Holocaust Education and “The Elephant at the Table” (Judean Rose)

                        Interview with Master Holocaust Teacher Dorene Schwartz-Weitz

Master Holocaust Teacher Dorene Schwartz-Weitz

Holocaust education is something that should be part of every history or social studies class. Or so you would think. After all, the Holocaust is an historic event, a catastrophic event, an attempt at genocide. It happened. People are yet alive to give testimony that this is so.

We know however, that in many cases, this particular event in history, the event known as the Holocaust, goes unmentioned in elementary and high school curriculums. Artist and Master Holocaust Teacher Dorene Schwartz-Weitz aims to change this. She wants mandatory Holocaust Education in every school in the United States. And she wants that education done properly. Schwartz Weitz wants Holocaust Education curriculums to be not only mandated but regulated.

How do we know that the state of Holocaust Education within the United States is a failure? A 2020 poll revealed that 63% of the respondents had no idea that “6 million” Jews had been murdered.* Of those who were aware that a number of Jews had been murdered by the Nazis, 36% believed the number of victims to be 2 million or so. A further 48% of those polled could not name a single concentration camp. They had apparently never even heard of Auschwitz, the most infamous of all Nazi concentration camps.

The Holocaust occurred only 75 years ago, but is largely forgotten by Americans. Some educators in, for example, Florida and Texas, feel that Holocaust denial should be a part of Holocaust Education, and treated as valid opinion. Not to mention the staff member who had third graders reenact the Holocaust and told them that Jews caused the Holocaust "because they ruined Christmas." 

Whether all of this is from ignorance or antisemitism, it is (and sometimes isn't) hard to say. But we do know that something must be done. Dorene Schwartz-Weitz is doing her part, having made it her life’s work to improve and make mandatory, Holocaust Education in schools across America. A busy artist whose uncle, aunts, and cousin were Holocaust Survivors, Dorene gave generously of her time to tell us about her work:

Varda Epstein: Tell us something about yourself, your background. How does one become a master teacher of the Holocaust?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: If someone would have shown me a video of my future, I'd never believe I'd become someone who has devoted her life to working passionately on promoting Holocaust Education. My original career trajectory was to become an artist. And indeed, my first major gallery opening was on 57th Street at the age of 25.

Though I was raised by an extended family of Holocaust Survivors, the subject was always "the elephant at the table" (as Jews, we were always at the table, lol). The noted Holocaust historian and Survivor, Dr. Yaffa Eliach, zt"l, was my high school teacher. But antisemitism wasn't part of my everyday life experience.

Dr. Yaffa Eliach (A"H) with Dorene Schwartz-Weitz

There was, however, always an undercurrent of antisemitism prevalent throughout my teaching career with what unfolded and what I came to witness was a lack of basic understanding of what it was to be a Jew. The culmination of all this arrived one day when a student—a high school football star in the running for a full scholarship—refused to do the required assignments. When confronted, he said, "You didn't learn your lesson. You should be sent back to Auschwitz".

Informed of the incident, the administration of the school failed to support me. Instead, they turned the tables "and then they came after me" with accusations regarding my teaching abilities.

It was then that I wrote, coordinated and taught, "Portraits of Survivors,” an interdisciplinary Holocaust Education program, and went back to Rutgers for a Master Teacher of The Holocaust certification. I was thereafter awarded plaques inscribed with, "Excellence in Teaching.”

Varda Epstein: Not long ago, you told me that teaching the Holocaust “should not be like teaching kids dangers of smoking when they haven’t started.” Why shouldn’t the Holocaust be taught as a cautionary tale?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: There is a phenomenon I became aware of while teaching the Holocaust. I had a student who seemed so dedicated, supportive and involved until I realized it was he who was carving those swastikas into the table where he sat. Apparently, when teaching, i.e., anti-smoking or sex ed. you get students who will suddenly start smoking and students who will start to engage in premarital sex.

It's called "The Boomerang Effect" and has to do with the fact that those in this age group are often rebellious.

Varda Epstein: Can you talk about the principal in Florida who refused to say that the Holocaust is a fact? What are your thoughts on this? How can we address top down Holocaust denial from our educators?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: More and more we are seeing the dire need for school to be a safe place. Creating this environment begins from the top down in setting the atmosphere. Administrators need to first be educated, have a curriculum in place, and an agreement as to how to best achieve a result where students know their well-being is the top priority.

Opening the door for Holocaust Denial by redefining it as "others' views and opinions,” sets the stage for conflict, not resolution. Would we give sex offenders a voice in sex education? I would dare to say that denying the Holocaust, with all its ramifications, is far worse.

