HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM: KRISTALLNACHT COMMEMORATIONS EVOKE PAST MEMORIES & PRESENT FEARS

Open Letter to President of the Parti Québecois Concerning the Name of the Jewish General Hospital: Lawrence Roseberg, M.D., Jewish General Hospital, Nov. 13, 2013 —  I would like to express my great displeasure and concern about the remarks that Tania Longpré, the Parti Québécois candidate in the Viau riding, recently posted on her Facebook page.

Kristallnacht as a Political Instrument: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 12, 2013 — This year, as has often occurred in the past, some Kristallnacht memorial meetings in Europe were abused as political instruments rather than serving to memorialize Jewish victims.

Swastikas, Slurs and Torment in Town’s Schools: Benjamin Weiser, New York Times, Nov. 7, 2013— The swastikas, the students recalled, seemed to be everywhere: on walls, desks, lockers, textbooks, computer screens, a playground slide — even on a student’s face.

For Zion’s Sake: The Proclamation of Revolt: Daniel Tauber, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 11, 2013— Britain was once a partner in the Zionist enterprise. During the First World War, her leaders harbored visions of Jews restored to their homeland.

On Topic Links

Light in Dark Times: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Jewish Press, Nov. 7, 2013

Rabbi from Ottawa returns $98,000 he found in used desk he bought online: Zev Singer, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 12, 2013

Extermination of Two Million European Jews Confirmed Just Prior to GA 70 Years Ago: David Geffen, Jerusalem Post, 11 Nov. 2013

Art Dealer Paid Just 4,000 Swiss Francs for Masterpieces: Louise Barnett, The Telegraph, Nov. 10, 2013

  OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OF THE PARTI QUEBÉCOIS              CONCERNING THE NAME OF THE JEWISH GENERAL HOSPITAL              Lawrence Rosenberg, M.D.

Jewish General Hospital, Nov. 13, 2013

I would like to express my great displeasure and concern about the remarks that Tania Longpré, the Parti Québécois candidate in the Viau riding, recently posted on her Facebook page. An article describing these comments was also published on November 10 in the Journal de Montréal/TVA. In her posting, Mme Longpré said that she favours the removal of the word “Jewish” from the name of the Jewish General Hospital. The article notes that she is now trying to distance herself from these remarks, claiming that her initial comments were made in haste and do not represent the full range of her views. Nevertheless, it is deplorable that a candidate for public office has made such an unreasonable statement, which has no place in the political discourse of this province. From time to time, critics and commentators have asked whether it is proper for a publicly funded institution to proclaim its religious affiliation in its name. The emphatic answer is “Yes”. The Jewish General Hospital was launched in 1934 in an era when it was still common for healthcare institutions to embellish their names, facilities and medical programs with overtly religious metaphors and symbols. This had been the practice ever since the founding of Montreal and the establishment of the original Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in the early 1640s.

The custom continued for more than three centuries and is evident today in the names of hospitals such as Sacré-Coeur, Notre-Dame, Sainte-Justine and Saint-Luc. When the founders of the Jewish General Hospital named their institution, they were simply following an example that had been set by society. Seen from a modern perspective, the JGH was distinguishing itself from Montreal’s other hospitals through an early form of branding. Today the word “Jewish” remains an intrinsic, essential and inseparable element of the hospital’s history and values. It is a reminder that the JGH, whose motto is “Care for all”, has had a strictly non-discriminatory policy since the day it opened, in sharp contrast to the exclusionary practices that once existed in most other Montreal hospitals. Furthermore, the JGH’s policy was enacted many years before such a measure was formally required by provincial or federal human rights legislation.

