HOLOCAUST STUDIES

Jewish Life before World War II | Holocaust Education | USHMM

https://www.israelunwired.com/remarkable-footage-of-jewish-life-in-europe-just-weeks-before-wwii/

REMARKABLE FOOTAGE OF JEWISH LIFE IN EUROPE JUST WEEKS BEFORE WWII

written by Phil Schneider January 17, 2023 16.3K views

The Jewish world of Europe numbered nearly 10 million people on the eve of World War II. It is hard to believe today, but Poland was one of the best places for Jews to live for many centuries, despite the occasional anti-semitic outbreak. It all changed when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939

Jewish Life before World War II | Holocaust Education | USHMM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNobaSEckHQ&t=6s


But there were Jews in other countries too. Austria, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and even Germany, all had sizeable Jewish populations. Life was good for so many of these people for so many generations. But the uniqueness of this video is that it affords so much more than a glimpse of what life was like in Europe.



The 9.5 mm films, sometimes even in color, are way beyond eye-opening. It puts on a face to the overwhelming idea of 6 million Jews being killed by the German people and their collaborators. It is so easy to forget how much life was snuffed out when the German war machine destroyed everything.



The Spielberg archive is a truly a treasure. This footage is amazing to see. It is also heartbreaking though because you can see how vibrant Jewish life was before Hitler and the German people destroyed it. But Hitler did not succeed in destroying the Jewish people, and we will continue to grow and thrive.

https://www.israelunwired.com/roseanne-speak-the-truth-about-the-holocaust/?
ROSEANNE, SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST
written by Shmuley Boteach June 29, 2023 1.7K views

My friend Roseanne Barr needs to immediately clarify her statements, lest they be used by antisemites to deny the Holocaust.

(JNS / Jewish Journal) The media is reporting that my friend Roseanne Barr said on a podcast that no Jews died in the Holocaust.

I have not talked with Roseanne. I find it hard to believe that someone who has joined me in fighting antisemitism and protecting Israel throughout the world, including on a special trip we took to Israel in 2019, where we spoke before large audiences, would deny the historical fact of six million Jews being murdered in the largest genocide in world history.

The Holocaust is an incontrovertible historical fact. It’s absurd to even have to mention it. The podcast host, Theo Von, tweeted that it was sarcasm: “This Roseanne Barr clip was sarcasm folks. A clip taken out of a long sarcastic rant she had during our chat. Can we not recognize sarcasm anymore?”

Seth Mandel, who heard the podcast, tweeted: “She’s talking about the dangers of censorship and specifically used this example as what could happen if you let, say, YouTube decide what is true and what isn’t.”

Sarcasm and explanations aside, my friend Roseanne needs to personally and immediately clarify her statements, lest they be used by antisemites, neo-Nazis, BDS Israel-haters and Islamists the world over to deny the Holocaust.

This is a time for earnestness, not sarcasm. I call on my friend Roseanne to speak the truth she knows all too well, and the sooner the better.

Originally published by Jewish Journal.

https://aish.com/sir-ben-helfgotts-remarkable-life/?src=ac
The Olympic champion and Holocaust survivor devoted his life to philanthropy and Holocaust education.
Sir Ben Helfgott, who recently died at age 93, was a world-class athlete, a tireless advocate for Holocaust education, a major philanthropist, and an all-round mensch. Here are some incredible facts about his remarkable life.

Sports taught him resilience.
Growing up in Piotrkow, a small town in Poland, Ben was surrounded by a warm and loving Jewish community that comprised almost a third of the population. Ben’s father Moshe ran a flour mill and his mother Sara stayed home to take care of Ben and his sisters Mala and Lucia. Ben’s two dozen cousins lived nearby.

Ben excelled in both school and sports. He won races against the other boys in the town and served as captain of his school’s soccer team. Years later, he credited his early love of sports with instilling a keen sense of sportsmanship and an inner strengthv “I could never have survived the Holocaust without that strength,” he later said.