Varda Epstein: How can educators teach the Holocaust to youth in an accurate way without sugarcoating the truth? And if we get that far, how do we avoid traumatizing them?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: The concept of having a whole school work on Holocaust education as an interdisciplinary program creates the environment where everyone knows they are working together toward a common goal of learning so as to promote an understanding of how this could have happened, and thus be prevented.

Moreover, having a student meet with a Holocaust Survivor so as to listen to their life's story of survival makes the unspeakable more humanely digestible. After 9/11, such meetings became all the more valuable with our students desperately seeking ways to survive psychologically or in the face of terror.

In the future, we will need to rely on resources such as Steven Spielberg’s interviews of Holocaust Survivors, and the vast archives at Yad Vashem, Bad Arolsen, and the like.

My Great Uncle Moish, Aunt Tzeril and Yankel, Holocaust Survivors on their first day in America.

Yankel was 9.

They survived by burying themselves alive in shallow graves and bunkers, in the forests surrounding Poland.

Varda Epstein: Where are we failing in regard to teaching the Holocaust?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: With regard to the goals of teaching lessons learned from the Holocaust, we fail in that there isn't first an agreement as to the necessity for Holocaust Education in its own right, rather than as a tagline to Genocide Education, where the Holocaust may be merely mentioned, if at all. There needs to be an awareness of the Holocaust as the turning point in civilization, on all levels. When the discussion encompasses other times and places where there were unspeakable genocides, it waxes over the very facts. The Holocaust happened at a time and in a place where science, art, music, and education were in top form. This wasn't happening to some uncivilized population unable to protect itself, thus making for the possibility of, “it can happen again.”

We need a Holocaust Mandate instituted as a requirement for a high school graduation diploma. There needs to be an agreed upon curriculum implemented by administrators and teachers, and supported by parents.

 

My father's family, Maciejow Poland. Taken the day my Bubby, father and uncle left to the US. Everyone else in this picture was killed as Hitler went through all the shtetlach. 

Varda Epstein: How can we improve Holocaust education in the classroom?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: In writing a Holocaust curriculum, there needs to be age appropriate information paired with exercises that promote an understanding of how to process and direct those goals so as to improve our relationship to the Holocaust. Those who have gone through Holocaust Education programs, Holocaust Survivors, children of Holocaust Survivors, and victims of antisemitism are our greatest resources in conveying the message. Students should know what a Jew is, along with some Jewish history (including prior persecutions), and current events as part of the basic foundation of understanding. Additionally, students should be made aware of the WWI events that led to Hitler’s, y"s, rise to power, which in turn, led to the near accomplishment of his main goal: the Final Solution.

All of the above should be included in the Holocaust curriculum.

Varda Epstein: How can parents supplement their children’s understanding of the Holocaust at home? 

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: After sitting to draw the portraits of a couple who had survived the Holocaust, one of my high school students said, "I didn't believe the Holocaust happened, but when I saw all these old people getting off a bus on this cold icy winter day just to talk to us, I knew they were not coming to make up stories.”

It later became known that the student's parents were Holocaust deniers. Thus separated from their influence, he was able to form his own opinion.

We cannot assume that parents will be supportive. Some need to first be educated. On the other hand, there are many parents who want to help and do so by chaperoning or taking their children to a Holocaust museum or movie, and then discussing the lessons to be learned.

Student portrait of Survivor Adam Boren

Student portrait of Survivor Ana Balaban

Varda Epstein: What would you say is the main takeaway that we should want our children to have from the historic catastrophe that is the Holocaust?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: The world is made of many nations, religions (4,200!), and creeds. Though we are sometimes seemingly so different, we share a most common need and goal for communication, acceptance, understanding and especially peace and love. By opening ourselves up to this awareness, we can all enjoy our shared lives.

Yes, it can happen again, but with Holocaust Education you will know there is a choice in how to respond to your own or others' needs for help. There are still many Righteous Gentiles being honored for their unbelievable courage when putting their own lives and the lives of their loved ones, on the line to save a Jew.

Varda Epstein: What does the future hold for you as a Holocaust educator?

Dorene Schwartz-Weitz: Things have drastically changed over the past two years in the world. We are living in the most challenging of times. G-d fearing people see "The Hand of G-d" in all unfolding.

Growing up after The Holocaust, in The Golden Medina, we had childhoods filled with attainable dreams and hope. As a parent/grandparent I pray my children and grandchildren will enjoy the same opportunities afforded us—and especially in regard to having the ability to live their lives as practicing Jews.

