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Majority of Israelis think Poland has to take more responsibility for Holocaust crimes

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(JTA) – More than three-quarters of Israelis believe that Poland has yet to take sufficient responsibility for the role Poles played in the Holocaust, according to a survey commissioned by the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv.

Keevoon Global Research surveyed more than 1,027 Israelis in December, with 76 per cent faulting Poland for not fully acknowledging Polish responsibility for what happened to Jews in the country during World War II, and 49 per cent saying that they see the eastern European nation in an unfavourable light. [Read more…]

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$30 million more allotted to survivors of French train deportations and families

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WASHINGTON (JTA) – The U.S. State Department is ready to allot the second half of the $60 million US in compensation for survivors deported to Nazi camps via the French rail system, and their spouses and descendants.

Claimants will receive virtually double the amount they were allotted after the governments of the United States and France reached agreement on the $60 million in 2014. [Read more…]

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Cameroon government minister says Jews brought Holocaust on themselves

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(JTA) – A Cameroon government minister said that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves because they wielded all the economic power.

The African nation’s government disavowed the comments made by Jean de Dieu Momo, the deputy justice minister, in a primetime interview on public television. Momo warned opposition leader Maurice Kamto that he was leading the native Bamileke people to a fate similar to that of the Jews during the Holocaust, the French news service AFP reported. [Read more…]

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Book Review: A journey to find both hope, and oneself

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Child of the Holocaust

Child of the Holocaust

Child of the Holocaust: A Jewish Child in Christian Disguise
By Jack Kuper
Penguin Random House Canada
256 pages

Child of the Holocaust: A Jewish Child in Christian Disguise, Jack Kuper’s autobiographical memoir was originally published in 1967. A new edition, with a new foreword by the author, has just been published.

Shortly before Kuper’s book first came out, Jerzy Kosinski published his novel, The Painted Bird, which became a sensational and sensationalist success. Both books deal primarily with the experiences of a young boy alone, facing the multiple dangers of Eastern Poland: Nazis, local partisans of the left and right, local villagers and farmers who had negative perceptions of Jews and were themselves under threat from the Germans for harbouring Jews, Gypsies and other “enemies.” Even the weather held its own menace. [Read more…]

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Holocaust scholars worry that memory is a victim of Israel’s warming ties with Eastern Europe

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the United Nations headquarters, in New York City, Sept. 26, 2018. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the United Nations headquarters, in New York City, Sept. 26, 2018. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the United Nations headquarters, in New York City, Sept. 26, 2018. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to establish close ties with the European Union’s Central European members has met with pushback from a perhaps unlikely source: Holocaust historians and activists protective of Israel’s role in preserving the memories of the Nazis’ victims.

Netanyahu has justified his outreach to leaders in countries like Poland and Hungary as a way to counterbalance the EU’s more Palestinian-friendly western states. [Read more…]

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A wave of anti-Semitism is bringing secular U.K. Jews closer to their roots

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Rachel Riley poses with campaigners outside parliament in London before delivering a petition to Downing Street, Oct. 8, 2018. Riley has spoken out in recent months about her Jewish identity and the anti-Semitic abuse she has received online. (Handout/Tom Nicholson for Bauer Media via Getty Images)
Rachel Riley poses with campaigners outside parliament in London before delivering a petition to Downing Street, Oct. 8, 2018. Riley has spoken out in recent months about her Jewish identity and the anti-Semitic abuse she has received online. (Handout/Tom Nicholson for Bauer Media via Getty Images)

Rachel Riley poses with campaigners outside parliament in London before delivering a petition to Downing Street, Oct. 8, 2018. Riley has spoken out in recent months about her Jewish identity and the anti-Semitic abuse she has received online. (Handout/Tom Nicholson for Bauer Media via Getty Images)

(JTA) – For most of her adult life, Rachel Riley was only vaguely aware of her Jewish ancestry.

A moderately famous daytime game show television host, Riley, 33, is one of countless unaffiliated Jews in the United Kingdom – a country with 250,000 Jewish citizens and where synagogue attendance is at a historic low. [Read more…]

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Library and Archives Canada acquires book from Hitler’s personal collection

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Michael Kent, curator of the Jacob M. Lowry Collection at Library and Archives Canada, unveils Statistik, Presse und Organisationen des Judentums in den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada, a book once owned by Hitler, January 23.
Michael Kent, curator of the Jacob M. Lowry Collection at Library and Archives Canada, unveils Statistik, Presse und Organisationen des Judentums in den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada, a book once owned by Hitler, January 23.

Michael Kent, curator of the Jacob M. Lowry Collection at Library and Archives Canada, unveils Statistik, Presse und Organisationen des Judentums in den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada, a book once owned by Hitler, January 23.

A rare 1944 book that hints at what could have happened to Jews in Canada and the United States had the Nazis prevailed in the Second World War – and that came from Adolf Hitler’s personal collection – has been acquired by Library and Archives Canada.

According to Library and Archives Canada, “The 137-page German language report, Statistik, Presse und Organisationen des Judentums in den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada (Statistics, Media, and Organizations of Jewry in the United States and Canada), was compiled in 1944 by Heinz Kloss. [Read more…]

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Polish far-right nationalists demonstrate at Auschwitz

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The main gate of the former Auschwitz extermination camp in Oswiecim, Poland. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

The main gate of the former Auschwitz extermination camp in Oswiecim, Poland. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

(JTA) – Polish far-right nationalists demonstrated at Auschwitz at the same time as the annual ceremony marking the camp’s liberation.

The demonstrators, led by Piotr Rybak of the Polish Independence Movement, were protesting the emphasis on the Jews killed at Auschwitz and not the Poles killed by the Nazis. [Read more…]

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Germany’s Angela Merkel calls out anti-Semitism ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, June 12, 2017. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, June 12, 2017. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

(JTA) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a video released ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, called on every citizen to fight against anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

She decried anti-Semitism by Germans and also hatred of Jews by Muslim migrants, as well as hatred of Israel. [Read more…]

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