leading French forces to victory, but during World War II he became head of the French government which collaborated with occupying German forces and helped deport thousands of Jews to death camps.
Macron had indicated Wednesday that Petain would be among the eight army chiefs honored at the Invalides military museum on Saturday, saying he had earned the nation’s gratitude.
“He was a great soldier, it’s a fact,” he said, though he stressed that Petain had made “disastrous choices” during World War II.
His comments were denounced by rival politicians and Jewish leaders, and set off a flurry of criticism on Twitter.
“The only thing we will remember about Petain is that he was convicted, in the name of the French people, of national indignity during his trial in 1945,” Francis Kalifat of the CRIF association of French Jewish groups.
The French president was also rebuked by Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett.
Anti-Semitic acts in France rose by 69 percent in the first nine months of 2018, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Friday, the 80th anniversary of the infamous “Kristallnacht” of Nazi attacks against Jews.Police Warn Of Brooklyn Teens Targeting Jews In Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes
“Every aggression perpetrated against one of our citizens because they are Jewish echoes like the breaking of new crystal,” Philippe wrote on Facebook, referring to the start of the Nazi drive to wipe out Jews on November 9, 1938, also known as the Night of Broken Glass.
“Why recall, in 2018, such a painful memory? Because we are very far from being finished with anti-Semitism,” he said, calling the number of acts “relentless.”
After a record year in 2015, the total number of anti-Semitic acts, including nonviolent ones, fell by 58% in 2016 and went down a further 7% last year, despite there being an increase in the number of violent acts.
In his Facebook post, Philippe quoted Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel as saying that “the real danger, my son, is indifference,” pledging that the French government would not be indifferent.
New York police are investigating a series of three bias crimes perpetrated by a gang of teenagers who are reportedly targeting Jewish people.White House says neo-Nazi leader visited on public tour
Police said that a group of black teenagers between the ages of 12 and 14 wearing hoodies committed the anti-Semitic attacks on Saturday within a 45-minute time period. The group first allegedly pushed a Jewish youth from behind and knocked off his hat, then threw a metal pipe into the glass window of a synagogue, and lastly knocked a 10-year-old Jewish girl to the ground. (RELATED: NYT Fears Anti-Semitic Threats Could Be ‘Setback’ For the Man Who Made Them)
“When you look at the totality of what we have here, there is a nexus to the Jewish faith in all three,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea during a press conference, according to ABC 7.
Police arrested suspects in connection with the incidents, which they are investigating as hate crimes, after circulating surveillance footage of the suspects. Authorities have not released the suspects’ names as they are minors.
The NYPD noted that there has been a recent surge in hate crimes, especially anti-Semitic crimes, in New York. Authorities reported a total of 309 hate crimes committed in New York from January to October, 159 of which were anti-Semitic.
Two days before the teenagers’ reported crimes against Jewish people, officials at a Brooklyn synagogue found threatening, Neo-Nazi graffiti inside their building on Nov. 1. Authorities said the suspect in that case is “described as a male Black, approximately 20-years-old, 5’8,″ 140 lbs, with black hair and last seen wearing a red suit jacket,” according to security footage.
A leading white supremacist who toured the White House grounds was part of a garden tour that is open to the public, the White House said.Newly revealed letter shows a fearful Einstein long before Nazis’ rise
Patrick Casey, who leads the American neo-Nazi and white supremacist group Identity Evropa, posted photos Wednesday on Twitter of him posing on the White House grounds.
“Evropa has landed at the White House!” he said.
Sarah Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, told JTA in an email: “He was one of more than twenty-five thousand people who came to the White House Fall Garden Tour, which is open to the public. Free tickets are made available to anyone who wants to attend.”
Identity Evropa coined the phrase “You will not replace us,” which refers to a conspiracy theory that Jews are masterminding a plan to replace whites with non-whites.
Identity Evropa participated in the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 that ended with violence and a deadly attack on counterprotesters allegedly carried out by a white supremacist. During that march, the Identity Evropa slogan was echoed in the phrase “Jews will not replace us.”
More than a decade before the Nazis seized power in Germany, Albert Einstein was on the run and already fearful for his country’s future, according to a newly revealed handwritten letter.80 Years After Nazi ‘Kristallnacht’ Pogrom, One Jewish Girl’s Holocaust Diary Sounds Warning Against Revival of Antisemitism
His longtime friend and fellow Jew, German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, had just been assassinated by right-wing extremists and police had warned the noted physicist that his life could be in danger too.
So Einstein fled Berlin and went into hiding in northern Germany. It was during this hiatus that he penned a handwritten letter to his beloved younger sister, Maja, warning of the dangers of growing nationalism and anti-Semitism years before the Nazis ultimately rose to power, forcing Einstein to flee his native Germany for good.
