Cukurs is only one example of a troubling and puzzling phenomenon: The revival in Central and Eastern Europe of historical figures who had been previously discredited by their ties to Holocaust crimes. In the quarter century since the end of communism in this region, states and societies have endeavored to “normalize” the past, reviving events and actors erased from communist-era histories. On the one hand, this process has brought to light important cultural, social, and political figures who were marginalized because they did not fit into the ideology of Soviet communism. On the other hand, it has animated a cast of “heroes” whose moral and legal transgressions have been sanitized.
Monday, March 7, 2022
How Israel’s Justice System Dealt With Alleged Jewish Collaborators in Concentration Camps—And Why That Still Matters Today
https://time.com/5710303/nazi-collaborator-trials/
Over those two decades, the kapo trials went through four main phases, moving from an initial perception of Jewish ghetto and camp functionaries as perpetrators equivalent to the Nazis to a final perception of them as victims.
Sunday, March 6, 2022
Arab world divided on Russia-Ukraine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has also divided support for Ukraine.
Hamarneh said Arab social media feeds are full of people sharing posts made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in support of Israel during the Gaza war. “This will mobilize the anti-Zelensky coalition," he said.
Dima Khatib, a Palestinian activist living in Doha, claimed it was hypocritical for the West to support Ukrainian resistance while often calling Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation terrorism. It's an argument echoed by other Palestinians and some of their supporters online.
Meanwhile, opinion in Lebanon is mixed along long-standing divisions in the country.
The pro-Hezbollah camp has sided completely with Russia, while those who do not back Hezbollah are voicing their support for Ukraine, according to Ayman Mhanna, director of the Beirut-based Samir Kassir Foundation.
Diaspora Min. asks PM to cancel deposits for Ukrainian refugees
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/323364
Ambassador Yevhen Korniichuk told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday that he was disappointed by Israel’s decision, comparing Ukrainian war refugees to Jews seeking shelter from the Holocaust during World War II.
“Dozens of Ukrainian citizens were sent back from Ben Gurion International Airport to the countries from which came over the past few days,” said Korniichuk. “Thousands of Righteous Gentiles in Ukraine saved Jews during the Holocaust.”
“This is a humanitarian issue, and I ask that it be reconsidered. Demanding cash guarantees of 10,000 or 20,000 shekels is very difficult. We are asking for your help. They aren’t coming here to work. They are fleeing war.”
Yuval Noah Harari: No matter what he does, Putin has already lost this war
“This war is not about conquering this city or that city. Putin can conquer all of Ukraine, that’s completely true,” Harari told Channel 12 news on Friday. “But this war is over the very existence of a Ukrainian people.”
Putin, he said, began the war “because he has a fantasy he’s built up in his head that there isn’t a Ukrainian people, that Ukrainians are actually Russians, that they want to be a part of Russia, and that only some small Judeo-Nazi gang in power is preventing it.”
Putin believed that he’d go in, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would flee, the military would surrender and the population “would greet the Russian tanks with flowers.”
But “he was wrong all along the way.”/
Ukrainian negotiator says Russia realizing ‘real cost of war’
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-negotiator-says-russia-realizing-real-cost-of-war/
“They are starting to realize the real price of war only now. And now we are starting to have constructive negotiations,” added the official, who participated in the first two rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine, held on the border of Belarus.
The antisemitism animating Putin’s claim to ‘denazify’ Ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/vladimir-putin-ukraine-attack-antisemitism-denazify
By claiming that the aim of the invasion is to “denazify” Ukraine, Putin appeals to the myths of contemporary eastern European antisemitism – that a global cabal of Jews were (and are) the real agents of violence against Russian Christians and the real victims of the Nazis were not the Jews, but rather this group. Russian Christians are targets of a conspiracy by a global elite, who, using the vocabulary of liberal democracy and human rights, attack the Christian faith and the Russian nation. Putin’s propaganda is not aimed at an obviously skeptical west, but rather appeals domestically to this strain of Christian nationalism.
TRUMP GOES FULL ANTI-SEMITE, UNLOADS ON AMERICAN JEWS IN WILDLY BIGOTED RANT
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/12/donald-trump-anti-semitism-jews-israel
In February 2017, asked what the government planned to do about the uptick in threats to Jewish centers and the rise in anti-Semitism since his election, Donald Trump responded, “I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” That claim, like the one he would make a few months later about being “the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,” obviously was and remains not true at all. How do we know? Let’s examine the evidence!
