Yom HaShoah - Marking The Enormity of The Holocaust - Herut eBook-Reduced

Marking
Yom HaShoah 2020
2 Herut North America

Marking Yom HaShoah 2020
Forward
By Rabbi Baruch Melman
On November 1, 2005, the UN chose January 27th to observe Yom HaShoah, putting
Holocaust Remembrance Day on the world's global calendar, and thus its consciousness.
How laudable is that! Kudos to the UN!
Curiously, in Israel, Yom HaShoah is not observed in January. Rather, it is observed in

April, specifically in the Hebrew month of Nissan every year, not in January. Is this simply
because the UN spends something like 80% of its energies and time condemning Israel,
and so to choose an alternative date by which to mark the unparalleled devastation of the
Holocaust is merely a symbolic snub? Yes, but it is far deeper than that.
Actually, the state of Israel had been observing Yom HaShoah since 1951. Why couldn't
the UN have simply honored the victims of the Shoah by borrowing the same date already
chosen by Israel? January 27 was the date on which Auschwitz was liberated. Why did
Israel consciously snub that date, as important as it is, and choose instead the symbolic
anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising? Or rather, to follow the actual
sequence of the declarations, we must ask why did the UN consciously snub the date that
had been already chosen by Israel?
To be honest, it is because the world is only comfortable seeing Jews as victims. Auschwitz
is the ultimate symbol of Jewish victimhood. But the world cannot abide the idea of the
Jew as fighter, not the eternal passive victim, the role imposed on us for two millennia of
exile and dispersion.
Inspired by Jabotinsky, his followers would show the world that Jews are again brave
warriors, passive victims no longer. When the Nazis chose Seder night, the night marking
Jewish Liberation, for the start of the final liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, the Jews were
ready and waiting for them. They knew they would likely all die, but they would die
defying the Nazi mythos and its war machine. The Germans were shocked. The "passive
Jews" held off and fought the Nazis longer than did the entire Polish Army. It took the
blasting of every building to rubble and the gassing of every basement and sewer to finally
wipe out the resistance.
So, Nissan is the month we observe the Shoah. Not as victims but as victors, for resistance
itself is a form of victory. The Ghetto Fighters paved the way for modern Israel, embodying
the new ethos of the fighting victorious Jew.
[Rabbi Melman is a community rabbi in Pennsylvania and was a Herut Zionists

candidate in the 2020 World Zionist Congress elections]

Don’t be sad - be MAD!
A Personal Yom HaShoah Message from World Herut’s Executive Director
As we approach Yom HaShoah [Holocaust Remembrance Day], we are once again

inundated with the obligatory pictures and posts of the atrocities that our people suffered
during the Holocaust.
Endless photos of emaciated Jews with sad faces and tears. Photos of piles of shoes or
bones from the dead, and of course, the photo of the yahrzeit candle with the caption
“Never again”
Some will post about the righteous among nations, who thank G-d, saved Jews and other
victims from the vicious arm of the Nazis.
It is seldom that I see a post about resistance, about pride, and about all of the Jews who
fought back.
What I don’t often see (if ever) is an angry post.
One would think that after having 72 years of national sovereignty in our ancestral
homeland, The Land of Israel, today the Jewish People all around the world, would be
proud enough and feel strong enough to feel anger towards those who tried to destroy us!
Anger towards those who had the ability to help and save our brethren from the hands of
the Nazi killing machine.
In early December 1942, the United Nations, or the Allied nations, made the famous
declaration acknowledging the fact that the Germans were mass murdering the Jewish
people in Europe. That declaration had no effect whatsoever on the Allies, and they did
nothing to stop the mass extermination of the Jewish people. Some may say they had no
means of stopping the Holocaust; the fact is that they didn’t even try. Shouldn’t this make
you mad?
Anger towards Lord Moyne, the British minister of state in the Middle East, who had the
power to save the Jews of Hungary by allowing them to immigrate to the British Mandate
of Palestine. When he was approached and asked to issue the charters that would save
one million Hungarian Jews, his reply was, among other things, “What will we do with a
million Jews?” and with that sent Hungarian Jewry to their deaths.
Shouldn’t this make you mad?
Anger is an emotion that a proud person should naturally feel when they have been
wronged.

Above and beyond the sorrow and the pain we all feel for the plight of the victims, as
proud Jews it is our responsibility to feel anger – to be MAD at all of those who stood by
and allowed this atrocity to happen.
Use this anger to build – to educate and to understand that only a strong, Jewish Nation
(Am Yisrael) with a strong State of Israel can ensure that we never, ever have to be at the
mercy of anyone else. We must rely only on ourselves for our safety, so let’s stop
identifying ourselves as victims and start identifying as strong, proud Jews, who confront
those who hate us; not cower to them. We are a people who have every right to be mad,
but we must use this anger to make sure “Never Again” means something and isn’t just
an empty slogan.
Don’t be sad - be MAD!!!
Karma Feinstein Cohen

Executive Director
World Herut

Contents
INTRODUCTION Page 5
PART ONE: Traditional Mourning & The Holocaust Page 6
PART TWO: The Holocaust in History Page 8
PART THREE: Special Exclusive Book Excerpt from 'Jews Make the Best Demons: "Palestine"
and the Jewish Question' by Eric Rozenman Page 21
PART FOUR: Current Holocaust Controversies Page 25
____ ____ ___
Herut North America (HNA) is a grassroots Jewish activist movement

committed to Zionist education. HNA is part of the World Herut
organization which conducts training around the world focused on building
the next generation of unapologetic, defiant, Zionist leaders. HNA is a
component of the American Zionist Movement and fielded a slate in the
2020 World Zionist Congress elections that garnered four times as many
votes as it had in the last election in 2015.
Herut North America welcomes your membership and invites your

involvement in one of the fastest growing pro-Israel groups
in the U.S. today.
Please consider becoming a member of Herut today.
Visit www.HerutNA.org for membership information.

Introduction
By Rabbi Zvi Kilstein
Max Nordau once explained the Jewish mentality to Ze’ev Jabotinsky:
"The Jew learns not by way of reason, but from catastrophes. He won’t buy an umbrella
merely because he sees clouds in the sky. He waits until he is drenched and catches
pneumonia."
The years leading up to the Holocaust and even during the days of the death camps,
Nordau's words were proven correct time and again.
As early as the 1920s prophetic poet Uri Zvi Greenberg predicted the poison gas used in
World War I would be used by the Germans to kill Jews in the future.
What some people saw clearly, others denied (and made fun of).
So while Jabotinsky raced around Europe - even as late as 1938 - warning "a fire is burning"
he was criticized as an alarmist and demagogue.
When he called for mass illegal immigration to save the Jews of Europe Jewish leaders
wrote Jabotinsky off as a crazy person.
During the Holocaust when Ben Hecht and the Bergson Group brought attention to the
murder of the Jews through newspaper ads, plays and marches on Washington
“establishment” Jewish leaders led by Steven Wise tried to dismiss the facts of the
destruction as lies and hysteria. (One of the rarest books I own is a collection of Jewish
eulogies to FDR. I handed a copy to my former teacher Elie Wiesel who told me "Unless I
held this book in my hand I would not believe what I was reading.")
After the war, when the Kastner trial broke in Israel, the level of collusion (at the worst) or
turning their backs on the suffering (at the best) we were shocked.
We should not have been shocked. Nor should we be surprised that the road to full
redemption is still blocked by those of no vision.
With the approach of Yom HaShoah we must remember our mission and stick to it.
Since this is a time of quarantine may I recommend you take the time to read this.
[Rabbi Kilstien lives in Florida and was a Herut Zionists candidate in the 2020 World
Zionist Congress elections]

Kel Maleh Rachamim
O G‑ d, full of compassion, Who dwells on high, grant true rest upon the
wings of the Shechinah (Divine Presence), in the exalted spheres of the holy
and pure, who shine as the resplendence of the firmament, for the souls of all
my relatives, both on my father’s side and my mother’s side, the holy and
the pure ones who were killed, slaughtered, burned, drowned, and strangled
for the sanctification of the Name, through the hands of the German
oppressors, may their name and memory be obliterated, for charity has been
donated in remembrance of their souls. May their place of rest be in Gan
Eden (the Garden of Eden). Therefore, may the All-Merciful One shelter
them with the cover of His wings for eternity; and may He bind their souls in
the bond of life. The L-rd is their heritage; may they rest in their resting-
place in peace; and let us say: Amen.