Ben Helfgott’s father smuggled food to his fellow Jews.
After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, they immediately started targeting Jews. In Piotrkow, all Jews were ordered to move into a cramped section of town that was designated the Jewish Ghetto. They were in constant danger. Ben recalled how one day, the local Nazis transported hundreds to Jewish men - including two of Ben’s uncles - to a nearby Jewish cemetery. The Jews were ordered to enter the cemetery in single file; as each man entered the cemetery, he was shot.
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Ben’s father realized that he and other Jews faced starvation in the Ghetto. He forged a pass allowing him to exit the ghetto for short periods of time, and made contact with some of his former Gentile employees who smuggled him small quantities of wheat to take back into the Ghetto. Inside the Ghetto, Moshe rigged up a small flour mill and produced small batches of flour for the Jews imprisoned inside.
Ben escaped death by becoming a Nazi slave.
When he was 12 or 13, Ben managed to get a “job” in a glass factory, lugging heavy boxes around the warehouse. He wasn’t paid for this work, but this slave labor managed to save his life. In 1942, when Ben was just 13 years old, Nazis took 500 Jews from the Ghetto to one of the town’s synagogues, and from there to a local woods. Deep in the woods, all 500 Jews were shot. Ben’s mother and his sister Lucia were among them.

Ben Helfgott, age 15, semi-reclining, far right

Soon, Ben - along with his father and sister Mala - were recruited to work as slave laborers at another local business. They were kept imprisoned near a factory, where they worked each day making huts. Later in life, Ben refused to accept that he’d been exploited as a slave by the local businessman who owned the factory: his working conditions weren’t so terrible, he explained. Yet he, along with the other Jews who toiled in the factory were never allowed to leave. Instead of receiving any pay, they were given starvation rations to eat.

Ben was sent to the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.
In 1944, the precarious safety that Ben, his father, and his sister had found in the factory came to an end. Faced with mounting losses on the battlefields, Hitler decided to speed up his annihilation of Europe’s Jews. The pace of Jews being sent to concentration and death camps quickened. Ben's sister Mala was sent to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women in Germany. Ben and his father were sent to Buchenwald, a fearsome concentration camp just outside the scenic German city of Weimar.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the horrors that Ben and other inmates faced in Buchenwald:

“This area was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of sentries, outfitted with automatic machine guns. Inside the main camp, there was a notorious punishment block, known as the Bunker….This is where prisoners who violated camp regulations were punished and often tortured to death.” Food was scarce and many prisoners died of starvation and disease. German doctors performed barbaric medical experiments on Buchenwald inmates. Periodically, prisoners were sent to nearby death camps to be gassed to death.

“It was a terrible place,” Ben later recalled. “All we had to eat was soup that smelled like urine and a crust of bread.”

Ben’s father was shot trying to escape.
In 1945, when Ben was just 16, Nazi forces abandoned Buchenwald. Ben was transferred to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. With 30,000 other Jews, his father Moshe was forced on a death march that killed tens of thousands of Jews. Moshe Helfgott tried to escape the death march and was shot dead by Nazi guards. Ben became an orphan, utterly alone in the world. He later described crying for days on end, mourning for his parents and sister.


Not even 1,000 Jewish child survivors could be found.
After the war, a major British Jewish charity wanted to do all it could to help child Holocaust survivors. The Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation was formed in 1933 after Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, and worked tirelessly for years to help bring Jewish refugees out of Europe to England to British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. In 1945, the group obtained permission from British authorities to bring one thousand child Holocaust survivors to Britain.

Tragically, they couldn’t find that many children who were still alive. In the summer of 1945, 735 child survivors were brought to England; Ben was one of them. He tried returning to Piotrkow after the war and was attacked by antisemites there. It was clear that he couldn’t remain in Europe; moving to England seemed like his only chance: “I knew I wanted to go.”

The survivor children (even the girls) dubbed themselves “The Boys” and made bonds for life.

Ben was housed in a camp in Windermere, a scenic area of northwest England, with other children. He described it as being “like heaven”.

Ben thrived in Windermere and later in London, learning English quickly, gaining entrance to a prestigious grammar school and earning high grades. He began to play sports again. Years after the war, he found out that his beloved sister Mala had also survived; they were reunited in England in 1947.

