An Analysis of Fackenheim’s essay from God’s presence in History: Shahid Khan, Researchgate, Mar. 2, 2017 — How would one characterize Fackenheim’s response to Auschwitz? Describe and assess his understanding for the ‘meaning to Auschwitz’?
How can we go on thinking in the same way?: Mary Jo Leddy, National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 26, 2016 — In the early 1970s, I was in danger of becoming another graduate school dropout. In the philosophy department at the University of Toronto, linguistic analysis and logical positivism seemed to reign supreme. I was bored, unable to see the relevance of philosophy to the causes for justice and peace that I was getting involved in. And then I attended Emil Fackenheim’s graduate course on the philosophy of religion.
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He Led Hitler’s Secret Police in Austria. Then He Spied for the West.: Ronen Bergman, New York Times, Apr. 5, 2021
A top commander in Hitler’s secret police, responsible for deporting tens of thousands of Jews, was shielded by the U.S. and German authorities after World War II and later joined West Germany’s foreign intelligence service, which knew about his wartime role, newly disclosed records reveal.
By the war’s end the official, Franz Josef Huber — who also held a general-level rank in the SS, the Nazi paramilitary organization — led one of the Gestapo’s largest sections, stretching across Austria and with roles out to the east. In Vienna after the Nazi takeover, his forces worked closely with Adolf Eichmann on deportations to concentration and extermination camps.
Eichmann would eventually be executed for his role in coordinating the murder of millions of Jews. Next Sunday is the 60th anniversary of the opening of his trial in Jerusalem. But Huber never had to hide or to escape abroad, as many other top Third Reich commanders did.
He spent the final decades of his life based in his hometown, Munich, with his family, under his own name. And the explanation for this strange immunity appears to lie in his usefulness in the spying conflicts of the Cold War.U.S. intelligence documents show that there was strong interest in drawing on Huber’s wartime network to recruit agents in the Soviet bloc, even as Austria was seeking to have him tried for war crimes.
“Although we are by no means unmindful of the dangers involved in playing around with a Gestapo general,” a C.I.A. memo from 1953 stated, “we also believe, on the basis of the information now in our possession, that Huber might be profitably used by this organization.”
Newly disclosed U.S. and German intelligence records reveal that both countries made efforts to conceal Huber’s role in the crimes of the Third Reich and to prevent him from facing trial.
Photographic Evidence Shows Palestinian Leader Amin al-Husseini at a Nazi Concentration Camp: Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Tablet, Apr. 7, 2021
In 2017, Jerusalem’s Kedem auction house posted three of six previously unknown photos on the internet, in which the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, inspects a Nazi concentration camp along with Nazi senior officials and government figures. According to the auctioneers, an expert was of the opinion that these inmates performed forced labor at the Trebbin camp near Berlin, which was, from 1942 to 1945, an SS artillery training place with a branch of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. Built after World War I as a Christian “City of Peace,” it was taken over by the SS in 1935. Among the prisoners were Jews from Hungary. Forced labor, terror and violence characterized their daily lives. Kedem hoped viewers would help identify men in the photos.
As it turns out, I can now shed light on five of the foreign guests in the pictures—global leaders whose presence reflects the transregional history between Europe, the Middle East, India, and America. The photographs also provide irrefutable proof that all of the men present had precise knowledge of the fate of Jews in Hitler’s Germany—and of the likely fate of Jews in their own home countries under Nazi rule. According to Kedem, the photos are stamped “Photo-Gerhards Trebbin.” This stamp indicates that they were probably photographed in Trebbin, 30 kilometers south of Berlin, “around 1943.” The six photos were auctioned for $12,300 to a private individual who, I would argue, should post the remaining three images on the internet as a humanitarian gesture to families of the prisoners.
The threats American Jewry refuses to face: Caroline B. Glick, Israel Hayom, Apr. 2, 2021
After being forced by Covid-19 restrictions celebrate Passover alone last year, like their Israeli brethren, American Jews were by and large able to celebrate the Passover seder with their friends and families this year. And as in Israel, American Jewish families reveled in their deliverance from loneliness on the Jewish festival of deliverance.