The Kaddish Prayer

May His great name be exalted and sanctified. In the world which He
created according to His will! May He establish His kingdom during your
lifetime and during your days and during the lifetimes of all the House of
Israel, speedily and very soon! And say, Amen.
May His great name be blessed forever, and to all eternity!
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and
lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, above and beyond all
the blessings, hymns, praises and consolations that are uttered in the world!
And say, Amen.
May the prayers and supplications of all Israel be accepted by their Father
who is in Heaven; And say, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life upon us and upon all
Israel; And say, Amen.
May He who makes peace in His high places grant peace upon us and upon
all Israel; And say, Amen.

"Hitler did not wholesale killing of Jews at once. First, he

imprisoned Jews; and noted the world's indifference. Then he
starved them; and still the world did not move. He dug his claws
in, bared his teeth; the world did not even raise an eyebrow. So he
went on, step by step, until he reached the climax of the gas
chambers." – Menachem Begin
"If we learn and remember, we shall overcome our enemies. They

will never succeed in enslaving us again. Never. Even if they
overwhelm us we shall throw off their yoke. If we have no arms,
we shall make them. If we have no force, we shall create it. They
will not break us." – Menachem Begin

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, in a speech given on October 24, 1938, in Warsaw,

Poland, stated:
"It is already three years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry... that a
catastrophe is coming closer, I became gray and old in these days, my heart
bleeds, that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will
soon begin to spit its all consuming lava. I see that you are not seeing this
because you are immersed and sunk in your daily worries.
Today, however, I demand from you trust... listen to me in this 12th hour. In
the name of God! Let any one of you save himself as long as there is still
time, and time there is very little... Whoever of you will escape from the
catastrophe, he or she will live to see the exalted moment of a great Jewish
Wedding, the rebirth and the rise of a Jewish state."

How a Distorted Narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Has

Established Itself to This Day
By Moshe Arens [April 2017]
In Israel we mark the day dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust as the Holocaust and
Heroism Day. In those desperate times many were heroes in the way they faced certain
death, like Janusz Korczak in Warsaw, who led the children in his orphanage to the railroad
cars that were to transport them to the gas chambers at Treblinka. But in Israel, quite
naturally, heroism is associated with the men and women who used weapons resisting the
Germans.
The Warsaw ghetto uprising has become the symbol of such resistance, and the date of
Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day has been chosen to coincide with the period of
that uprising. It began on April 19, 1943, and was the first uprising in the areas of German
occupation during World War II. It is an event of great significance not only in Jewish
history but also in the history of World War Two.
Two organizations, each numbering a few hundred young men and women, dared to face
the might of the German army when its troops entered the ghetto that morning – the Jewish
Military Organization led by Pawel Frenkel, and the Jewish Fighting Organization led by
Mordechai Anielewicz. They are also known by the initials of their Polish names, ZZW
and ZOB. They knew they could not defeat the Germans and believed they were facing
certain death. They fought for the honor of the Jewish people; they fought for a page in
history.
Why were there two organizations and not one? The answer lies in the ideological and
political hostility that characterized the politics of the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish
community in Palestine. Projecting the class struggle that characterized much of Europe in
the pre-war days onto the Jewish community in Palestine, the socialist Zionist parties saw
in Jabotinsky’s adherents enemies of the proletariat, fascists. The allegation that they had
been responsible for the murder of the socialist Zionist leader Haim Arlozoroff had also
turned them into murderers in the eyes of their opponents. These views were propagated
by emissaries who came from Palestine to instruct the socialist Zionist youth groups in
Poland. Under the German occupation, years after the emissaries had returned to Palestine,
that was still the political education that the members of the socialist Zionist youth groups
in the Warsaw ghetto – Dror, Hashomer Hatzair, Gordonia – continued to receive.
The youth groups were the only organizations to survive the chaos imposed on the Jews in
the ghetto by the Germans, and were the basis for preparations for resistance. In forming
ZOB the socialist Zionists were prepared to reach out to other “proletarian” groups in the
ghetto, but not to those they considered fascists. Thus the adherents of Jabotinsky organized
their own fighting organization, ZZW. They were better armed and trained than the fighters
of ZOB. They fought the main battle of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in Muranowski Square,
where they raised the Zionist and Polish flags as a symbol of resistance to the Germans.

Why are Pawel Frenkel and his comrades left out of the uprising as taught to this day in
the schools in Israel, and why are they sidelined in the Yad Vashem museum? Had all
traces of their heroic battle disappeared?
On December 14, 1945 in the opening stages of the Nuremberg trials, assistant counsel
Maj. William Walsh read from SS Gen. Juergen Stroop’s dispatches to Heinrich Himmler
on the fighting
in the Warsaw ghetto: “The main Jewish combat group retreated to Muranowski Square
and there they raised the Jewish and Polish flags.” It was reported in the Hebrew newspaper
Davar that same day. On May 11, 1949, the day Israel was admitted to the UN, as the
Israeli flag was raised before the UN building, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett referred to
it as “[this blue-and-white flag] that was unfurled above the walls of the Warsaw ghetto in
the desperate uprising.”
The facts were there for all to see. But as George Orwell wrote: “Who controls the past
controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” That is how a distorted
narrative of the Warsaw ghetto uprising has established itself to this day. ✡

____ ____ ___
To learn about Moshe Arens please see this article by Karma Feinstein
Cohen here!

“I Believe The Lessons Of The Holocaust Are These…”