“The Boys” became close friends for life, and their children and grandchildren continue to enjoy deep friendships to this day.

Paul “Yogi” Mayer encouraged Ben to become an athlete.
Paul Mayer - known as Yogi - was a major presence in the north London Jewish community at the time. He’d been born in Germany. A gifted athlete, Yogi was widely expected to compete in the 1936 Olympics on Germany’s national swimming team, until the Nazi government forbade Jewish athletes from representing the country.

In 1939, Yogi, along with his wife Ilse and their young son, fled Germany, moving to Britain, where Yogi volunteered for the British army, working in Special Operations. After the war, he settled in north London and began to run a sports club for Holocaust survivors, known as the Primrose Youth Club. Ben Helfgott was one of his star athletes. Yogi encouraged him to focus on weightlifting, which was one of his particular strengths.

Only two Holocaust survivors ever competed in the Olympics.
Only two Holocaust survivors ever competed in the Olympics. One was Alfred Nakache, a French swimmer who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He and his wife Paule had a chance to escape to Spain with a clandestine Jewish smuggling group, but they turned it down because they feared that their toddler daughter Annie would cry and give away the location of their fellow Jews. The family was sent to Auschwitz, where Alfred’s wife and baby daughter were murdered. Alfred survived, and represented France in the 1948 Olympics in London.

Ben Helfgott was the only other Holocaust survivor to compete in the Olympics.

Ben was captain of the British Olympic weightlifting team at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. He also represented Britain in the 1960 Rome Olympics. “Whenever I pulled on that GB (Great Britain) vest I wanted to do well; I so wanted to win a medal to say thank you to the country that saved me,” he said.

Ben also won gold medals at the World Maccabiah Games - the “Jewish Olympics” - in Israel, where he represented Britain in 1950, 1953, and 1957.

He was the last person to see the Israeli athletes before they were murdered in the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre.

In 1972, Ben was an official in the Munich Olympics, where Palestinian and German terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes and a West German police officer, while German Olympic officials insisted that the games continue.

“I was with them until about 1:30 am,” he recalled; “speaking and drinking coffee. Then, at 7:30 am I was woken by a phone call, telling me they had been taken hostage. I have never forgotten them.” (Quoted in The Boys: The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors by Martin Gilbert (Holt Paperbacks: 1998).

Ben dedicated his life to helping Holocaust victims.
Ben Helfgott was a tireless advocate for needy Holocaust survivors. In 1963, he set up the ‘45 Aid Society, to raise awareness about the Holocaust and to provide material aid to poor survivors. Angela Cohen, the current Chairwoman of the ‘45 Aid Society, recalls that Ben “started talking about Holocaust before anybody else and made it an easy open door for people to talk about Holocaust whether they were a survivor” or not. “The difference that he has made has been incredible and enormous.”

Ben Helfgott became a Knight in 2018.

Ben became a well-known figure in Britain. He served on the boards of a number of prominent Holocaust organizations and never missed an opportunity to educate people about the Holocaust. He was knighted in 2018, and afterwards was known as Sir Ben Helfgott.

Ben married Arza Helfgott in 1966; the couple had three sons and nine grandchildren.

After Ben’s death on June 16, 2023, Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak noted “Sir Ben Helfgott…survived the worst of humanity. His legacy is the ultimate triumph over that darkness.

Why Is the Holocaust Being Forgotten?
With anti-Semitism on the rise, we must especially now, more than ever, never forget the events of the Holocaust and understand that they can happen to any targeted minority group. We need to learn everything we can about history, so we do not repeat it.  
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/history/why-is-the-holocaust-being-forgotten.html?utm_source=Crosswalk&utm_campaign=Connecting%20through%20Crisis%20-%20Crosswalk.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=3712656&bcid=aca0ec8e3bea4e78ac0738d678528c86&recip=488938472%20
Hope Bolinger
Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer
Why Is the Holocaust Being Forgotten?
The 75th Anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation passed on January 27, 2020, and yet, as Holocaust survivors pass away, we have found that an entire generation does not know of the horrors that took place during World War II.
Many adults between the ages of 18 to 34 lack the basic knowledge of the events that took place during the Holocaust. According to the New York Times article linked above, “Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. And 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force.”