As Jews, we are taught to be accepting and respectful of others. Hillel summarized the entirety of the Torah by stating the most important commandment is to, "Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

As a Holocaust Educator, I see that our work, in many ways, has just begun.

If you would like to help assist the goals of education toward prevention, here's what all of us should do ASAP:

1. Demand mandatory Holocaust education: only 19 out of 50 states in the US have mandatory Holocaust Education.

2. Learn more about the issue of mandatory education here: "If You Don't Have Mandatory Holocaust Education, Demand It"

3. Add your voice and receive updates about mandatory Holocaust Education on Facebook by joining our group: Campaigning to make Holocaust education mandatory.

*It is important to note that “6 million” was only an estimate. The actual number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is closer to 7 million and still counting, as mass graves and bodies continue to be discovered in various parts of Europe.

---

---

Read More

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and The Myth of the Good German (Judean Rose)

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a Holocaust film from 2008, is one I’d never seen before. I didn’t really want to watch it. I’ve seen enough Holocaust movies to last a lifetime, if you’ll excuse the inappropriate idiom. But like vegetables you eat for your health and not your palate, I figured I was due for a serving.

Anyway, it’s not like one can really shy away from learning about and remembering the Holocaust. Or maybe you can, if you are a non-Jew. You can just choose to stick your head in historical sand and live your life blind to the implications of so many millions of Jews hunted down, herded into gas chambers, and incinerated into ash.

But not only non-Jews become ostriches when faced with the catastrophe that is the Holocaust. Jews worldwide say, “Never again,” and then do very little when actually faced with a huge spike in antisemitic incidents and attacks as is currently the case. For this reason alone, the rest of us are tasked with the heavy responsibility of refreshing our collective memories, and continuing to educate ourselves on this subject. This work will never be over.

Watching The Boy in Striped Pajamas is a part of this work, only because it teaches a lie. Which is why it is unsurprising that The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is on Netflix. After all, Michelle and Barak “randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli” Obama, are hard at work destroying long-accepted societal norms. They are getting the big bucks to teach us that whites have privilege, America is not exceptional, and the Jews are nothing special:

Back in 2018, the [Obamas] first signed a groundbreaking multi-year deal with Netflix through their production company, Higher Ground Productions. "We created Higher Ground to harness the power of storytelling," President Obama told The Hollywood Reporter. "That’s why we couldn’t be more excited about these projects. Touching on issues of race and class, democracy and civil rights, and much more, we believe each of these productions won’t just entertain, but will educate, connect and inspire us all."

Of course, I wasn’t really thinking of any of this when I clicked play. Netflix had shown me the preview; I had some free time; and I realized that I had never watched this movie and thought I probably should. I steeled myself for the “lesson” I was about to absorb.

The first thing I noticed was the lush cinematography. The scenery and clothing are realistic, the colors rich. As time went on, I realized that beautiful colors and fine film work can be as deceptive as it is effective in strengthening the message a movie is intended to impart. In the case of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, that message is: Not all Germans are bad and not all Jews are good.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas then, is one more in the pantheon of Holocaust movies calculated to show good Germans where few to none would have or could have existed. The movies are well made and full of pathos. The main purpose of these films, however, is not to teach the Holocaust but to suggest that there were the same number of good Germans as bad—and as many Germans who refused to serve in the Nazi army as those who served, an outlandish and shocking fiction.

Watching these movies, anyone ignorant of what really happened will be waiting for it: the moment where a good Nazi does a kindness for or saves a Jew. Because that is what filmgoers like best. That is what moves them. This is not, however, what happened in the Holocaust. For the approximately 7 million (and still counting) Jews who were murdered, there were no good Nazis, no good Germans waiting in the wings to save a Jew just so viewers could pass around that box of tissues as they delicately dab their eyes (and eat popcorn).

The Jews had no Saviors

The Jews had no saviors. They were murdered, their lives and future generations lost forever. It is as coldly horrible as that.

But inversion of truth is a theme that is evident throughout The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The roles are reversed, and a little German boy and his family are the victims. This is what students are meant to absorb as they watch this “educational” film.

This is actually no different from the message imparted by the BBC today about Jewish victims of Arab terror. The BBC works hard at skewing the truth for its audiences. Typical consumers of BBC fare have no idea that many Arabs are terrorists and that they specifically target Jews. The BBC has told them, and they believe, that the Jews have no right to any territory within the borders of the modern State of Israel. BBC viewers believe that the terrorists are victims, and the victims, evildoers, because the BBC has told them so.