By Menachem Begin
[May 1981]
I believe the lessons of the holocaust are these:
First, if an enemy of our people says he seeks to destroy us, believe him. Don’t doubt him
for a moment. Don’t make light of it. Do all in your power to deny him the means of
carrying out his satanic intent.
Second, when a Jew anywhere in the world is threatened or under attack, do all in your
power to come to his aid. Never pause to wonder what the world will think or say. The
world will never pity slaughtered Jews. The world may not necessarily like the fighting
Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.
Third, a Jew must learn to defend himself. He must forever be prepared for whenever
threat looms.
Fourth, Jewish dignity and honor must be protected in all circumstances. The seeds of
Jewish destruction lie in passively enabling the enemy to humiliate us. Only when the
enemy succeeds in turning the spirit of the Jew into dust and ashes in life, can he turn the
Jew into dust and ashes in death. During the Holocaust it was after the enemy had
humiliated the Jews, trampled them underfoot, divided them, deceived them, afflicted
them, drove brother against brother, only then could he lead them, almost without
resistance, to the gates of Auschwitz.
Therefore, at all times and whatever the cost, safeguard the dignity and honor of the Jewish
people.
Fifth, stand united in the face of the enemy. We Jews love life, for life is holy. But there
are things in life more precious than life itself. There are times when one must risk life for
the sake of rescuing the lives of others. And when the few risk their own lives for the sake
of the many, then they, too, stand the chance of saving themselves.
Sixth, there is a pattern to Jewish history. In our long annals as a nation, we rise, we fall,
we return, we are exiled, we are enslaved, we rebel, we liberate ourselves, we are oppressed
once more, we rebuild, and again we suffer destruction, climaxing in our own lifetime in
the calamity of calamities, the Holocaust, followed by the rebirth of the Jewish State.
So, yes, we have come full circle, and with G-d’s help, with the rebirth of sovereign Israel
we have finally broken the historic cycle: no more destruction and no more defeats, and no
more oppression – only Jewish liberty, with dignity and honor. These, I believe, are the
underlying lessons to be learned from the unspeakable tragedy of the Holocaust. ✡

[Menachem Begin was born in Poland in 1913. A Zionist leader starting in his youth, he
was the commander of the Irgun’s revolt against British rule and served as Israel’s Prime
Minister from 1977 to 1983.]

Remember Us!
By Ben Hecht
[Originally published in The American Mercury in February 1943 and is

widely believed to be the first piece in any major American publication to
reveal the Nazi genocide.]
When the time comes to make peace, the men of many countries will sit around the table
of judgment. The eyes of the German delegates will look into the eyes of Englishmen,
Americans, Russians, Czechs, Poles, Greeks, Norwegians, Belgians, Frenchmen and
Dutchmen. All the victims of the German adventure will be there to pass sentence — all
but one. Absent from the table of judgment will be the Jew.
There are two reasons for this.
First is the fact that the Jews have only one unity — that of the target. They have lived in
the world as a scattered and diverse folk who paid homage to many cultures, many
ideologies, and called many flags their own. They had little in common but the Germans'
rage against them. The pogrom restores their unity. The Germans have animated the myth
of the Jewish menace beyond any of their predecessors and tried to prove their case by
presenting the world with a larger pile of Jewish corpses than has ever before been
introduced into the ancient argument. Despite this unity of death given the Jews, there will
be no nation to represent them at the judgment table. There will be no one from the empire
of nightmare in which for many years they dwelt in agony.
The second reason why they will not be represented at the peace conclave is an even more
practical one. Outside the borders of Russia, there will not be enough Jews left in Europe
to profit by representation were it given them. They will have been reduced from a minority
to a phantom. There will be no representatives to make demands in behalf of the three
million Jews who once lived in Poland, or of the nine hundred thousand who once lived in
Rumania, or of the nine hundred thousand who once lived in Germany, or of the 750,000
who once lived in Hungary, or of the 150,000 who once lived in Czechoslovakia, or of the
400,000 who once lived in France, Holland and Belgium.
Of these six million Jews, almost a third have already been massacred by Germans,
Rumanians and Hungarians and the most conservative of the score-keepers estimate that
before the war ends at least another third will have been done to death. These totals will
not include Jews who died in the brief battles of the German blitzes. Nor will they include
those who figured in the casualty lists of the Russians. Of the three million Jews in Russia,
more than seven hundred thousand have entered the Soviet armies and fought and bled on
all the valorous battlefields of the Muscovites. These are the lucky Jews of Europe and are
not to be counted in the tale of their nightmare.

In the hearts of the millions who were hanged, burned or shot, there was no dream of
representation and no hope.
They did not die dreaming, like the valorous Greeks, Dutchmen, Frenchmen and Czechs,
of abasements to be avenged and homelands to be restored. These great sustaining powers
in the human soul are unknown to the Jews. When they die in massacre, they look toward
no tomorrow to bring their children happiness and their enemies disaster. They cannot
gather strength out of any terrestrial past or future. For it is the whim of history, known to
the Jews of Europe, that no homeland is ever theirs, no matter how long they live in it, how
well they serve it or how many of its songs they learn to sing.
When the plans for the new world are being threshed out at the peace conference, when the
sentences are being passed and the guilt fixed and the plums distributed, there will be
nothing for the Jew'-s of Europe to say to the delegates around the judgment table but the
faint, sad phrase, ''Remember us!”
They will have only one political statement to offer and that will be that.
In proportion to their numbers, there were more Jews who died in the First World War
defending the Kaiser’s Germany than there were Germans, The Jewish Soldier Cemetery
outside Berlin, unless it has been plowed up and turned into a concentration camp, is
witness to the manner, of their dying must remain one of the measures of the German soul.
There will be wagonloads of savants on both sides, of economists, of metaphysicians,

philosophers and financiers to plot the remaking of a world. The dead of many lands will
speak for justice, but the Jew alone will have no one to speak for him. His voice will remain
outside the hall of judgment, to be heard only when the window is opened and the sad, faint
cry drifts in —
"Remember us! In the town of Freiburg in the Black Forest, two hundred of us were hanged
and left dangling out of our kitchen windows to watch our synagogue burn and our rabbi
flogged to death. In Mannheim and Hindenburg, the Germans drove us all into our burning
churches where we knelt and prayed and died while they sang their German song outside,
Break the skulls of all the Jews

And Future glory win.
Proudly will our banners fly
When Jewish blood runs from our sabre.
“In the town in Szczucin in Poland on the morning of September 23rd, which was the Day
set aside for our Atonement, we were all in our synagogues praying God to forgive us. All
our village was there, our bakers, millers, harness-makers, our students, wives, mothers
and sisters and every child that was old enough to pronounce the name of G-d. Above our
prayers we heard the sound of the motor lorries. They stopped in front of our synagogue.

The Germans tumbled out of them, torches in hand. The Germans set fire to us. When we
ran out of the flames, they turned machine guns on us.
They seized our women and undressed them and made them run naked through the
marketplace before their whips.
All of us were killed before our Atonement was done. ‘Remember us!’
“Remember us in Wloclawek. Here also the Germans came when we were at worship. The
Germans tore the prayer shawls from our heads. Under whips and bayonets, they made us
use our prayer shawls as mops to clean out German latrines. We were all dead when the
sun set. Remember us!
“In Mogielnica, in Brzeziny, in Wengrow and in many such places where we lived obeying
the law, studying to be wise, working for our bread and offering harm to no one, there also
the Germans came with their bayonets and torches, debasing us first and then killing us
slowly so they might longer enjoy the massacres.
“In Lublin, five hundred of our women and children were led to the marketplace and stood
against the vegetable stalls they knew so well. Here the Germans turned machine guns on
us and killed us all. But this was not as bad as in other places, for here we died quickly.
“In Warsaw, in the year 1941, we kept count and at the end of twelve months 72,279 of us
had died. Most of us were shot but there were thousands of us who were whipped and
bayoneted to death on the more serious charge of having been caught praying to God for
deliverance.
“In the seven months after June 1941, there were sixty thousand of us massacred in
Bessarabia and Bukhovina. There were more of us than that killed in Minsk. We hung from
windows and burned in basements and were beaten to death in the marketplace and this
was a time of great celebration for the Germans. Remember us!
“Remember us who were put in the freight trains that left France, Holland and Belgium
and who rode standing up to the east. We died standing up for there was no food or air or
water. Of the twenty thousand who made that trip, only a few hundred were taken alive
from the boxcars. These were sent to Transnistria and in Transnistria we all died of hunger
slowly and under the watchful eyes of the Germans and Rumanians.
“In Kiev no Jew young or old was left alive. We fill the waters of the Dnieper today with
our bodies. There are thousands of us in the waters. And for a long time to come, no one
will be able to drink from that river or to swim in it.
For we are still there. And this, too, is held against us, that we have poisoned the waters of
the Dnieper with our dead bodies.