For nearly 80 years, the Jewish General Hospital has excelled in serving patients from across Quebec, which has had a vibrant Jewish community for approximately 250 years. The hospital has done its utmost on behalf of Quebecers by drawing strength from the Jewish values of extending medical treatment to those in pain, compassion to those in distress, and assistance to those in need. In addition, the JGH’s values inspire respect for all religions, cultures and ethnic communities; recognition of the diversity and contribution of every member of staff; and a commitment to fostering a work environment where each person is valued, respected and supported. This commitment to a superior quality of care is a source of pride for the JGH which, for decades, has earned the support of government at all levels and all political persuasions. The Jewish General Hospital has no intention of dropping “Jewish” from its name, and it considers any such suggestions to be deeply offensive and discriminatory.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Rosenberg, M.D.

Executive Director

Jewish General Hospital

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KRISTALLNACHT AS A POLITICAL INSTRUMENT

Manfred Gerstenfeld

Jerusalem Post, Nov. 12, 2013

This year, as has often occurred in the past, some Kristallnacht memorial meetings in Europe were abused as political instruments rather than serving to memorialize Jewish victims. Memorial-day manipulation in Germany goes back many years. In 1969 on the date marking Kristallnacht, an anarchist-leftist group painted graffiti on Jewish memorials stating, “Shalom and Napalm” or “El Fatah.” Additionally, a firebomb was thrown at the Jewish community center in Berlin. The leftist groups’ common perception was that “Jews who were expelled by fascism became fascists themselves, who in collaboration with American capitalism, want to annihilate the Palestinian people.”

In 2010, Frankfurt’s then-Christian Democrat mayor, Petra Roth, invited Holocaust survivor Alfred Grosser to deliver the 2010 Kristallnacht speech in Paul’s Church. This German-born French Jewish intellectual promoted reconciliation between Germans and the French. He is a notorious anti-Israel hate-monger. Grosser used his speech to draw parallels between the conduct of the Nazis and that of Israel.
This year, another Kristallnacht manipulation drew much attention. Jerusalem Post reporter Benjamin Weinthal detailed the criticism of a memorial conference at Berlin Jewish Museum. Jewish anti-Israel hate-monger Brian Klug was invited as the keynote speaker there.

The abuse of Kristallnacht is far from limited to Germany. On November 9, 2003, in Vienna, a memorial meeting was disrupted by members of the Sedunia group, who shouted through loudspeakers. They had to be removed by participants of the meeting. Sedunia is an organization of Muslims and Austrian converts to Islam. In the same month a leading Dutch inciter against Israel, Gretta Duisenberg – the widow of a former president of Europe’s Central Bank – took part in a demonstration in one of Amsterdam’s main squares. A mock Israeli checkpoint for Palestinians was set up there. Only the participation of Palestinian suicide murderers would have made it more realistic. A few years ago, the Dutch Jewish community started to organize its own Kristallnacht memorial meetings in Amsterdam. The other, leftwing dominated commemoration, downplays contemporary anti-Semitism and focuses on general racism.

Muslim organizations also participate in it, often to promote the fight against Islamophobia. They do not speak out against the fact that the greatest violence in any religion in the world comes out of several Muslim societies. This year, at least 65,000 Muslims will be murdered by other Muslims in a number of Arab states. Nor will they mention that the involvement of Muslims in anti-Semitic incidents in Europe is far larger than their proportion of the population. This has again been confirmed in the recently published study by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights. Muslim bodies and left-wing organizations sometimes play together a major role in this abuse of Kristallnacht.

In Helsingborg, Sweden, the Jewish community refused to participate in the 2012 Kristallnacht memorial meeting. Local paper Helsingborgs Dagblad noted that the community’s leader, Jussi Tyger, said that the memorial meeting was organized by left-wing parties and Muslims, who are known to be the most racist against Jews. In the Norwegian town of Bergen, the November memorial day is not centered on Kristallnacht, but on the 26th of the month when cargo ship Donau left Oslo with 552 Jews – the great majority of whom were killed in extermination camps. They had been arrested by Norwegian police rather than by German occupiers. Last year the speakers were leader of the Socialist Left party Audun Lysbakken and former prime minster Kåre Willoch, both notorious anti-Israelis.