Although 96% of Americans do believe genocide happened before and during the events of World War II, most of the historical detailing has become fuzzy in the minds of millennials and younger generations.

Why have we forgotten what we must not forget? Why must we never forget the Holocaust? And what is the cost of fading memories of these historical events?

Why Have We Forgotten?
A number of factors can play into the reason why Americans don’t remember the events that they must never forget.

First, certain minority groups targeted during the Holocaust have faded from the picture altogether, such as the Roma, people with disabilities, Polish people, prisoners of war from the Soviet Union, black Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and those from the LGBTQ+ community.

Most, with a very basic idea of the Holocaust, could say that Nazi Germany targeted Orthodox Jews, which they indeed did, but their reach goes far beyond that.

Second, education can play a role in why we forget.
Some schools, distraught by the lack of knowledge have integrated teachings about the Holocaust into their schools’ curriculum, but not every school has followed suit.

Third, with fewer survivors of the events still living, and with media tending to twist and distort news, millennials and younger generations have less of a fighting chance of getting the right information about what really happened during the Holocaust.

I was blessed enough to interview a World War II veteran for his memoir during my sophomore year of college before he passed away, but many in my generation do not have the ability to speak with someone who was an eyewitness during the time of the Holocaust. Although we do have access to books and other media that documents eyewitness accounts such as The Diary of Anne Frank and The Hiding Place, younger generations seem to read less than previous ones. The best way to reach them is via social media, but that is also the best way to reach them with content that twists the truth.

Fourth, and most importantly, Satan likes to cause division and strife (John 8:43-44). If generations forget about the horrors of the Holocaust or approach them in an apathetic manner, what’s to prevent them from repeating them?

Why Must We Never Forget?
As the old mantra goes, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

If an entire generation of adults is ignorant of most of the details about the Holocaust, what can prevent them from repeating the same atrocities? Although our generation may have seen previous generations as uncivilized and by no means would we, as a “woke” generation, commit the same horrors, we have to keep in mind Nazi Germany was by no means barbaric in the sense that we understand the term.


Germany would have been extremely advanced. And yet, they committed some of the most heinous acts of all history.

Because sin runs rampant in the hearts of men, anyone ruled by the powers of this world is capable of great, evil acts (Ephesians 6:12).

We must never forget because we must never repeat the events of history.

We must also remember that Hitler didn’t simply take power overnight and start the Holocaust the next day. The events happened gradually from 1933 to 1941 until it was too late to stop them. No one saw the Holocaust coming.

Now, we have a historical advantage. We could see how Hitler rose to power and prevent similar leaders today from following in his footsteps, but only if we truly remember history correctly.

With anti-Semitism on the rise, we must especially now, more than ever, never forget the events of the Holocaust and understand that they can happen to any targeted minority group.

As Deuteronomy 32:7 says, “Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.” We need to learn everything we can about history, so we do not repeat it.

iStock/Getty Images Plus/fermate

Hope Bolinger is a literary agent at C.Y.L.E. and a graduate of Taylor University's professional writing program. More than 600 of her works have been featured in various publications ranging from Writer's Digest to Keys for Kids. She has worked for various publishing companies, magazines, newspapers, and literary agencies and has edited the work of authors such as Jerry B. Jenkins and Michelle Medlock Adams. Her column "Hope's Hacks," tips and tricks to avoid writer's block, reaches 6,000+ readers weekly and is featured monthly on Cyle Young's blog. Her modern-day Daniel, Blaze, (Illuminate YA) Den (releasing July 2020), Dear Hero (releasing September 2020), and Dear Henchman (releasing 2021)  Find out more about her at her website.

Originally published March 04, 2020.