“Remember us who were in the Ukraine. Here the Germans grew angry with us because
we were costing them too much time and ammunition to kill. They devised a less expensive
method. They took our women into the roads and tied them together with their children.
Then they drove their heavy motor lorries into us. Thousands of us died in this way, with
the German military cars running back and forth over our broken bodies.
“In Chelm, Poland, the Germans paid special attention to our hospitals and orphan homes.
They entered these places and hurled our sick and our children into the streets.
“Remember us in Ismail when the Rumanians came. For two days, they were busy leading
all the Jews to the synagogue. We were all finally locked inside it. The doors and windows
were sealed. Then the Iron Guards blew us up with dynamite and threw torches at those of
us who were not quite dead.
“In Odessa, the Germans led five thousand of us out into the country roads. We were mostly
old men, old women and children — some too old and some too young to walk. Above our
heads the Germans flew their bombers and dropped their bombs on us. The German officers
yelled that we should be proud for we were serving Germany by helping their fliers
improve their marksmanship. But their marksmanship was good. Of the five thousand,
none of us remained alive.
“In Ungheni, Rumania, the Germans accused us of crimes against the police. Three
thousand of us were tried. The Germans followed us to our homes. They had been
forbidden to waste bullets on us. They obeyed their officers. We were old and unarmed but
it took the Germans two days to club us all to death with their rifle butts and rip us into
silence with their bayonets.
“In Riga, a thousand of us arrived on a transport from Germany as conscripted laborers.

We had been traveling in sealed compartments for days without food. The Germans in Riga
unlocked our compartment and looked us over. The Germans in Riga decided we were too
weak to be of any use in the factories. They put us into large wagons, sealed the wagons
and drove us into the fields and dynamited us. None of us was left alive. Remember us who
were workingmen.
“Remember, too, those of us who were not killed by the Germans but who killed ourselves.
Some say there were a hundred thousand of us, some say two hundred thousand. No count
was kept. Our deaths accomplished little, but it made us happy to die quickly and to know
that we were robbing the Germans of their sport.”
These are only a few of the voices.
There are many more and there will be more millions.

When the German delegates sit at the peace table with their monocles restored to their pale
eyes, no sons or survivors or representatives of these myriad dead will be inside the hall
to speak for them. And by that time, it will be seen that the Jews are Jews only when they
fall under German rifle butts, before German motor lorries and hang from German belts
out of their kitchen windows. It will be seen that the Jews are Jews only when they stand
up for the hour of extermination. Once dead, it will be seen that they are left without a
government to speak for their avenging and that there is no banner to fly in their
tomorrow.
Only this that I write — and all the narratives like it that will be written — will be their
voice that may drift in through the opened window of the judgment hall. ✡
[Ben Hecht is perhaps most often remembered as a playwright, screenwriter, and

author. During the Holocaust and after he served as the leading publicist of the
Jabotinsky movement in the U.S.]
____ ____ ___

Do Holocaust Survivors Deserve Justice?

By Emil L. Fackenheim
[Originally published in B’tzedek: The Journal of Responsible Jewish
Commentary - Volume 1, Number 1; Spring 1997 / Aviv 5757]
In 1947 Estelle Sapir went to the Credit Suisse Bank in Geneva, showed officials a deposit
slip dated 1938, but the bankers, unmoved, would not give her access to the account, -- her
father's, presumably -- without his death certificate. "I broke into tears," she says, "and I
cried to him, 'You want me to get it from Hitler, from Himmler?' But it was no use."
"That was the experience of thousands of Jews," Time magazine, adds to its report, making
this the lead story in its November 4, 1996 issue.
It was not the first time Switzerland acted as though, to be sure, there was a Hitler, a
Himmler, but not, in particular, for Jews. That first time was in 1938 when, to quote
Holocaust scholar Michael Marrus, there was "an unusual collusion between German
authorities in Berlin and the head of the Swiss police, Heinrich Rothmund."
German Jews needed passports to flee, German ones of course, and not Berlin but
Rothmund suggested a "J" in the Jewish. "Why didn't we think of it?", they must have
thought in Berlin, and accepted the idea gratefully. Henceforth, this would discriminate
between Germans to admit, if holiday makers and "Aryans," and Germans to keep out,
"non-Aryans" in flight for their lives. To quote Marrus again, "Rothmund continued to
wield authority over refugee matters during the war, claiming afterwards that such caution
was absolutely necessary in view of the dangers that the Confederation faced." One would
like to think, not very confidently, that at the time the chief of the Swiss police never quite
realized.
And now, sixty years after Rothmund, and fifty after the Sapir-bank incident? Former
Swiss U.S. Ambassador Carlo Jagmetti is on record as declaring that "from a human point
of view, some real
mistakes have been made [by the banks] . . . that it was unacceptable [for the banks] to ask
for death certificates;" that these requests were "psychological errors." (Jerusalem Post,
October 31, 1996).
From the human point of view? Psychological errors? "Real mistakes"? Should they not
have been nice to survivors and their heirs, traumatized as these poor creatures were? Not
hurt their feelings, break regulations, give them charity? Even now, it seems, a major Swiss
representative, speaking officially for his country, fails to recognize a moral, misdemeanor
of fifty years ago, an offense against justice, which, for a banker, hardly any can be worse.
Winston Churchill called for ridding the world of Hitler's shadow, at a time when he was
busy with the Fuhrer alive. With Hitler dead a half a century, his shadow still lives.

And not in Switzerland or Europe alone. Canada made news with two facts, one inspiring
-- her leadership against starvation and death in Africa -- and one depressing -- the news of
hundreds of Nazis, even thousands, safe and sound, alive and unmolested, in Canada. Did
I say depressing? It is an outrage.
For Jews to demand justice -- in Switzerland, Europe, Canada -- is more than the exercise
of a right, more than merely about money. It is a duty, a mitzvah, as if given on Sinai itself:
it helps rid the world of Hitler's shadow.
There is no mitzvah without hope. The polls show that the Israeli youth want to know what
really happened with Hitler, Himmler and Jews. For the first generation, even the second
and third, it was too traumatizing. "No more 'horror stories'", some tell us, "they disturb
our sleep and our theology." The young will have none of that: the truth, if you please, the
unvarnished truth! That's what the young want from the middle-aged and the old.
And not only in Israel. The polls show the same about Holland. The story of Anne Frank
and her Dutch friends: how come so many Jews were deported from Holland? Why have
we heard about Anne Frank, but not the Dutch Nazi party? There is hope also for the rest
of Europe, perhaps even for France and Switzerland. And the Germans have published Ein
Volk von Moerdern? The book asks only the question, but the answers wanted by the young
are not evasions or apologetics.
In Canada they won't be left behind. Their grandfathers fought and died in the war. With
the bloodshed over, how did the worst among the just-defeated enemy -- not merely Nazis
but Nazi criminals -- get into Canada?
The young need hope but haven't had much in this century of hopelessness. Perhaps, with
its main product, cause and symbol last gotten rid of -- Hitler, of course, who else? -- the
young will learn how to hope again, in another, better century. ✡
[Professor Fackenheim (1916-2003) was a world renown philosopher and a Fellow

of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University.]