Humanizing Nazis

“Humanizing Nazis echoes the trend of humanizing terrorists. It serves the purpose of diminishing the brutality of their intentions by claiming a justifiable ‘cause,’ says Dr. Elana Heideman, Holocaust scholar and Executive Director of The Israel Forever Foundation. “As a result, one who feels the humanity of the Nazi can examine the victims of that brutality with increasing callousness, disregard and, specifically for Jews, increased dehumanization.”

This kind of disregard for and even dismissal of the plight of the Jews is evident in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The movie does not teach the Holocaust—instead it whitewashes genocide for an audience so ignorant of history, it doesn’t even know it is watching a lie. Or perhaps it simply doesn’t want to know, and prefers fiction to reality.

As I watched The Boy in Striped Pajamas, I came to understand that I was not so much getting a lesson on the Holocaust, as on the futility of war. This is galling, and a misdirection. The Holocaust is about Jewish genocide. Look at it straight on, I angrily told the screen. Stop co-opting it for your flavor of the month ideology.

Not that anyone would listen. Just as they wouldn't listen in my Facebook meme group when I asked them not to use Holocaust and Nazi terminology or imagery in reference to vaccination mandates and programs, or anything and anyone they do not like. 

A Joking Reference

“Nazi, now a word used to refer to anyone who may demonstrate some version of stringency in their behavior or attitude, has become a form of a joking reference, removing the severity of the murderous truth behind the name,” says Dr. Heideman. “The potential benefit of humanizing Nazis would be if it were to teach others how easy it is for any individual to give in to their basest human tendencies for evil and cruelty when the matter of responsibility is taken away.

“Unfortunately, this is not the result as more and more become enamored with the idea of power, strength, pride that the humanized Nazi represents,” says Heideman.

Perhaps that is why we find Bruno so sympathetic. The little German boy, son of a Nazi commandant, is the main character in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. His grandmother is against Nazism and war in general. Her punishment for speaking out is that she is killed—though we are told she died in an Allied bombing. We know, however, that she was killed, because her husband, a Nazi sympathizer, was there with her and was left completely unscathed. This is one of many pointed revelations that Bruno and his mother confront as they wrestle with understanding what is actually happening.

It is a very slow reveal. And no one who really knows the history of the Holocaust would believe that everyday Germans learned only with time that evil that was all around them. Even little boys like Bruno would have known full well that the Jews were being hunted down and killed like rats. But in the context of the fiction that is this movie, Bruno remains clueless throughout the movie. Which is why *SPOILER ALERT* he blundered into a gas chamber and died.

Bruno isn’t the only character who doesn’t get it. His mother, too, seems to have little awareness of the Holocaust until it is waved under her nose. His father, of course, is a prototypical Nazi brute. There needed to be at least one. (Ralf is there to represent!)

The Real Drama Begins

It’s when Bruno’s family moves next door to a fictional Auschwitz that the real drama begins. There’s a terrible smell. We see the chimney of the crematorium belching Jewish smoke. Bruno’s mom figures it out and has a nervous breakdown. The subtle message here is that “not every German” took part in the atrocities. Some, like Bruno’s fictional mom, were either married to Nazis, making it complicated for them to leave, or were simply unaware of what was happening all around them. Which is simply not possible.

We learn that the maid and a handsome blond Nazi soldier named Kotler are probably Jews under cover. They overact the part of “Good Germans” and Nazis, in order to save their skins. One of them is unsuccessful.

Bruno, against his mother’s directive, goes to explore what he thinks is a farm next door. He comes to an electric fence where he meets Shmuel, a little Jewish boy imprisoned in the camp who is stealing a few precious minutes of leisure. After they spend a few minutes getting acquainted, Shmuel takes up a wheelbarrow and goes back to work. Which makes no sense. In a real concentration camp, he would have had no ability to take a break to play at a fence. He would have had no will of his own to resume work at his leisure.

The friendship between the two deepens on Bruno’s daily visits to the fence, sometimes with food that is subsequently wolfed down by the Jewish boy. The storyline as presented made me angry. What Jewish boy, in such a scenario, would have had the energy to play?

Equal Danger

Also: instead of worrying about Nazi brutality, the viewer spends most of the movie terrified that one of the little boys will make a mistake and be electrocuted at the fence. This is part of the lie that the producers shove down our throats: Jew or German, it matters not. Both are in equal danger, both boys are willing to sacrifice everything--their very lives--for friendship (as if the Jewish boy had a choice or anything to say in the matter).