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Home » Perspectives Papers » Israel Must Remain Vigilant in Its Relations with Poland
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-relations-poland/
Israel Must Remain Vigilant in Its Relations with Poland
By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld September 1, 2019
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Memorial plaque in Kielce, Poland commemorating victims of post-war antisemitic pogrom, photo via Wikipedia

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,273, September 1, 2019

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In view of Poland’s historical treatment of Jews, Israel must remain ever-vigilant that there be no falsification of history as Polish-Israeli relations develop. There is a strong desire in Poland to whitewash or otherwise minimize horrible events. Provided the Israeli authorities calibrate their statements and stick to the facts, they will maintain the moral high ground in the relationship.  

Polish-Israeli relations are very complex, in view of Poland’s past behavior toward Jews. Israel must be continuously alert if it is to avoid a falsification of history.

Consider the Polish Holocaust law, which was re-amended in 2018. The law has elicited many international reactions. The resulting publicity has shone a renewed spotlight on the massive participation of Poles in the murders of Jews during the Holocaust, as well as the country’s persistent antisemitism both before and after the war.

Many details have reemerged in the media. Historian Jan Gross was widely quoted. He documented in his book, Neighbors, the way the Jews of the village of Jedwabne were burned to death in a barn by Polish residents of the town during the Holocaust. The work of historian Jan Grabowski, who teaches at the University of Ottawa, Canada, also received a great deal of renewed attention. He and his colleagues detailed the mass murder of 200,000 Jews by Poles during the Holocaust, confirming the figure established by Polish Jewish historian Szymon Datner about fifty years ago.

For the first time, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) published a declassified US State Department document from 1946 that compared Polish treatment of Jews to that of German Nazis. It stated that after the war, many Jews preferred to flee even to Germany rather than return to Poland.

Best known among Polish antisemitic crimes in the immediate postwar years was the 1946 pogrom in the town of Kielce, during which 42 Jews were murdered. In 1968, 13,000 people of Jewish origin were stripped of their Polish citizenship and expelled from the country. On the occasion of the 2018 anniversary of that antisemitic purge, Polish president Andrzej Duda offered what the Washington Post called “a non-apology apology.”

More than 15 years ago, I interviewed the then-head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, the late David Bankier. He said:

Most Polish underground organizations believed that post-Hitler Poland would be a country without Jews…. those who remained would have to leave Poland after the war. This view was expressed even in the Zegota organization, the council for aid to the Jews set up by the Polish resistance. Among them were people who endangered their own lives.

Bankier remarked that the belief that Poland was not a country where Jews should live was highly reflective of Polish feelings at that time.

A 2011 study by the University of Bielefeld found that 63% of Poles agree with this statement: “What the State of Israel does today to the Palestinians is in principle not different from what the Nazis did to the Jews in the Third Reich.” This percentage was substantially higher than in the other European countries where this poll was taken.

Polish diplomat Jan Dziedziczak, the deputy director of the Polish Foreign Ministry, complained about a text at the Yad Vashem museum that states that after 1939, most Polish police officers returned to duty under the German occupiers. It also says that in 1943, 16,000 Polish police officers – some armed – served under the Germans.

Yad Vashem states that the Polish police were employed “on a wide scale against the Jewish population,” and “had an active role in policing ghettos in occupied Poland and searching for Jews who sought refuge with the local population after escaping from ghettos and camps.”

The Polish police demonstrated “absolute devotion” to the Nazi authorities, according to Yad Vashem, “although a handful of cases of assistance to Jews by some officers also occurred.”

As long as Israeli authorities calibrate their statements and stick to the facts, they will have the moral high ground in the Israeli-Polish relationship.

A lack of sophistication, professionalism, or tact can easily upset the relationship. Israel Katz demonstrated this failing shortly after he became acting Israeli FM. Quoting former Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir, he made the statement that Poles suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk.

Katz spoiled what could have been an important Israeli diplomatic success – an official meeting in Israel of the four Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). Poland refused to participate, which led to the canceling of the meeting. This was unfortunate, as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu had worked hard on improving relations with these countries. Katz’s words even drew the condemnation of pro-Israeli US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Katz would have served his country’s interests if he had fully apologized for his offensive and damaging statement.