The Jews were forced back against the barbed wire

By Moshe Prager
A story from Lublin, late 1939.
The Jews were forced back against the barbed wire. The barbs pierced their flesh, pricking
their bones, and the blood began to trickle and run. The Jews huddled and crowded
together, stumbling and falling as more kept coming, colliding against the fallen ones and
falling with them. In the midst of this confusion the shrieking voice of the murderous chief
was heard again: “Sing, arrogant Jews, sing! Sing or you will die! Gunners, aim your
machine guns! Now listen, you dirty Jews. Sing or you will die!” And at that horrifying
moment, one man pried himself loose from the frightened mob and broke the conspiracy
of total silence. He stood there all alone and began to sing. His song was a Chassidic folk
song in which the Chassid poured out his soul before the Almighty:
“Lomir zich iberbeiten, iberbeiten, Avinu shebashamayim, Lomir zich iberbeiten,

iberbeiten, iberbeiten—” “Let us be reconciled, our Heavenly Father, Let us be reconciled,
let us make up—”
A spark of song was kindled, but that spark fell short of its mark. The Jews had been beaten,
and recoiled. The voice of the singer did not reach them. His song was silenced. There was
no singing.
But something did happen at that moment. A change took place.
As soon as the solitary voice was hushed, humbly, another voice picked up the same tune,
the same captivating Chassidic tune. Only the words were not the same. New words were
being sung. One solitary person in the entire humiliated and downtrodden crowd had
become the spokesman of all the Jews. This man had composed the new song on the spot,
a song derived from the eternal wellspring of the nation. The melody was the same ancient
Chassidic melody, but the words were conceived and distilled through the crucible of
affliction:
“Mir velen zey iberleben, iberleben, Avinu shebashamayim, Mir velen zey iberleben,
iberleben, iberleben—” “We shall outlive them, our Heavenly Father, We shall outlive
them, outlive them, outlive them—”
This time the song swept the entire crowd. The new refrain struck like lightning and jolted
the multitude. Feet rose rhythmically, as if by themselves. The song heaved and swelled
like a tidal wave, arms were joined, and soon all the frightened and despondent Jews were
dancing.
As for the commander, at first he clapped his hands in great satisfaction, laughing
derisively. “Ha, ha, ha, the Jews are singing and dancing! Ha, ha, the Jews have been

subdued!” But soon he grew puzzled and confused. What is going on? Is this how subdued
people behave? Are they really oppressed and humiliated? They all seem to be fired up by
this Chassidic dance, as if they have forgotten all pain, suffering, humiliation, and despair.
They have even forgotten about the presence of the Nazi commander . . .
“Stop, Jews! Stop at once! Stop the singing and dancing! Stop! Stop immediately!” the
oppressor yelled out in a terrible voice, and for the first time his well-disciplined
subordinates saw him at a loss, not knowing what to do next. “Stop! Stop! Stop at once!”
the commander pleaded with his soldiers in a croaking voice. The Jews, singing and
dancing ecstatically, were swept by the flood of their emotions and danced on and on. They
paid a high price for it. They were brutally beaten for their strange behavior. But their
singing and dancing did not stop. ✡
____ ____ ___

These Children Are Mine
A story from after the War.

Rabbi Eliezer Silver, a leader of American Orthodox Jewry in the twentieth century was
president of the Va’ad Hatzala or the Rescue Committee for Jews who survived the Shoah
(Holocaust). In that capacity, he travelled in post-war Europe looking for Jewish children
who had ended up in non-Jewish orphanages, most often sponsored by the Roman Catholic
Church. In one such case he came to an orphanage in Alsace Lorraine asking if there were
Jewish children there.
He was told that there were none or that they could not be identified as such; their origins
were unknown and they themselves had forgotten where they were from. Rabbi Silver
insisted that he nevertheless be permitted to see the children and he was finally allowed to
do so for a few moments before their bedtime. He walked into a room filled with beds of
children preparing to go to sleep. He called out: “Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem
Ehad” and immediately a young child cried out “Mommy!” Soon other voices joined in as
children began to come forward crying out for their mothers. “These children are mine,”
he said to the priest. “I will take them now.” ✡

Special Book Excerpt from

'Jews Make the Best Demons: "Palestine" and the Jewish Question'
By Eric Rozeman
Introduction What’s Old is New Again
Jews and non-Jews who wish them well believe the Holocaust ended in 1945. But if the
Holocaust began with ideas and words, only ending in round-ups and gas chambers, then
more to the point it was interrupted until it could be resumed with ideas and words.
Israelis and non-Israelis who support the Jewish state think Israel emerged victorious from
several major Arab-Israeli wars. Therefore, they seek to “correct” rather than quash anti-
Zionist, anti-Jewish prejudices in Diaspora and open the way to peaceful Arab-Israeli
coexistence in the Middle East.
But more accurately, Israel won large, even existential battles. Yet the war itself, now in
its tenth decade, continues. Enemies still undefeated, still confirmed or reconfirmed in anti-
Israel, antisemitic mythology, continue to fight. By non-military as well as armed means
they conduct a relentless war of attrition aimed at eventual destruction.
If all this were not so, Israel would not be the only one of the world’s approximately 200
countries whose capital city hosts no foreign embassies; which periodically has issued gas
masks to all its citizens (small tent-like protectors for infants); given endless incitement
and terrorism against it feels compelled to wall itself in, ghetto-like, from neighbors; and
is openly and repeatedly threatened with destruction by an Iran intent on nuclear weapons
and still bolstered by international trade.
Hatred of Israel, of the Jewish state, reanimates hatred of the Jewish people. In fact, the old
hatred of the Jewish people compels much of the newer hostility to the Israeli state. In that
sense, anti-Zionism is antisemitism and can hardly be otherwise.
“The Palestinian narrative,” historical revisionism leading to denial of the Jewish people’s
past, incites hatred of Israel. In that way, it functions as the new blood libel. To the
significant extent it complements Sunni Islamic imperialism, it also denies the Jewish
present and, by implication, future. This imperialism rejects Judaism (not to mention
Christianity) as a religion on equal footing with Islam.
The original blood libel—the fantastic charge that Jews murdered non-Jews and used their
blood for religious purposes—began among ancient Greeks, was well-established in
medieval Christianity, current in czarist Russia and revived by Nazi Germany. Today it
circulates widely in Arab-Islamic lands. It does so at times independently, but often as part
of the lie of Palestine.

Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsburg—his Hebrew pen-name means “One of the People”), was a
late 19th century cultural Zionist. He termed the blood libel accusation “the solitary case
in which the general acceptance of an idea about ourselves does not make us doubt whether
all the world can be wrong, and we [the Jews] are right, because it is based on an absolute
lie, and is not even supported by any false inference from particular to universal.”