Eventually, Bruno risks his life to go under the fence. We are made to believe this makes him brave. The little boy is not a Nazi, just a regular German hero. But in actual fact, there was no such thing.  

Hannah May Randall, writing for Holocaust Learning UK, writes:

Bruno’s characterisation perpetuates the belief that most German civilians were ignorant of what was happening around them. In fact the general public in Germany and in occupied Europe were well aware that Jewish people were being persecuted, forced to emigrate and eventually deported. There were also many who knew that Jewish people were being killed. Many Germans profited from the Holocaust as Jewish properties and belongings were ‘Aryanised’, which meant they were taken from their Jewish owners and given instead to ‘ethnic’ Germans.  A minority of German civilians resisted Nazi ideology. Nazi authorities stamped out resistance to the regime quickly and brutally . . .

As an audience we learn a lot about Bruno, so he becomes a real little boy in our imaginations. However, Shmuel is only ever depicted as a one-dimensional victim.  Shmuel has no personality or individuality, so the audience doesn’t build an emotional connection with him. This means it is harder for the reader to empathise with Shmuel and his situation. . .

Shmuel’s story is also historically inaccurate. For readers of the book it is clear that the camp is probably the Auschwitz concentration camp complex as Bruno calls it ‘Out-With’. If a young boy like Shmuel had entered Auschwitz-Birkenau then it is very likely he would have been sent straight to the gas chambers on arrival, just like the majority of children who arrived there, as the Nazis didn’t consider them useful as forced labour. A small number of children were chosen for medical experimentation but these children were kept away from the main camp. Even if Shmuel had been selected for forced labour he would not have had the opportunity to spend most of his days sitting on the outskirts of the camp.

The story’s conclusion leaves many readers upset. Bruno digs a tunnel under the wire, crawls into the camp, then he and Shmuel go looking for Shmuel’s missing father. Both boys are swept up in a group of prisoners being taken to the gas chamber, where all of them are murdered. The emotional focus of the story is on Bruno’s family and their distress as they realise what has happened to their son. The reader’s attention remains with the experience of the concentration camp commandant and his wife whose son has been killed in what is portrayed as a tragic accident.

Because the focus of the story remains on Bruno’s family, the book does not engage with the main tragedy of the Holocaust: that none of the people in the gas chamber should have been there. Due to the way in which Shmuel’s character is portrayed in the novel, his character doesn’t engage the reader’s sympathy in the way that Bruno does. Shmuel represents the 1.5 million children murdered by the Nazi regime in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the death camps of occupied Europe and in the killing fields where millions of civilians were shot into mass graves, yet the reader’s sympathy is directed towards a Nazi concentration camp commandant and his family.

A British study on student reactions to Holocaust films including The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, illustrates some of the main takeaways from the film:

"[The movie] made me feel more compassionate towards both sides in this kind of issue between maybe Jews and Germans, although I'm only using those kind of terms to, to categorise ... if anything, I've taken away ... a grander understanding of not just the Jewish people and the problems they faced but the German people and the problems that they faced, too, and then these things coming together" (Peter, 26, dance practitioner).

"Yeah, pretty much, erm, don't let your kids climb under fences ... I suppose, try to explain these things, like kind of bad things in the world to your children, don't keep them in a complete innocence ... He didn't know what was wrong with going ... to the other side ... if he had known, maybe he would have been a bit more standoffish but then you kind of think, well, the fence, that, that whole thing shouldn't have existed anyway, the concentration camps, so it's, it shouldn't have existed and he, like as a child, shouldn't have to know about it, shouldn't have to burdened with these kind of terrible, terrible events and emotions and stuff, so it's, it's, I don't know, it's very hard to reconcile what I think towards the movie, I think” (Sam, 19, student, when asked if he thought that the film held a "message for today").

The study author writes:

The arguably loaded question that I asked him, which presupposed that the film does indeed have a "message", did not surprise Sam. His response was immediate and detailed. It reflects what [some have] warned of in relation to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: that Bruno's death "becomes less a consequence of prejudice and more a bizarre health and safety incident. If Bruno had been properly instructed about the camp (as would have been the case in reality) he would not have gone inside.”

Sam realised that this "message" is flawed as the concentration camps "shouldn't have existed", but his concern is, nonetheless, reserved for Bruno (as the one that should not be burdened) rather than Shmuel. [Other experts have argued that "we are supposed to be somehow devastated, along with the Nazi commandant that the wrong boy died.”