“Out here, nobody knows where I am, and I’m believed to be missing,” he wrote in August 1922. “Here are brewing economically and politically dark times, so I’m happy to be able to get away from everything.”
The previously unknown letter, brought forward by an anonymous collector, is set to go on auction next week in Jerusalem with an opening asking price of $12,000.
“I’d like to sleep through the rest of this war and wake up when it’s over. After all, I could read about what happened.” — from the diary of Rywka Lipszyc, Feb. 12, 1944.‘Kristallnacht’: The Legal Status of the Bystander
For the global community of Holocaust scholars and educators, the 80th anniversary of the Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jews commonly known as “Kristallnacht” — which falls this Friday and Saturday — could scarcely come at a more pertinent moment.
Since the violent far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Americans have become transfixed by the growing brazenness of this country’s white supremacists. In the last month alone, the murderous consequences of this hatred have been on graphic display — first in the Oct. 24 slaying of two African-Americans in a Kentucky grocery store by a gunman who reportedly tried to enter a black community church moments earlier, and then the Oct. 27 massacre of 11 Jewish worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue by a neo-Nazi assailant, marking the worst antisemitic atrocity in the history of the US.
Over in Europe, antisemitism is more in the frame now than at any other time since the Nazi era. From the antisemitic murders of two elderly French Jewish women — Sarah Halimi in 2017 and Mireille Knoll this year — to the unresolved crisis over antisemitism at all levels of the British Labour Party, to the bitter disputes in Eastern European countries on the topic of wartime collaboration with the Nazis, scarcely a day passes without discussion or reflection on whether there is a future for Jews on the continent. And in the Middle East, Holocaust denial, crude antisemitism and comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany remain a staple of the region’s media, as well as a core theme of the Iranian regime’s propaganda.
I am child of the Holocaust. Both of my parents are Holocaust survivors. This essay seeks to answer three questions essential to my understanding of the Holocaust, the bystander, and my understanding of duty owed to another individual.
Those questions are: What do we learn from the Holocaust in general, in particular from Kristallnacht, regarding the bystander? What is the responsibility of the individual in the face of unmitigated racism and hatred? What is the most appropriate application of the painful lessons that can be learned from the tragic events of Nov. 9-10, 1938?
On November 7, 1938, a Jewish youth named Herschel Grynszpan shot the German diplomat Ernst Vom Rath in Paris. Grynszpan’s family, Polish Jews living in Germany, were ordered to be expelled by the Nazi regime and transferred to refugee camps whose conditions were dire. Vom Rath died of his wounds on Nov. 9; word reached Hitler shortly thereafter while attending a dinner commemorating the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Upon hearing the news, Hitler left the dinner; speaking on his behalf Goebbels, in essence, called for a pogrom directed against Jews. The expression “spontaneously planned” has been used by historians to describe the unfolding of the events of the next two days.
Within hours of Goebbels’ words, more than 1,000 synagogues were set on fire or destroyed; in 24 hours 91 Jews were killed; and over 30,000 Jewish men aged 16 to 60 were sent to concentration camps where they were tormented and tortured for a number of months. More than 1,000 of those arrested met their deaths in the camps. Rampant looting and extreme violence in a hateful atmosphere marked Kristallnacht, along with arrests, destruction of physical property, physical abuse, and humiliation in more than 1,000 cities, towns, and villages in Germany and Austria.
Do not sing louder. On the 80th anniversary of Kristellnacht in Germany & Austria, which launched the Holocaust, watch this film. https://t.co/LvGGDXBc6u
— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) November 9, 2018
Merkel commemorates Nazi Kristallnacht against Jews with synagogue speech
Germany has a moral duty to fight rising antisemitism, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday in an emotional speech at a Berlin synagogue to mark the 80th anniversary of a Nazi campaign of attacks on Jews.Men shouting about killing Jews end London Kristallnacht vigil
Dressed in black, Merkel told Jewish leaders that violence against Jews, blamed on far-right militants or Muslims, was growing in Germany now, eight decades later.
"Jewish life is blossoming again in Germany - an unexpected gift to us after the Shoah," she said, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. "But we are also witnessing a worrying antisemitism that threatens Jewish life in our country."
Germany and Austria on Friday marked "Kristallnacht," a wave of killings of Jews and looting and destruction of property launched on Nov. 9, 1938. The name refers to the broken glass which littered streets outside synagogues and Jewish shops and homes.
Shortly before Merkel spoke, an appeal court in Berlin overturned a decision by police to ban a far-right march in the capital planned for later on Friday.
Police had barred the event on the grounds it would be unacceptable to hold a far-right march on the same day as the rest of the country was commemorating Jewish victims of Nazi violence.
A vigil held by pro-Israel activists in London for Jews murdered in Arab countries was dispersed violently by men shouting about killing Jews in Arabic.Memories of Kristallnacht
The event Wednesday by the Israel Advocacy Movement was held on Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park, which is known for its culture of free speech and passionate street preachers championing various causes.