Actually, there have been more than a few cases in which the Jews, or the Jewish state,
have been right and “all the world wrong.” These include but are hardly exhausted by
claims Jews control international finance, run the world’s communications media,
concocted the HIV- AIDS virus to attack their enemies, that Israel welcomed the 1967
Six- Day War as an opportunity to conquer Arab land, and that Zionism is racism.
Today, the primary case in which the Jews are right and much of the world wrong is the
Palestine lie. It falsely charges that the Jews, as Zionists, ethnically cleansed an indigenous
people from the land of Palestine, there established an imperialist, racist regime and that
the Jewish state—Israel—undermines Middle Eastern and even world-wide stability. In
fact, the Palestine lie has a) camouflaged antisemitism as anti-Zionism and b) promoted as
justified a resurgence of antisemitism. In this way it functions as the direct descendant of
the original blood libel. By no coincidence it repeatedly invokes the original to reanimate
it if not return it to respectability. Calls for Jewish destruction on the streets of Europe and
colleges campuses in North America have followed.
For those acquainted with the history of the blood libel and familiar with the inversions
and fabrications of “the Palestinian narrative,” reexamining either topic may seem
tedious. The falsifications are similar. But reexamining both the libel and the narrative have
become inescapable. In increasingly “post-modern” Western culture, facts are decreasingly
determinative. Which is to say, post-modern becomes pre-modern, empirical rationality
yielding once more to romantic superstition.
For many, but perhaps now a minority, the Hebrew Bible’s civilizing ethical monotheism
remains a social-cultural cornerstone. In the West’s none-too-distant past a majority
including, for example, John Adams and Winston Churchill, took the Bible’s civilizational
centrality for granted. Members of Britain’s Peel Commission went to Mandatory Palestine
to investigate the Palestinian Arabs’ anti-British, anti-Jewish rebellion in 1936—a
rebellion armed and funded by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Commissioners asked
Zionist leader and later Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, by what right the
Jews claimed the Holy Land. The secular but Jewishly knowledgeable Ben-Gurion pointed
to a copy of Scriptures and reminded them, “the Bible is our mandate.” Sacrificing a
Jewish state—and sacrifice it would be, in the original sense of ritual offering—the West
would sacrifice its ethical anchor.
However, a large and growing number imagines post-modern, secular materialism can
survive untethered from traditional values short-handed as “Judeo-Christian ethics.”
Whereas the blood libel once made Jews agents of Satan, the Palestine lie now casts them
as agents of racism, equivalent to the anti-Christ in the secular fundamentalist catechism.
“Racist!” like “heretic!” before it, as some have noted, is the ultimate malediction and
authorizes the ultimate sanction.
So the West once again finds itself at a perversely familiar junction. The Jews, the Zionists,
the Israelis are right, and much of the world is wrong. But such elevated outlier status for
the Jews is intolerable. There- fore, the position of their enemies can be tolerated, even
embraced. An- dré Gide—who won the Nobel Prize for Literature when it still mattered—

observed, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was
listening, everything must be said again.” So it is about the Jews, Israel and their enemies.
The Holocaust did not begin with concentration camps and gas chambers. Steven Blaney,
public safety and emergency preparedness minister in the cabinet of staunchly pro-Israel
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, felt compelled in 2015 to repeat a truism: “[The]
Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words.”
Those words led from slander to marginalization, from marginalization to isolation, and
from isolation and dehumanization to the death camps. Blaney’s observation, not new, was
again necessary. Obfuscation aside—and it is limitless on the subject of the Jews and their
state, whether intentional or unintentional, informed or ignorant—such words again enter
common conversation, especially via the Internet. …
Chapter Two: Denial, Revisionism and Narrative
… In 2007, a 22-year-old man who called [Elie] Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust
fictitious pulled him out of a hotel elevator in San Francisco and attacked him.”
The attacker’s name was Eric Hunt, who, when convicted on false imprisonment-felony
hate crime charges one year later, was described as a “troubled” New Jersey man. He had
yanked Wiesel out of the elevator in an attempt to “persuade” him “to renounce the
Holocaust.” But metaphysically, his name could have been Haj Amin el-Husseini, or that
of el-Husseini’s relative and ideological heir Yasser Arafat, or Arafat’s successor as leader
of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas. Not to mention many other
“troubled” people, including the countless followers of al-Husseini, Arafat and Abbas, their
apologists, enthusiasts or competitors—Arab, Muslim, European, North American,
Christian, secular or even Jewish. Any passionate subscriber to the Palestinian narrative
would do.
“Narrative” is the post-modern literary, historical or psychological term of art for a tightly
held, highly personalized substitution and often partial if not complete falsification of
factual history. Can history be factual? Isn’t it an artificial construct by those with
“hegemonic” power in any given society?
Is medicine fact-based, or is what one physician’s biopsy reveals to be a malignant tumor

just another doctor’s wart? Are metallurgy and alchemy branches of the same discipline,
or does the former rest on science, the latter on superstition? On Dec. 7, 1941 did Japan

bomb Pearl Harbor, or was it the other way around, with the United States launching a
surprise attack on Tokyo?
If reality hangs, Rashomon-like, on one’s personal, subjective perspective, on a gaggle of

conspiracy theorists’ Web sites, then even though one person’s blizzard is never another’s
heat wave, non-existent tunnels under a real Washington, D.C. pizzeria could be the site of
a fictitious child sex abuse ring connected to Hillary Clinton—as asserted by the Internet-
deluded in the fall of 2016. If those pizzeria tunnels were real, or at least virtually real, then
one person’s terrorist could be another’s “freedom fighter”—as apologists for Palestinian
terror have asserted for decades. This gossamer foundation of moral relativism constitutes
an imagined shield for those who believe lofty sentiments immunize them against at least
passive complicity in terrorist murder. By such pretexts they excuse, if not justify, the
slaughter of Israelis and, if necessary, their Jewish and non-Jewish backers. They cover
their excuse with the academic gloss of post-modernism, which in this case amounts to not
only Holocaust revisionism and Zionist demonization but also Jewish obliteration. Such
obliteration is epitomized, as noted, by the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural
Organization’s repeated denials in 2016 and 2017 of Jerusalem’s Jewish identity. First the
word, then the deed….
Praise for Jews Make the Best Demons: “Palestine” and the Jewish Question
“Rozenman’s cry from the heart establishes the clear connection between the old
antisemitism and the new anti-Zionism. Only the blind or the wicked can deny his truth,
proven by exemplary research; everyone else will learn from him.” – Daniel Pipes, founder
of Middle East Forum and Middle East Quarterly.
“Copiously researched and elegantly written, this book offers an uncommonly insightful
analysis into the alarming increase in antisemitism and its offshoot, anti-Zionism,
throughout the world … This is a brilliant book that should be required reading for anyone
concerned about the oldest prejudice threatening our civilization once again.” – Juliana
Geran Pilon, Senior Fellow, Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western
Civilization, author of The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World
____ ____ ___
Eric Rozenman has worked as a reporter for Ohio Scripps-Howard Newspapers, a

congressional staffer and editor of the Washington Jewish Week and B’nai B’rith’s
International Jewish Monthly. His commentaries and analyses have appeared in
publications including The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post,
Journal for the Study of Antisemitism and Journal of International Security Affairs.