Among the English pupils interviewed . . . we similarly find "a perspective of widespread German ignorance of the Holocaust" and "a marked tendency to shift their locus of concern from the victims of the Holocaust onto the bystanders and even, to some extent, to the perpetrators.”

It is an awful thing that the book on which this movie is based and the movie itself are considered Holocaust "classics" and are used as educational materials in classrooms all over the world. As more and more states mandate Holocaust education, we must have proper oversight to ensure that what is taught reflects the actual horror of the Holocaust. It is critical to ensure that children understand that there were no good people saving the Jews.

The enormity of the catastrophe deserves to be seen head on without historical embellishments or distortions. No one has the right to exploit and abscond with the Holocaust for their own purposes. No one has the right to minimize or distort the truth.

There were no good Nazis. 

And no one saved the Jews.

---

---

Read More

Don’t Send Your Children to Poland, Please (Judean Rose)

This year, when it came time for my son, the youngest of 12 children, to register for the class trip for Poland, I was ready. I sat Asher down for a talk and explained that he wasn’t going, that even if we had the money for such a trip, even if the school were to give him a full scholarship, he wasn’t going. I wasn’t going to allow my son to become a source of income for a country of antisemites.

And that was that.

Asher understood. More than that, he agreed. At 17, he is politically “woke.” He gets it.

This was before the whole business with Poland’s new legislation became big news. I didn’t need Poland to pass a law to understand which end was up. They don’t want us to connect Poland with the Holocaust? So fine, let us not send our children there to see the remnants of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto.

So what if the Holocaust couldn’t have happened without Germany, without the Nazis?

Does that whitewash the long history of Polish Jew hatred, the pogroms?

Does it make Poland pure and innocent compared to Bulgaria and Denmark, that did so much to help the Jews?

So what if Poles were killed, too. This too, does not erase the antisemitism that Poles imbibe with their mothers’ milk.

Moreover, why, of all countries, should the Jewish State be propping up Poland’s economy with these trips that have become a rite of passage for Israeli high school students? We’re talking some 30,000 children, spending at the very least, a few thousand shekels each for this “privilege.”

To my mind, this is one thing we can do: not support people who hate us. Just as we shouldn’t be using Israeli tax money to help the PA pay stipends to terrorists who have spilled Jewish blood.

It is exactly the same thing. No reason to reward such people or even give them a living. The latest expressions of Polish antisemitism (see for instance: Antisemitic Images, Cartoons, Flood Polish Press as Holocaust Law Dispute Festers, Polish Jews Reel from Wave of Antisemitism Following Furur Over Country’s New Holocaust Law, Top Polish Educator Blames Jews for Communist Atrocities in Antisemitic Facebook Rant, Polish PM: There Were Jewish Perpetrators of the Holocaust) only serve to reinforce what I already knew in my marrow.

What of the people who say the experience of visiting Poland is moving, and a good way to teach the Holocaust?

I say hogwash. I never traveled there and I have an acute understanding of the Holocaust and so do my children. In fact, I’d say that boycotting the place is every bit as powerful a teacher as going there.

Which is why I was raised to check labels, to not buy items from Germany or Spain or from companies that are known to be owned by antisemites. I was proud to express my heritage in this manner. Always was. Even from a young age.

We are lucky enough to have survivors still among us. Let us bring them into the schools to give testimony to our Israeli children. Let us teach the children about the horrors through books and museums. It was enough for me, and it is enough for them.

A friend very involved in Holocaust education told me that my attitude only reinforces the antisemitic trope that Jews turn everything into a matter of money. My response? Do I really care if by refusing to spend money in their country, I look “Jewy” to the Poles??

I couldn’t care less.

Let me tell you a little story: some years ago, I studied my family tree. Politics were off-topic for all the genealogy forums so I started a little yahoo group for this purpose, for people who wanted to speak about Lithuanian politics, in particular as they pertain to the Jewish people. We weren’t a huge group but we had some really interesting members, for instance, the late Prof. Dov Levin, who was a partisan in Kaunas (Kovno) during the war, and who wrote hundreds of articles and at least 16 books on the subject of the Holocaust.

At the same time, I remained active in various genealogy groups, including one for those researching my ancestral shtetl of Wasiliski (Vashilishok), Belarus, in what used to be Lithuania. Our Vashilishok group was approached to clean up the centuries’ old cemetery, which was in a deplorable condition. It wouldn’t cost very much, we were told, since the locals could be hired dirt cheap to do the job. It would take a few weeks at most to get it done.

My maternal paternal great grandfather Haiman Kopelman in Egypt in 1914. He was born in Wasiliski Belarus.