Henry Ford and Anti-Semitism: A Complex Story
As with most famous people, Henry Ford was complex and had traits and took actions that were laudatory as well as troublesome. The most controversial and least admirable aspect of Ford’s career was his descent into anti-Semitism. Convinced that “bankers” and “the Jews” were responsible for a whole range of things he didn’t like, from the world war to short skirts to jazz music, Ford used his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to carry on an active anti-Semitic campaign. Between 1920 and 1922 a series of articles denounced all things Jewish. While officially apologizing for the articles in 1927, Ford’s anti-Jewish sentiments ran deep. Seen within the context of the times, they demonstrate the sharp realities and tensions that emerge in societies undergoing profound cultural, economic and political change.
Nazi Collaborator or National Hero? A Test for Lithuania
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/world/europe/nazi-general-storm-lithuania.html
“They have built up a whole national narrative around fighting Communism that they cannot dismantle,” said Grant Gochin, a South African of Lithuanian descent who has calculated that he lost 100 family members to the Holocaust in Lithuania, dozens of them in territory under Mr. Noreika’s control during the Nazi occupation.
Friday, March 4, 2022
Is halachic status independent of reality?
Sanhedrin (33b) To explain the terms “innocent” and “righteous” in the verse: “And the innocent and the righteous you shall not slay” (Exodus 23:7), the Sages taught: From where is it derived that with regard to one who is leaving the court having been found liable, and someone said: I have the ability to teach a reason to acquit him, from where is it derived that the court brings the accused back to be judged again? The verse states: The innocent you shall not slay, and the accused may in fact be innocent.
An open letter to Chabad/Lubavitch HQ
I am sorry to report that we seem to have uncovered a deep fault in the Chabad/Lubavitch worldwide organization. Many of us grew up hearing amazing stories about the great work that Chabad centres do around the world. How they help Jewish travellers in India, provide communities for Jews who would otherwise have none, rescue and de-program misguided Jewish teenagers from cults, set up orphanages in Eastern Europe, etc… The stories are endless and, until now, have created a glowing picture of Chabad as truly being “Hashem’s Army.”
In our campaign to help the twin boys, Benji and Sammy Schlesinger be reunited with their mother, Beth Alexander, after a decade of obstruction by Rabbi Jacob Biderman of the Lauder Chabad Campus in Vienna, Austria, we learned a lot about how the Chabad shlichim (emissaries) work. When we see the massive conferences in New York where the shlichim come together from every corner of the planet, we are encouraged to think of Chabad as one large family under the authority of 770 NYC. Apparently, this is absolutely not the case.
We assumed that informing Chabad/Lubavitch HQ, and other Chabad Rabbis in different places, about how Biderman used his position to help erase their mother from the lives of two little boys who were obviously confused, depressed and suffering, would result in at least some interest from Biderman’s fellow Rabbis as to how he could do such an outright chillul Hashem. We are shocked by what ensued.
We are a group of more than 6000 supporters of Beth. Ordinary people from all walks of life, mostly Jewish but not all, and from all over the world. We only want two innocent Jewish boys to experience the love of their mother before it’s too late and they grow up thinking she doesn’t care about them. We don’t want revenge or money. We just want justice for two children who have no voice in the corrupt and hostile environment of the Lauder Chabad Campus.
We received a number of replies from Chabad Rabbis and/or their wives. We were informed that every Chabad centre is autonomous. Every Chabad Rabbi is responsible for raising his own funds among the community he “serves” and works however he sees fit. Who knew? Many of us learned something we didn’t know before. However, no Rabbi or Rebbetzen wanted to get involved. Not to make a phone call, ask some discrete questions, or interest themselves in any way in the plight of defenceless children.
And yet this was not the most shocking part. Not one reply was honest enough to admit that they don’t want to rock the boat and cross a powerful Rabbi in a rich Chabad community. After all, how many of them are as successful as Biderman in Vienna who has his own K-12 school campus? Instead, we got lectures in how we perhaps don’t know the whole story, there are two sides to every coin, etc...