Jews Make the Best Demons: “Palestine” and the Jewish Question, the most
revealing work on anti-Zionism and antisemitism in recent years, is available
at www.barnesandnoble.com and www.amazon.com

Anti-Israel Professor Hijacks a Holocaust Conference

By Moshe Phillips
[Originally published by Algemeiner in February 2020]
A radical professor who thinks America is hopelessly racist will preside over an upcoming
Holocaust education conference that will seek to show “connections between racist
ideology and policies in the US and Nazi Germany.”
The conference, which is scheduled to be held in North Carolina this May, is sponsored by
the Illinois-based Holocaust Educational Foundation, which is a respected, mainstream
organization. But the Foundation has put the event in the hands of professor Barry
Trachtenberg, a harsh critic of Israel and Zionism, who is co-chairing the conference with
colleagues. It’s obvious they intend to manipulate the event for political purposes.
One of those “connections between racist ideology and policies in the US and Nazi
Germany” that Trachtenberg and his cohorts are focused on is comparing slavery in
America to the Holocaust. In the conference description, they write that the event “will
also explore how the specific history of the Holocaust helps us to particularize and compare
the continued controversial impact and reception of Southern slavery and segregation on
our public and private lives.”
Last year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explicitly warned against
exactly these kinds of irresponsible analogies. The Museum said that it “unequivocally
rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether
historical or contemporary. … At a time when our country needs dialogue more than ever,
it is especially dangerous to exploit the memory of the Holocaust as a rhetorical cudgel.”
Perhaps the reason Trachtenberg can’t resist making such analogies is that he has such a
harsh view of the US. In 2009, Trachtenberg signed a petition dismissing US anti-terror
policies as “the so-called ‘war on terror.’”
Trachtenberg’s extremist view of America fits with his extreme hostility towards Israel.
He has repeatedly compared Israeli policies to those of apartheid South Africa. He signed
a 2009 petition describing Israel’s self-defense actions against Gaza rockets as “the mass
destruction unleashed by the State of Israel against the people of Gaza.”
Last November, Trachtenberg spoke at an Appalachian State University event on what he

called “the experience of Palestinian Arabs, who faced nearly wholesale ethnic cleansing
with the founding of Israel.” Similarly, in 2013, he signed a public statement accusing
Israel of “relentless ethnic cleansing.”

Trachtenberg has also repeatedly spoken at events sponsored by the anti-Israel group
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and signed many of its anti-Zionist petitions. In 2017, he
signed a JVP letter under the heading “Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council.”
That same year, Jewish Voice for Peace invited convicted terrorist Rasmeah Odeh, who
murdered two Hebrew University students, to address its annual convention. I wonder how
alumni of
Hebrew University would feel about attending Trachtenberg’s upcoming conference in

May, knowing that he associates with a group that champions a murderer of their fellow
alums.
Trachtenberg also avidly supports anti-Israel boycotts. In 2013, he signed a public

statement — organized by the official Palestinian BDS National Committee — calling for
a worldwide boycott of a conference at Hebrew University. In 2014, Trachtenberg signed
a petition urging the state of California to divest from all Israeli companies. In 2016, he
signed a petition calling on the Modern Language Association to boycott all Israeli
academic institutions.
In 2017, Trachtenberg testified before a US Congressional committee against legislation

to combat antisemitism. He declared that reports about antisemitism on college campuses
are exaggerated, and said he opposed the bill’s classification of comparisons between Israel
and Nazi Germany as antisemitic.
Trachtenberg is also deeply hostile to major American Jewish organizations. In the 2009
petition, he and his cohorts sneered that the only people who supported Israel’s actions
against Gaza rockets were “the usual apologists for the Jewish state.” Writing last year in
the pro-PLO Journal of Palestine Studies, Trachtenberg complained about what he said is
“the current willingness of major Jewish organizations in the United States — such as the
Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the
American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and leaders to overlook or
dismiss white supremacy in the name of supporting Israel.”
No doubt, there are donors to the Holocaust Educational Foundation who have been
associated, at one time or another, with the ADL, AIPAC, AJC, or the Wiesenthal Center.
I wonder what they think of Trachtenberg’s outrageous verbal assault on these
organizations. I also wonder why the Holocaust Educational Foundation put Trachtenberg
on its own academic council. Either the Foundation didn’t bother to check out Trachtenberg
before nominating him to its council — which would be bad enough — or it knew of his
anti-Israel, pro-BDS advocacy and nominated him anyway.
By this time, however, Trachtenberg’s extremist activities have become so well known that
the Foundation can no longer plead ignorance. It’s shocking that the Foundation is putting
its upcoming conference in the hands of an extremist who promotes boycotts of all Israeli
universities, and slanders major American Jewish organizations.

Equally appalling is that the Foundation is permitting Trachtenberg to use its good name
to hold a conference which will seek to prove “connections” between America and Nazism.
This is a grotesque and appalling manipulation of Holocaust history for political purposes,
and it strikes at the heart of what the Holocaust Educational Foundation is supposed to
promote. ✡

The 'Jewish nose' myth is alive and well - in the US Holocaust Museum
By Moshe Phillips
[Originally published by Israel National News/Arutz Sheva in March 2019]
It’s bad enough that an annual Belgian carnival float mocks Jews by depicting them with
huge “Jewish noses.” But now a prominent historian at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum is also perpetuating the myth that there is such a thing as a “Jewish
nose.”
In a tweet on December 17, 2019, Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, a staff historian at the museum
who frequently represents it at events around the country, wrote: “At a talk today, asked
about my personal background. I confessed that I’m not Jewish, but with a Hebrew first
name, German last name, and my nose and hair, I ‘pass’.”
Historian Sharonna Pearl wrote an essay in Tablet last year titled “The Myth of the Jewish
Nose: It’s Not Really a Thing.” Pearl was just stating the obvious. Yet here we have a staff
historian at the Holocaust Museum—of all places—who thinks that it IS a thing.
The idea that there is a distinctive “Jewish nose” dates back to the 12th century CE, when
medieval anti-Semites introduced it as a way of singling out Jews for contempt.
The nose became “a physical symbol of otherness for Jews,” as Prof. Roy Goldblatt has
put it.
Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine made ample use of the “Jewish nose” stereotype. A
notorious Nazi film produced in 1940, called “The Eternal Jew,” purporting to expose the
“real” Jew, focused on “Jewish faces,” zooming in on Jews’ noses to make them seem
unattractive.
Similar images appeared throughout the Nazis’ news media, cultural publications, and
children’s books. You would think that a historian at the Holocaust Museum would be
informed and sensitive about the danger of echoing such stereotypes.
In recent years, the “Jewish nose” lie has been heard from various other quarters. In 1999,
for example, Arizona state legislator Barbara Blewster told a colleague, “You can’t be
Jewish. You don’t have a big hooked nose.” Blewster was compelled to publicly apologize,
but she continued to insist, “I have no prejudice at all. I admire the Jews.” Sure she does.
The recently resigned prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamed, has repeatedly
referred to “hook-nosed Jews.” The website of Belgium’s Ghent University until recently
included a sign-language video showing a hooked nose as the translation for the word
“Jewish.” And a Jewish woman in Sweden recently reported that when she went to a

Stockholm police station to have her photo taken for an ID card, an anti-Semitic officer
digitally altered her image to drastically enlarge her nose.
Women in particular have suffered from the “Jewish nose” stereotype that Erbelding is
perpetuating. Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield and Maital Friedman of the Shalom Hartman
Institute have written about how the “Jewish nose” and related stereotypes have been used
to intimidate Jewish women into altering their appearances. “These negative stereotypes
have impacted our
Jewish psyche and spawned a self-consciousness and communal shame about ‘Jewish
looks’,” they point out.
Some see a direct connection between the Jewish nose stereotype and violence against
Jews. In a recent essay, Jonathan Kaplan, of the University of Technology-Sydney, noted
that Pittsburgh synagogue gunman Robert Bowers invoked classic anti-Jewish stereotypes
in his online ravings. “How we speak about and depict others in the media and social
discourse perpetuates long-held stereotypes and ultimately emboldens hate-filled
individuals,” Kaplan warned.
Sadly, Rebecca Erbelding’s remark about “Jewish noses” is just the latest in a series of
extremist statements that she has made in recent years, forcing the U.S. Holocaust Museum
to publicly apologize or distance itself from her words.
One such episode occurred when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared

U.S. border detention facilities to Nazi-era “concentration camps.” Erbelding sent out
tweets and re-tweets sympathizing with Cortez’s position. She even gave “a Geppetto
checkmark” to Cortez’s defense of her declaration. (That’s shorthand for saying that a
statement is “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”) The Holocaust Museum
then issued a statement saying that Erbelding’s position “does not reflect the position of
the Museum.”
Erbelding has publicly condemned the United States for destroying Syria’s chemical
weapons factories. She has promoted donations to the American Friends Service
Committee despite that group’s comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany. She has even
claimed it would have been wrong for the U.S. to bomb Auschwitz, because it “would have
killed a lot of people.” That last one is so bizarre, it might sound as if she couldn’t have
been serious—but she was.
Rebecca Erbelding needs to apologize for perpetuating the deeply offensive stereotype
about “Jewish noses.” But beyond that, one might ask: how many more times will the U.S.
Holocaust Museum find itself embarrassed by Erbelding’s extremist antics, before it
concludes that she is more of a liability than an asset?

America’s taxpayers pay Erbelding’s salary and finance the Holocaust Museum. They have
a right to expect that federal government institutions will not have a hand in the
irresponsible parroting of anti-Jewish stereotypes. ✡

An Unfair Attack on the JNF From an Unlikely Source— the US

Holocaust Museum
By Moshe Phillips
[Originally published by The Jewish Press in December 2019]
The official journal of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has just published
an article depicting the Jewish National Fund (JNF) as a colonialist exploiter of the
Palestinian Arabs. The article was authored by Amy Weiss, a young Holocaust scholar
from New Jersey. It appears in the latest issue (Fall 2019) of Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, the museum’s official journal, which is edited by Richard D. Breitman.
Weiss accuses the JNF of secretly plotting in the 1930s to plant more pine trees and fewer
olive trees in its forests, thereby “alter[ing] a Palestinian landscape to resemble a European
one more familiar to Jewish pioneers and Holocaust survivors.”
According to Weiss, the JNF continued this European-colonialist conspiracy after the 1948
war, too. “Erecting JNF forests where Palestinian villages and olive groves once stood
promised to erase the connection to that land of the former residents who had fled or been
expelled,” she writes.
The hook for Weiss’s article is an obscure episode from the 1940s in which some American
Christians planted a small forest in Israel to commemorate child victims of the Holocaust.
But that isn’t what Weiss wanted to bring attention to; she concentrates her firepower on
depicting the JNF and its forestry work in as negative a light as possible.
Weiss mocks the JNF’s claim that its aim was to revive the Land of Israel. She calls it “the
myth of ‘making the desert bloom,’” and dismisses the centuries of Arab neglect of the
land as the “purported languishing” of land. According to Weiss, Zionist leaders concocted
this “environmental degradation narrative” in order to “justify” the JNF’s land-grab policy.
“While publicly speaking of environmental improvement and jobs, in actuality [the JNF]
strove for Jewish colonization,” Weiss asserts, suggesting the JNF was disingenuously
advancing a secret and sinister agenda. After Israel’s War of Independence, “JNF pine trees
figured in the planting over of ‘abandoned’ Arab villages,” Weiss writes.
Notice the quotation marks around “abandoned.” Weiss clearly doesn’t believe they were
abandoned. In fact, when she refers to Palestinian Arabs who emigrated during the war,
she calls them “700,000 people [who] either had been forcibly driven from their homes or
voluntarily fled.” Weiss’ wording is apparently intended to create the impression that the
number who were expelled and the number who fled is roughly equal.
Yet even Benny Morris – the king of the so-called “New Israeli Historians” who bash
Israel’s founding fathers – has acknowledged that a large majority of Palestinian Arabs
chose to flee in order to get out of the way of battle areas. Only a tiny number were expelled,

and even they were only expelled because of specific wartime emergencies, not as part of
any Zionist plot to get rid of the Arabs.
For Amy Weiss, however, the work of the JNF is clothed in sin. It was carrying out what
she has described in her lectures as a “politicized land reclamation project to secure land”
for the Zionist movement and Israel. It was trying to “erase” Arab villages and replace
them with a “European” model. And she alleges that the JNF caused “devastating damage”
to the environment, to boot.
In Weiss’s distorted version of history, the Jews are alien, land-grabbing, desecrators of
the ecology while the Palestinian Arabs are the noble indigenous planters of olive trees.
“The planting of olive trees consequently became a symbol of struggle for Palestinians,”
Weiss asserts.
That’s an ironic statement, considering how often Palestinian Arab terrorists set fire to the
land for which they are “struggling”; just the November 2016 arson wave alone destroyed
nearly 5,000 acres of forests, brush, and open land throughout Israel.
Why did Richard Breitman, the editor of the museum’s Holocaust journal, decide to publish
Weiss’s harsh attack on a venerable and respected Jewish institution as JNF? Why did he
permit a journal that is supposed to showcase legitimate Holocaust research to be used to
present such a twisted version of history?
Do the leaders of the Holocaust Museum endorse Breitman’s action? If not, what are they
going to do about it? The public – which funds the museum through its tax dollars – has a
right to some answers. ✡
[Moshe Phillips is the national director of Herut North America's U.S. division.]

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Marking

Yom HaShoah 2020

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Curiously, in Israel, Yom HaShoah is not observed in January. Rather, it is observed in

[Rabbi Melman is a community rabbi in Pennsylvania and was a Herut Zionists

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Don’t be sad - be MAD!

A Personal Yom HaShoah Message from World Herut’s Executive Director

As we approach Yom HaShoah [Holocaust Remembrance Day], we are once again

What I don’t often see (if ever) is an angry post.

Shouldn’t this make you mad?

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Don’t be sad - be MAD!!!

Karma Feinstein Cohen

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PART ONE: Traditional Mourning & The Holocaust Page 6

PART TWO: The Holocaust in History Page 8

PART FOUR: Current Holocaust Controversies Page 25

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Herut North America (HNA) is a grassroots Jewish activist movement

Herut North America welcomes your membership and invites your

Please consider becoming a member of Herut today.

Visit www.HerutNA.org for membership information.

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Kel Maleh Rachamim

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The Kaddish Prayer

May His great name be blessed forever, and to all eternity!

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"Hitler did not wholesale killing of Jews at once. First, he

"If we learn and remember, we shall overcome our enemies. They

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Ze’ev Jabotinsky, in a speech given on October 24, 1938, in Warsaw,

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How a Distorted Narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Has

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“I Believe The Lessons Of The Holocaust Are These…”

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[Originally published in The American Mercury in February 1943 and is

There are two reasons for this.

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There will be wagonloads of savants on both sides, of economists, of metaphysicians,

Break the skulls of all the Jews

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“In Riga, a thousand of us arrived on a transport from Germany as conscripted laborers.

These are only a few of the voices.

There are many more and there will be more millions.

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[Ben Hecht is perhaps most often remembered as a playwright, screenwriter, and

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Do Holocaust Survivors Deserve Justice?

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[Professor Fackenheim (1916-2003) was a world renown philosopher and a Fellow

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The Jews were forced back against the barbed wire

“Lomir zich iberbeiten, iberbeiten, Avinu shebashamayim, Lomir zich iberbeiten,

But something did happen at that moment. A change took place.

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