One of our group was going out there anyway for a roots trip, so he took a look and reported back to us. It seems the locals had plowed under the Jewish cemetery, claiming they were preparing to build a strip mall there. But years had gone by, and nothing had been built. Instead, the residents were grazing their cattle in this spot.

Our landsman looked, but could not find a single legible fragment of stone, so thorough had been the destruction of our ancestors’ final resting place, now a place for cows to eat and crap.

We were essentially being asked to build a fence around the area, using local labor, to keep the cattle out, and to put up a sign marking the site as a Jewish cemetery.

As we discussed this issue in our forum, I found myself really not wanting to do this thing. I knew that more Lithuanian Jews had been murdered by Lithuanians than Nazis during the war. Why would I want to support their descendants? Not to mention, I’d seen recent photos of what used to be the Jewish matzoh factory and was now a school. Covered with antisemitic graffiti.

Nothing had changed.

I sought counsel from a local rabbi on behalf of our group. The rabbi saw nothing wrong with fencing off the cemetery. Nor did he find it to be something we must do. The ball was back in our court.

I was going to see Prof. Levin in his Jerusalem home on a different matter. I figured I might as well ask him what he thought. Prof. Levin’s entire family had been murdered in the Holocaust, including his twin sister. He was from the same country as my ancestors, and like me, had made Aliyah. I figured that if anyone could give us an informed opinion, a response touched with the pain of having lived through the Holocaust, it would be Prof. Levin.

I put my question to him. Prof. Levin said (with some vehemence), “Your ancestors would not want you to spend a single shekel on restoring that cemetery! Save your money and spend it in Israel on a suitable project, where it helps the Jewish people. This is what your ancestors would want you to do.”

I felt relieved and comforted to hear Prof. Levin say this. I knew that our collective conscience could now rest easy not doing this thing. We didn’t have to do it. Moreover, we should NOT do it.

We all of us contributed, instead, to a local project that spoke to us.

And that was the last of that subject.

Now you should know that a lot of pressure was brought to bear on us by the local Belarussian Jewish community to do this thing. But we said no.

And that is as it should be.

The trips to Poland by Israeli high school students must stop. Instead, let us invest our money in their education here in Israel. Because our ancestors would not have wanted us to be sending our youth to Poland. They would want us to be building our own country, the Jewish State, with all our might and resources.

One more small story: back in the 1970’s, it was the fad for Jews to bring blue jeans and matzoh to the Jews of Russia. The refuseniks, in dire straits, could sell the jeans on the black market and have money to live on. The matzoh was for them to eat on Pesach, something unobtainable in that black hole of repression. One couple came back from Russia to tell my youth group about their trip, how they knew their hotel room had been bugged, and how dangerous it had been.

I told my late great uncle, Morris A. Paul, all about it. Uncle Morris was president of the Pittsburgh ZOA for years on end, honorary vice president of the national Executive Committee of the ZOA, and on the national budget and finance committee of the ZOA. He also served on the national Executive Board of State of Israel Bonds. Hearing about this couple’s trip to Russia, Uncle Morris commented, “I don’t know why anyone would go to Russia. I was glad to leave.”

Uncle Morris sent all my cousins to Israel for their 16^th summers. He knew where he wanted to put his consumer dollars. Right in the hands of the State of Israel.

Morris A. Paul, or “Map” as he liked to be called, would never have financed a high school student’s trip to Poland, and he sure as shooting would have been downright irritated to hear about Israeli high school students traipsing off to Auschwitz.

This is something our children do not need. And it is something we should not do.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

10/24 Links: Jerusalem Synagogue Massacre claims sixth victim; BDS activists guilty of discrimination

From Ian:

---

11 months on, rabbi dies of wounds from Jerusalem synagogue massacre

Almost a year after Palestinian terrorists killed four worshipers and a policeman at a synagogue in Jerusalem, Rabbi Haim Yehiel Rotman, who was critically injured in the attack, died from his injuries Saturday evening.
Rotman had been in a coma ever since two East Jerusalem terrorists armed with a gun, axes and meat cleavers stormed the Bnei Torah Synagogue in Har Nof last November and began attacking worshipers.
Rotman, 55, suffered a number of blows to his head from an axe.
Rotman is survived by his wife and their 11 children. He was being laid to rest at 10 p.m. Saturday night at Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery.
“He was one of the most special people in our community who always had a smile on his face,” a member of the Bnei Torah Synagogue told Israeli daily Yisrael Hayom.
“He was so loved by everyone in the community, and his death represents another blow to the community that was broken almost a year ago.”