But even the joy of Passover couldn’t dispel the twin storm clouds rising around the largest Jewish diaspora.
The first threat is growing Jew-hatred. American Jewish groups are good at fighting white supremacism. Unfortunately, the most dangerous external threat to Jewish life in America doesn’t come from neo-Nazis. It comes from their home base.
Antisemites now have access to voters lists: Bernie M. Farber and Len Rudner, National Post, Mar. 10, 2021
The appearance of an officially registered anti-Semitic political party in Canada is the type of nostalgia we can do without.
Travis Patron, the leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party (CNP), has recently been charged with one count of wilful promotion of hate against Jews. He already faces two serious charges of aggravated assault, assault causing bodily harm and a breach of probation. While these charges have not yet been proven in court, there can be little question that the CNP’S status as a registered political party is alarming.
Sadly, Canada has some history with anti-Semitism in the political arena.
On July 24, 1943, Norman Jaques, the Social Credit member of Parliament for Wetaskiwin, Alta., read portions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Hansard during a discussion on wartime appropriations. Despite objections from other MPS, including one who derided the inclusion of “fraudulent or forged Jew-baiting documents,” Jaques was permitted to proceed.
Jaques was a hard-core anti-Semite even by the standards of Social Credit. He believed in an international Jewish financial conspiracy, Jewish control of the media, blamed Jews for communism and opposed the entry of Jewish refugees into Canada. It took many years for the party to repudiate such vile opinions.
In WWII, an anti-Semitic Canada kept Jewish ‘enemy aliens’ in barbed wire camps: Julie Masis, Times of Israel, Aug. 16, 2020
“In Canada, Reinhart looked out of the window of the train and saw signs that read, “No dogs or Jews allowed,” his son said.”
The town of Sherbrooke, located about two hours east of Montreal, is a pleasant place to visit, especially in the temperate summer. There is a waterfall, and a promenade around a lake. In a nearby park, walkways have been built through the swamp to give city-dwellers a chance to enjoy birdsong and admire waterlilies. The town’s small history museum has recently reopened — with hand sanitizer and masked tour guides.
But nothing in the museum informs visitors about a bizarre part of Sherbrooke’s history: a camp where German and Austrian Jews were held as prisoners during World War II.
In 1940, biochemist Reinhart Pariser was a student in his early 20s at the University of Cambridge in England when one day police knocked on his door and gave him 10 minutes to pack, his son, David Pariser, told The Times of Israel.
He was put on a boat crammed with German Jews and German Nazis — both labeled by the British as “enemy aliens.” Some boats went to Australia, others to Canada; he ended up on the Canadian boat by sheer coincidence.
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For Further Reference:
Powerful speech from grandson of Holocaust survivor Israel Defense Forces: Facebook, Jan. 27, 2020 — 75 years ago, Barak’s grandmother was liberated from Auschwitz after surviving the Holocaust. Today, Barak is an officer in the IDF. This is their story:
In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis: Eric Lichtblau, NY Times, Oct. 26,2014 — In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show.
Memory without Memorials: Dr. Shay Pilnik and Professor David Patters: 2020 ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute: Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, Sept. 10, 2020 — Memory Without Memories: The Story of Babi Yar”
Field of Flags’ memorial at University of Rhode Island honors Holocaust victims: JNS, Apr. 6, 2021 — Hillel at the University of Rhode Island has created its annual “Field of Flags” memorial in honor of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins on Wednesday night.
Canadians Who Exploit the Holocaust as a Rhetorical Cudgel Deserving of Contempt: Robert Walker, Honest Reporting Canada, Mar. 26, 2021 — In the wake of the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust against European Jewry in 1945, activists and educators around the world committed that “never again” would the world witness such an inhumane massacre of innocent civilians, regardless of their faith, ethnicity, colour, orientation or any other factor.