This was another expression of abuse of Holocaust memory: extreme anti-Israelis attempting to whitewash their reputations. The local Jews decided not to participate. An American-Norwegian Jew who has participated for years in the event with Jewish prayers and an original composition wrote on his Facebook page: “I refuse to participate in the same program as Kåre Willoch. They could not have chosen a more inappropriate speaker at a ceremony commemorating the Holocaust.” He explained to his American friends in English that Willoch is “extremely anti-Israel, and has made some terrible anti-Semitic comments.”
This year, a young gentile woman pulled out of the Oslo Kristallnacht memorial. She was meant to speak there, but received a death threat earlier that day…

Of a different distorting nature is the regular comparing of potential ecological disaster to the Holocaust.
In 1989, then-Senator from Tennessee Al Gore published an op-ed in The New York Times titled, “An Ecological Kristallnacht. Listen.” Gore called upon all humankind to heed the warning: “…the evidence is as clear as the sounds of glass shattering in Berlin.” All these vignettes above have to be seen in a broader context: the widespread and increasing abuse of Holocaust memory in general.

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SWASTIKAS, SLURS AND TORMENT IN TOWN’S SCHOOOLS

Benjamin Weiser

                                   New York Times, Nov. 7, 2013

The swastikas, the students recalled, seemed to be everywhere: on walls, desks, lockers, textbooks, computer screens, a playground slide — even on a student’s face. A picture of President Obama, with a swastika drawn on his forehead, remained on the wall of an eighth-grade social studies classroom for about a month after a student informed her teacher, the student said.

For some Jewish students in the Pine Bush Central School District in New York State, attending public school has been nothing short of a nightmare. They tell of hearing anti-Semitic epithets and nicknames, and horrific jokes about the Holocaust. They have reported being pelted with coins, told to retrieve money thrown into garbage receptacles, shoved and even beaten. They say that on school buses in this rural part of the state, located about 90 minutes north of New York City and once home to a local Ku Klux Klan chapter president, students have chanted “white power” and made Nazi salutes with their arms.

The proliferation and cumulative effect of the slurs, drawings and bullying led three Jewish families last year to sue the district and its administrators in federal court; they seek damages and an end to what they call pervasive anti-Semitism and indifference by school officials. The district — centered in Pine Bush, west of Newburgh, and serving 5,600 children from Orange, Sullivan and Ulster Counties — is vigorously contesting the suit. But a review of sworn depositions of current and former school officials shows that some have acknowledged there had been a problem, although they denied it was widespread and said they had responded appropriately with discipline and other measures. “There are anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred that we need to address,” John Boyle, Crispell Middle School’s principal, said in a deposition in April.

In 2011, when one parent complained about continued harassment of her daughter and another Jewish girl, Pine Bush’s superintendent from 2008 to 2013, Philip G. Steinberg, wrote in an email, “I have said I will meet with your daughters and I will, but your expectations for changing inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic.” Mr. Steinberg, who, along with two other administrators named as defendants, is Jewish, described the lawsuit in recent interviews as a “money grab.” He contended that the plaintiffs had “embellished” some allegations.

Nonetheless, reports of anti-Semitism have persisted, with at least two recent complaints made to the Jewish Federation of Greater Orange County. The New York Times has reviewed about 3,500 pages of deposition testimony by parents, children and school administrators, which were provided by the families’ lawyers on the condition that the identities of the children, some of whom are still enrolled, be protected. Limited redactions were also made to protect student privacy. The children, in their depositions, accuse at least 35 students, who are identified by their initials, of carrying out anti-Semitic acts; other offenders are identified less specifically. Whatever the number of students involved in such activity, its impact was felt by the Jewish children, said Ilann M. Maazel, a lawyer for the families. “There were multiple children who just did not feel safe going to school day after day,” he said.