Another Israeli who apparently does not know the meaning of calibration is controversial Hebrew University historian Daniel Blatman, who accepted the Polish government’s offer to head the Ghetto Museum scheduled to open in Warsaw in 2023. Blatman wildly attacked Yad Vashem in an article entitled, “Yad Vashem teaches the Holocaust the way totalitarian countries teach history.” The choices of what will be represented at the museum, and how those things are represented, can lead to serious future conflict.

Israel’s leading Holocaust scholar, Yehuda Bauer, has said that Blatman’s role is apparently to serve as a Jewish-Israeli fig leaf for the new museum, which is supported by the nationalist Polish regime.

The strong desire of many Poles to rewrite their country’s past requires Israel to anticipate coming problems. A current example is the discussion in Germany about establishing a monument in Berlin dedicated to Poles murdered during the German occupation. German atrocities should be remembered – even more so now, in view of contemporary developments in the country. Jews should be sensitive to atrocities committed against others, all the more so if they were committed concurrently by the very nation that exterminated its Jews.

In 1979, the “Polish” Pope John Paul II visited Auschwitz. There he said: “Six million Poles lost their lives during the Second World War, a fifth of the nation.” This was a semantic amalgamation. Three million Poles – whom the Germans saw as an inferior people – were killed by the Germans in racist murders, or 10% of the Polish people. Three million Polish Jews were murdered in a mass act of exterminatory antisemitism – more than 90% of the Polish Jewish population. The Germans considered the Jews to be subhuman, viewing them as bacteria and vermin.

The issue of a monument for Polish victims in Berlin was largely theoretical until very recently. During a visit to Poland just a few weeks ago, German FM Heiko Maas came out in favor of a German memorial for Polish victims of Nazi rule. He said: “Such a memorial is not only a gesture of reconciliation, it would be important also for us Germans as well.”

If the monument for Polish victims does materialize in Berlin, Israel and the Jews will have to make sure ahead of time that no texts distorting history appear on it.

View PDF

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ is a Senior Research Associate at the BESA Center and a former chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He specializes in Israeli–Western European relations, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism, and is the author of The War of a Million Cuts.

Zuckerberg defends Facebook users’ right to deny the holocaust
Jul 18, 2018 | 0 |
Zuckerberg defends Facebook users’ right to deny the holocaust
Mark Zuckerberg defended the rights of Facebook users to publish Holocaust denial posts, saying he didn’t “think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong”. In an interview with Recode published on Wednesday, the CEO also explained Facebook’s decision to allow the far-right conspiracy theory website Infowars to continue using the platform, saying the social network would try to “reduce the distribution
of that content”, but would not censor the page. Zuckerberg’s comments came the same day that Facebook announced a new policy pledging to remove misinformation used to incite physical harm. The CEO’s remarks to Recode have reignited debates about free speech on the social network at a time when Facebook is continuing to face scrutiny over its role in spreading misinformation, propaganda and hate speech across the globe.
READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/18/zuckerberg-facebook-holocaust-deniers-censorship

Facebook should stick to German laws on Holocaust denial, Berlin says after Zuckerberg’s comments
Published time: 19 Jul, 2018 20:58
Edited time: 19 Jul, 2018 21:51
Get short URL https://on.rt.com/9aoj
Facebook should stick to German laws on Holocaust denial, Berlin says after Zuckerberg’s comments
FILE PHOTO. Ron Sachs / Global Look Press
Facebook must comply with Germany’s laws banning Holocaust denial regardless of its own internal polices, authorities gave a warning to the company CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who said Holocaust deniers' comments should not be removed.
“There should be no place for anti-Semitism anywhere!” German Justice Minister Katarina Barley said in a Twitter post in response to Zuckerberg’s recent comments he made in an interview to the Recode technology news website. She went on to say that anti-Semitism includes “verbal and physical attacks on Jews as well as the denial of Holocaust” and is “punishable by us and will be strictly prosecuted” in Germany.
Katarina Barley

@katarinabarley
Für #Antisemitismus darf es nirgendwo einen Platz geben! Dazu gehören verbale und körperliche Angriffe auf Juden genauso wie die Leugnung des #Holocaust. Auch letzteres steht bei uns unter Strafe und wird konsequent verfolgt. #Zuckerberg https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/antisemitismus-studie-103.html …
7:59 AM - Jul 19, 2018
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Her angry outburst was provoked by the Facebook’s CEO comments, in which he said that Holocaust deniers’ comments should not be deleted from the social network platform just because they “get something wrong.”