Believe me, we know the whole story. And even if there was something we don’t know, what could possibly be so heinous as to bar a mother from attending her children’s birthday parties in school? Refusing her any information about their wellbeing or progress? What could Beth Alexander have done that allowed Rabbi Biderman to lie to the courts on behalf of her ex-husband? What sort of a monster would the mother have to be for a Rabbi to break one of the 10 Commandments? One look at the videos on the You Tube Chanel “Help Beth” would reassure anyone that the extreme measures Biderman took to separate the boys from their mother, was unfounded and downright cruel.
Now we know that Rabbi Jacob Biderman decided to follow the money because caring for the welfare of two children in his care above his own personal success, would not get him his school, would not pay his personal expenses, would not provide a house for his family to live in, and – most shockingly – would not necessarily gain him the respect and standing among the other shlichim who can only dream of the resources Biderman has at his disposal. But at what cost? According to Jacob Biderman, destroying the lives of one Jewish family is not a high price for the Jewish world to pay.
This is the problem with Chabad/Lubavitch. They hide behind the good name of the organization that is based on the righteous work of some of its members, whilst in reality, it’s every man for himself. And if one Rabbi threatens the good name that brings in the money worldwide, all they want is to hush it up.
But perhaps I am being too harsh. Many of us suspect that the reason they harp on about two sides to every story, etc… is that it absolves them from dealing with the uncomfortable thought that some Rabbis among them are corrupt. For some Rabbis, like Jacob Biderman, the money might be their top priority. That their beloved Chabad might be supporting “Rabbis” who are not worthy of the name, may be too hard to contemplate. Better to make excuses and not open that potential Pandora’s box.
Now we understand that Chabad is not Hashem’s Army at all. It is a loose collection of communities run by individuals with no accountability to the organization whose erstwhile good name they can exploit should they so wish. From now on it must be known that Chabad just means Jewish, and like, the whole of Am Yisrael, there are good and bad souls among them.
As such Chabad no longer means anything. Your Rebbe must be turning in his grave.
Rachel Selby
Jerusalem
Open Letter To Jacob Biderman : WE SIMPLY WILL NOT STOP NOR WILL WE GO AWAY
info@lauderchabad.at
biderman@lauderchabad.at
Rabbi Biderman,
https://helpbeth.org/lauder-chabad-statement-on-facebook-1st-march-2022/
Lauder Chabad Campus: “The Perfect harmony between Austrian formal education and Jewish teaching of the heart and spirit” (as written on their Facebook page) I’d like to know, is that the same “heart and spirit” of the twin boys you’ve stripped of seeing their mother for 10 years?
Is this the same “heart and spirit” that you’ve blatantly stopped a mother from attending every parents’ evening, every concert and birthday party since they were in the Kindergarten? Is this the same “heart and spirit” that despite a mother recording that one of her children was deliberately ramming himself against a wall in an act of self-harm, Rabbi Biderman testified in Court that both twins were ‘thriving with their father’. Is this the same “heart and spirit” that you wrongfully reported Beth Alexander to be mentally ill – despite knowing full well that this was a lie?
You may succeed to continue to pull the wool over the eyes of innocent families who may think by sending their beloved children to your school will be a good choice but we hope they’ll think again once they’ve read and learned what lies beneath your fake veneer ‘to grow up with joy and confidence’. Together with the Austrian courts, you have been culpable in damaging these poor children.
One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to know the mental damage these children will have suffered as a direct result of their treatment of which you are in part hugely responsible, having withheld them from being with their mother. The boys have been and continue to be used as pawns throughout this ghastly 10-year episode and I wonder, did anyone stop to think and ask them what they wanted? Granted if you ask them now – I believe they’ve been so heavily brainwashed in favour of their father – but you tell me: which child do you know who would ever elect to be without their mother?
A final note to the entire Lauder Chabad establishment: You may think it unnecessary for your names and school to be brandished across social media – but you’ve not seen anything yet! There are several thousands of us from all over the world in support of Beth and we are not going anywhere. In fact, we are just growing in numbers and support. We are fully supported by Chabad in our local communities with whom we’ve all raised your behaviour and coercion. Our local Chabad Rabbis are quite frankly sickened and ashamed by your involvement.
I/ we will continue to knock on your door; we shall continue to make so much noise; we simply will NOT stop, nor will we go away until there’s an independent investigation and only once Beth has been reunited with her boys. You may think that it’s a little ‘unnecessary’ for the several thousand of us from all over the world, to have taken to social media – but you just wait. This is only the very beginning. Karma will prevail.
Sarah Callis
#ReunitingBethWithHerBoys #helpbeth
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