In 2008, T.E., then a fifth grader at Pine Bush Elementary School, told her mother that two boys had made drawings in school that she did not understand, adding, “I think it was something bad.” The mother, Sherri E., 48, asked her daughter to draw what she had seen, and realized it was a swastika. The mother testified that during a subsequent meeting, the elementary school principal at the time, Steve Fisch, agreed to talk with the boys but added: “What’s the big deal? They didn’t aim it towards her.” Mr. Fisch, in his deposition, denies saying that. Not long afterward, the mother said, one of the boys called T.E. “Jew” on the bus and made an offensive gesture toward her and her daughter. Sherri E. withdrew her daughter from Crispell Middle School last year, and is now educating her at home.

Some of the affected students saw their grades suffer, and felt socially isolated and depressed, the depositions show. One said he contemplated suicide. The swastikas, drawn or carved onto school property, or even constructed by students out of pipe cleaners, caused much of the anxiety. Sometimes they were accompanied by messages like “Die Jew,” the children testified. “I actually started to hate myself for being Jewish,” D.C., a Pine Bush High School graduate who now attends college, said in an interview. He recalled that around the time of the Jewish holidays, teachers would ask if there were Jewish students in the class. “I learned very, very quickly not to raise my hand,” he said. D.C., now 18, testified that he was “overwhelmed” by the number of swastikas he saw. In eighth grade, he said, he reported one that was about a foot in diameter, which he found in a bathroom; it was removed, but it reappeared quickly. He testified that he stopped reporting swastikas because “nobody was doing anything about them.”

His sister, O.C., now 15, testified about a more direct message from a sixth grader who formed his hand into the shape of a gun and “said he was killing Jews.” In seventh grade, O.C. said, she saw a girl holding her hands up to hide a swastika on her face. The girl explained that a student had restrained her while another drew the insignia; the school said it had disciplined the two students. O.C. said she heard slurs like Christ killer, stupid Jew, dirty Jew, disgusting Jew. “Jew was kind of an insult,” she explained. Her father, David C., an adjunct instructor at Orange County Community College, recalled telling his daughter’s teachers that she lacked focus because of the harassment and swastikas. He had even stumbled upon one, he testified, describing how he saw a “small swastika on one of the stalls” in a school bathroom.

The children testified about hearing crude jokes about the Holocaust and the killing of Jews. “How do you get a Jewish girl’s number? Lift up her sleeve,” went one. D.C. remembered a student telling him that his ancestors had died in the Holocaust. The student then blew on his flattened hand, and said, “You are just ashes.” “Every day at the high school,” D.C. testified, “I would go in, and I would just have the worst day of my life.” Mr. Steinberg said in his deposition that his challenge as superintendent was that “so many” students were being accused of anti-Semitic behavior. “The issue is not three students doing it all the time; the question is if you have 30 students doing it,” he said. “How do you undo the years of inbred prejudice?”

 [To read the full article, please click on the following link —ed.]

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FOR ZION’S SAKE: THE PROCLAMATION OF REVOLT

Daniel Tauber

                                  Jerusalem Post, Nov. 11, 2013

Britain was once a partner in the Zionist enterprise. During the First World War, her leaders harbored visions of Jews restored to their homeland. At the war’s end, she accepted responsibility for putting those visions into effect under the Mandate for Palestine. But the calculating British Empire that prepared to fight World War II was not the romantic British Empire of World War I.

In 1936, responding to Arab violence and opposition to Zionism, Britain drastically lowered Palestine’s Jewish immigration quota. In 1939, when no other country would give European Jewry refuge, Britain issued a new White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine – the internationally designated Jewish refuge – to a total of 75,000 over the next five years. It was the anti-Balfour Declaration. The anti-Jewish policy did not change when Winston Churchill became prime minister or when Britain learned of the slaughter of the Jews. Even the 75,000 immigration certificates were not all granted. Nor did it change when Germany surrendered in May 1945 or when the Labor party, which called for Jewish statehood, was elected.
The new foreign secretary, Ernst Bevin, warned against Jewish refugees trying to get unfairly “to the head of the queue” of the post-war settlement.