“There is a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he told Recode on Wednesday, adding that, even though he personally finds such position “deeply offensive,” he still “does not believe” that “our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong.” Zuckerberg also said that he did not believe that Holocaust deniers “are intentionally getting it wrong.”

READ MORE: Facebook bans photographer who went ‘off to shoot some Christians’ for work

In Germany, Holocaust denial is punishable by law. Social media sites can face fines amounting to up to € 50 million ($ 58 million) if they fail to promptly remove such hateful messages. The social networks in Germany are obliged to delete “obvious” hateful content within 24 hours after a complaint is filed, while other reported content should be dealt with within a week.

“No one should defend those who deny Holocaust,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who actually introduced the so-called "network enforcement law” while he was a justice minister, said in a tweet, commenting on the recent developments. The legislation fully came into force on January 1, 2018.


Heiko Maas

@HeikoMaas
#Antisemitismus darf nirgendwo einen Raum haben.
Wer den Holocaust leugnet, den sollte niemand verteidigen. Im Gegenteil: Weltweit muss alles getan werden, um jüdisches Leben zu schützen.#Zuckerberg

FAZ.NET

@faznet
Guten Morgen, liebe Leser. Mark #Zuckerberg will Posts von Holocaust-Leugnern auf @facebook nicht entfernen und hat dafür eine sehr eigenwillige Erklärung: https://buff.ly/2mrkqUd

10:54 AM - Jul 19, 2018
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German officials are far from the only people concerned by Zuckerberg’s comments, which actually provoked quite a stir on social media. Some people criticized the Facebook CEO by saying that he is the one who apparently got something wrong.


Benjy Sarlin

@BenjySarlin
So apparently Mark Zuckerberg is under the impression there's some good faith debate going on over whether the Holocaust happened? https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17575156/mark-zuckerberg-interview-facebook-recode-kara-swisher … pic.twitter.com/ClLngQqesS

5:27 PM - Jul 18, 2018
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Others seemed to be offended by his comments, which they called “unacceptable and outrageous.” Some people also said the “Facebook leadership just … has no moral compass” and is not fit for the job it is doing.


Rabbi Shmuley

@RabbiShmuley
Unacceptable & outrageous remarks by @MarkZuckerberg about #Holocaust denial. Must clarify his remarks & make clear Holocaust denial is a willful and hateful attempt to trivialize murder of 6 million Jews. No room for Holocaust denial on @facebook... https://www.timesofisrael.com/facebooks-zuckerberg-says-he-wont-remove-holocaust-denial-posts/ …

1:36 AM - Jul 19, 2018
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Brianna Wu

@Spacekatgal
This is what gets me. Zuckerberg has been largely radio silent since Cambridge Analytica.

His first major media event since, and he just blurts out “Holocaust deniers don’t have bad intent.”

This wasn’t a mistatement. Facebook leadership just fundamentally has no moral compass.

1:49 AM - Jul 19, 2018
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Matt Stoller

@matthewstoller
Replying to @matthewstoller
My general point that no one should be doing the filtering of news for 2.1 billion people. But Mark Zuckerberg defending the sincerity of Holocaust deniers suggests that we may have picked the single worst person to do what is an impossible job. pic.twitter.com/j3GELcn0w4

5:44 PM - Jul 18, 2018
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Many people also disputed Zuckerberg’s statement that Holocaust deniers do not intend to do any harm and warned that allowing them to continue could lead to potentially dangerous consequences. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said that “Holocaust denial is a willful, deliberate and longstanding deception tactic by anti-Semites that is incontrovertibly hateful, hurtful, and threatening to Jews.”