A few dozen people holding Israeli flags and candles gathered there ahead of Kristallnacht, the name of Nazi pogrom perpetrated in 1938, to highlight the suffering and slaying around the same time of many hundreds of Jews who were killed and wounded in pogroms across the Arab world.
Joseph Cohen, an Israel Advocacy Movement activist, filmed the event as about 20 men drowned his talk, shouting: “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.”
The cry relates to an event in the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Some of the men shouted about “Palestine,” surrounding the pro-Jewish activists and shoving them.
During 1938, the Polish authorities became concerned that due to the increased persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria, some 60,000 to 100,000 Polish Jews in those countries would seek - or be forced - to return to Poland to escape Nazi persecution. So the Polish government legislated a citizenship law requiring Poles who had lived abroad for five years or more to obtain a stamp to revalidate their passport. But all Jews were refused this revalidation, leaving them stateless. When the Nazi regime learned of this, Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler ordered that all Polish Jews be immediately and forcefully repatriated to Poland.On the Anniversary of Kristallnacht, a Rare Story of Two Righteous Gentiles
On Oct. 28, 20,000 Jewish men, women and children were arrested, hurriedly packed just one suitcase, and were transported in sealed trains to the Polish border, my own father among them. When armed German guards with dogs drove them to the crossing, the Polish guards closed the border and received the order: No Jews. After 3 days the Poles were forced to accept them.
On the night of Nov. 9, all synagogues in Germany, Austria and the by-now Nazi occupied Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia were set alight, 7,500 Jewish shops and other property were destroyed and 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps.
When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Friedrich and Pauline Kellner, known to their neighbors as longtime opponents of the Nazis, left Mainz for the small town of Laubach, hoping to avoid trouble with the new government. Friedrich found work there as the manager of a courthouse, which also afforded him some small amount of protection. The Kellners’ grandson, Robert Scott Kellner, describes how they helped a Jewish family in the town:Anglo-German Jewish Businessman Wilfrid Israel Saved Thousands from Nazi Persecution
As worried Jews sought to leave Germany, a Jewish woman in Laubach, Hulda Heynemann, approached Pauline for help. The police had brought false charges against her son-in-law, Julius Abt, to confiscate his property. Friedrich . . . and Pauline helped Abt get to the port in Hamburg to leave for America. The Heynemanns’ daughter, Lucie, expecting a child, remained behind until she gave birth. The Kellners helped mother and infant son get away as well. They tried to convince Lucie’s parents to leave with her, but the Heynemann family had been in Laubach for generations, and the old couple felt certain their neighbors would do them no harm. . . .
The Heynemanns made a mistake trusting their neighbors. On the moonlit night of November 9, 1938, during an orchestrated nationwide frenzy of religious and racial hatred [that came to be known as Kristallnacht], Friedrich and Pauline Kellner tried vainly to halt the mob seeking to attack the town’s Jews. The judge who presided over the court, Ludwig Schmitt, refused Friedrich’s request to bring the Jewish families into the courthouse for protection. . . .
Friedrich wanted to press charges against the leaders of the stormtroopers [who led the assault], bringing his and Pauline’s written testimony to Judge Schmitt. The judge angrily denounced him and said [that the leader of the local Nazi women’s group] had demanded an investigation into Pauline’s ancestry to see if she had Jews in her family—nothing else could explain why the wife of a justice official sent her son to America to avoid army service, did not cooperate with the women’s group, and helped Jews. “And we have questions about you, too,” the judge said ominously to Friedrich, telling him the matter was already in the hands of the state authorities in Darmstadt.
Wilfrid Israel was an Anglo-German Jewish businessman and philanthropist. Born in London, his father owned and directed the N. Israel department store in Berlin, where Wilfred became personnel manager of 2,000 staff.
On 10 November 1938 - Kristallnacht, the store was ransacked. SS guards rounded up the Jewish employees as other Nazis shattered display cases, slashed paintings and threw typewriters out of the windows. Wilfred contacted the Nazi commander of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Hermann Baranowski, and negotiate his employees' release in return for a promise of unlimited credit at the store.
Wilfred then helped the store's remaining 200 Jewish employees to emigrate, giving them two years' salary in cash and securing many of them jobs abroad. This undoubtedly saved their lives. Before he left Berlin on 15 May 1939 for London, he played a central role in organizing the Kindertransport and other rescue schemes for those already in the camps.
He died on 1 June 1943 when his flight was shot down by a Luftwaffe fighter while he was returning from Lisbon, where he had been on a mission for the Jewish Agency arranging entry certificates to Palestine for refugees
Over 70,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. This week, just over 70 years later, IDF officers returned to sing Israel’s national anthem “The Hope.” Listen pic.twitter.com/yeueUls9Hs
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDFSpokesperson) November 8, 2018