The British military establishment continued to view Palestine as a strategic asset in terms of military bases, communications and stemming Soviet influence in the region. Keeping oil flowing to an economically diminished Britain was also a priority. The war-time policy of appeasing Arab opposition to Zionism had to be continued. Bevin personally thought the Balfour Declaration was a “wild experiment” and “a Power Politics declaration.” He even considered partition “manifestly unjust to the Arabs.”

Instead, Bevin proposed a cantonization plan which gave the Jews a small amount of territory and no immigration control. Then he proposed a trustee plan leading to the emergence of an Arab-Palestinian state.
Britain had thus long ago renounced its role as “Mandatory” and embraced the role of imperial occupier intent on retaining Palestine as long as possible or establishing a friendly Arab state, preferably owing Britain certain treaty rights. For the Jewish state to rise, the British occupier would have to be removed.
This was not something Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, the Jewish Agency or the Haganah could admit. It was, however, long anticipated by the Revisionist-Zionist movement.

In the late 1930s Jabotinsky argued that Britain was losing its legitimacy in Palestine due to its anti-Jewish policies. Yet through 1938, he believed Britain could be convinced to return to Zionism. The younger generation in Betar and the Irgun Zvai Leumi (the National Military Organization – the Jabotinskyite offshoot of the Haganah), however, believed Britain would never repent. At the Betar World Conference in Warsaw that year, Menachem Begin, the leader of Polish Betar, proposed amending the Betar Oath to suggest rebellion against the British. When Jabotinsky asked about the practicalities, Begin replied that it would be for experts to determine. Jabotinsky compared Begin’s words to the creaking of an un-oiled door.
But in 1939 Jabotinsky came around. In Warsaw, he declared, “When the Irgun grows, your hope also grows,” and later that “the only way to liberate our country is by the sword.”

In August, Jabotinsky, sent coded plans to the Irgun, for tens of thousands of Betarim to storm Palestine’s shores, link up with Irgun forces, take and hold government buildings for at least 24 hours and declare Jewish statehood. But in September, Germany invaded Poland, the heart of European Jewry. Two days later, Britain declared war on Germany. Jewry had no choice but to support Britain. The Revisionist-Zionist movement immediately announced support for the British war effort. A few days later the Irgun announced the same. Within a year Jabotinsky died of a massive heart attack, but not before a split in the Irgun began to emerge between David Raziel and Avraham Stern. Just a few days before his death, Jabotinsky reinstated Raziel, who had resigned as commander, thereby blocking Stern from assuming command.

By October 1940, Stern and his followers left the Irgun to fight Britain – even as Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv and a German invasion become foreseeable. Rejected by the Yishuv, forced to resort to bank robberies, Stern found himself on the run. He would eventually be murdered by British policemen who had arrested him. Raziel fared no better. He was killed by a German bomb while on a mission for the British in Iraq.
[To read the full article, please click on the following link—ed.]

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CIJR wishes all its friends and supporters Shabbat Shalom!

Light in Dark Times: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Jewish Press, Nov. 7, 2013— What is it that made Jacob—not Abraham or Isaac or Moses—the true father of the Jewish people?
Rabbi from Ottawa returns $98,000 he found in used desk he bought online: Zev Singer, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 12, 2013 — Sometimes when you buy a piece of furniture through Craigslist, you get it home only to find that the seller hasn’t cleaned out all the junk inside it. This story starts that way. Except it wasn’t exactly junk.                                                              Extermination of Two Million European Jews Confirmed Just Prior to GA 70 Years Ago: David Geffen, Jerusalem Post, 11 Nov. 2013— The Jewish Federations of North America functions today as the main representative body for North American Jewish groups. But in the 1940s, American Jewry was splintered into many organizations and parties, each making a bold attempt to save its brothers and sisters from the Nazis overseas.                                                                                                                   Art Dealer Paid Just 4,000 Swiss Francs for Masterpieces: Louise Barnett, The Telegraph, Nov. 10, 2013 — The art dealer whose son was found to have hoarded a treasure trove of masterpieces in his Munich flat paid the Nazis just 4,000 Swiss Francs for 200 paintings now thought to be worth millions, it has emerged.

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