Bassem Eid: Barbaric violence and the Palestinian failure of leadership

I am disheartened and worried about the violence being perpetrated in Israel by some of my fellow Palestinians. This latest wave of violence started at the Al Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem. It has extended to the rest of East Jerusalem, then to the West Bank, and then to all of Israel. My biggest worry is that we Palestinians appear to have no responsible leaders, neither in the Palestinian territories nor at the Knesset. These leaders, instead of calming the violence, are fanning its flames.
This wave of violence will not help the Palestinians’ economic situation. It will not help our ability to convince anyone, let alone Israelis, that we deserve a state. And it will not help grow our civil society which we badly need to do if we are to ever be taken seriously as a peace partner. All that this achieves is to push us further back. Yet our leaders are content to preach hate then sit back and enjoy their financial perks while Palestinian society is crashing and burning.
Not surprisingly, Hamas is engaged in inciting violence. The IDF reported that Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas, is “actively instigating and inciting terrorism and publicly encouraging and praising the execution of attacks against Israelis.” This is expected from Hamas unfortunately, but the problem does not stop at Hamas.
At the start of this wave of violence, Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas said “The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours… and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. […] We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing”. What kind of responsible leader would make such anti-Semitic and violent statements? The only conclusion one can draw from this is that Abbas is out of control and undeserving of the title he holds. Americans have denounced his rhetoric and so has the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who is not exactly known for his pro-Israel bias.

Bassam Tawil: The Palestinian Jihad: Lies, Lies and More Lies

First, we are not seeing anything "popular." We are not seeing, as before, thousands of Palestinians participating in the violence or protests.
It is just another wave of terrorism: targeting Jews for being Jews. The terrorists and their apologists do not distinguish between a Jew living in the city of Beersheba, and a Jew from a West Bank settlement. For the Palestinian leaders and media, these Jews are all "settlers" living in "occupied territories."
The appropriate term for the current wave of terrorism is "jihad". The attacks on Jews in Israel and the West Bank are part of the global jihad that has been waged for many years against Jews in particular, non-Muslims in general, and even against other Muslims who might not agree with a differing version of Islam.
This jihad is not aimed at "ending occupation" or protesting against misery and checkpoints. The terrorists do not see a difference between a "left wing Jew" and a "right wing Jew." They do not ask their victims about their political affiliation before knifing them.
In a grotesque rewrite of history, UNESCO declared that two Jewish holy sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, were Muslim holy sites.
This is a wave of terrorism based on lies. Palestinian leaders, including Abbas his officials in the Palestinian Authority and his Fatah faction, have been lying to us for months. They told Palestinians that the Jews are "invading" and "desecrating" Islamic holy sites with the purpose of destroying them. Abbas and his officials are urging Muslims to join the jihad against the Jews.
The leaders are now telling us that most of the terrorists were, in fact, innocent civilians who were shot dead by Israelis while on their way to buy food or going to work. Lying has become an integral part of the jihad against Jews. The campaign of lies, distortion and fabrications is not less serious than the terror attacks.
This is yet another phase of the worldwide jihad against all the "infidels" and "enemies of Islam." Those who are murdering Jews today do not hesitate to murder other non-Muslims tomorrow, especially those who are seen as Israel's friends, such as the U.S.

'The mufti planned to build crematorium in Dotan Valley'

The controversy over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks on Jerusalem Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini's role in the extermination of European Jewry has promoted veteran journalist Haviv Kanaan to recall the malicious plan the mufti devised.
Kanaan published an article in Haaretz in 1970 in which he reviewed the senior Muslim clergyman's actions in 1942, when the Jewish community in then-British Mandate Palestine was preparing for the possibility of a Nazi invasion. Kanaan said that in 1968, while researching his article, he met with Faiz Bay Idrisi, a senior Arab officer in the Mandate Police, who spoke of al-Husseini's intention to build a crematorium in the northwest Samarian hills.
"Even today, as I recall what I heard from police officials and mufti supporters, chills go through my body," Idrisi told Kanaan at the time, recalling how in case of a German invasion "Haj Amin Husseini was gearing to enter Jerusalem at the head of the Muslim Arab Legion squadron he'd created for the Third Reich. The mufti's plan was to build a huge Auschwitz-like crematorium in the Dotan Valley, near Nablus, to which Jews from Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and North Africa would be imprisoned and exterminated, just like the Jews in the death camps in Europe."
This should come as no surprise in light of al-Husseini's known views and actions during the Holocaust, and prior to it. (h/t blue sky)

Read More