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

ADL

@ADL_National
Replying to @ADL_National
“Holocaust denial is a willful, deliberate and longstanding deception tactic by anti-Semites that is incontrovertibly hateful, hurtful, and threatening to Jews.” Read the full statement from our CEO @JGreenblattADL

9:00 PM - Jul 18, 2018
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Others said that Holocaust denial could well be the first stage of a new Holocaust and lead to the revival of Nazism if left unchecked.


Steve Redmond
@sjredmond
The thing that most defenders of hate speech like Mark Zuckerberg don’t get is that it’s Stage 1 of a Holocaust. Hitler didn’t start the holocaust by hearding Jews into trains. He had to poison the minds of Germans first so that they would gain the “Lock them up” mentality.

11:12 PM - Jul 18, 2018
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AskHistorians
@askhistorians
Holocaust denial is not a “mistake”, Mr. Zuckerberg. It has a clear purpose: negate, distort, minimize, and trivialize proven facts about the Nazi genocides against Jews, Roma, and others. The goal is to rehabilitate the racist, antisemitic, xenophobic ideology of Nazism. [1/8]

7:25 PM - Jul 18, 2018
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The public outrage prompted Zuckerberg to issue a clarification to his statement just hours after his interview was published. “I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny that,” he said. He still tried to defend his position by saying that Facebook’s goal was not to “prevent anyone from saying something untrue” but to “stop fake news and misinformation spreading across our services” by essentially limiting such content’s distribution in the News Feed.

Still, some people apparently did not find his arguments to be convincing enough.


popular comedy account “the pixelated boat”
@pixelatedboat
Zuckerberg: Oh no! Our algorithm is promoting too much holocaust denial. Bad algorithm! Bad! Show people ... 5% less holocaust denial

3:40 AM - Jul 19, 2018
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Facebook has recently been involved in a number of controversies related to its policy of dealing with hate speech and offensive content. In March, the social network giant refused to remove a post containing a death threat against the UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. In July, however, it went as far as to remove excerpts of the US Declaration of Independence during the Independence Day celebrations after considering them ‘hate speech.’

Responding to Holocaust Denial
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Responding-to-Holocaust-Denial.htmlesponding to Holocaust Denial

We have a duty to educate the world. Here is one survivor’s harrowing story.
by Reuven Lewis, M.Ed.         
Recently, 8th grade students in a school district in California were asked to decide, based on information given to them by their teacher, if the Holocaust happened or if it was a 'scheme for monetary gain.' Rabbi Yaakov Salomon called this "blatant anti-Semitism, coming in the Rialto school system whose superintendent is Mohammed Z. Islam."

How do we as a Jews respond? I submit to you thoughtful readers that educating our own community and the world about what really happened a mere 75 years ago is the best approach. We have a duty to teach the world, an obligation that has become even more acute with the release of ADL’s new survey on global anti-Semitism that reveals that almost half of the world’s adults never heard of the Holocaust and over a quarter hold anti-Semitic views.
There is no simple way to begin to grasp the enormity of 6,000,000 innocent Jews being murdered by the Nazis just because they had Jewish parents. But one man's account may be a start.

Eugene Heimler is a remarkable man who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Tröglitz and Berga-Elster, and lived to be an eloquent witness to the world and write about this unimaginable horror. Heimler became a psychiatric social worker and therapist and developed a model for overcoming trauma based on his experiences in the camps. He wrote about his experiences with a poet's sensitivity and realness.
Responding to Holocaust DenialEugene Heimler's book, Night of the Mist is a heart wrenching classic; it is the best way I have found of getting through to the current generation who think of 1940 as ancient history.
One incident will hopefully be enough to confirm the realness of this tragic time for the world:

And while all this flashed through me, someone leaned towards me and whispered in my ear the same words I had heard from the apparition that morning: ‘After the roll-call get away from Barrack No. 17. Danger….’
The SS officer was now standing in front of me. I felt that even the wind had stopped blowing… He looked at me, and as if mesmerized I looked back deep into his eyes. I do not know how long we were staring at one another. I do not know how long he stood before me.

A harsh shout brought me back to my senses. The ‘Appel’ was over. People were slowly dispersing. I knew that something was about to happen, that I had to do something. Half-conscious, I stumbled towards the electrified fence.

A long ditch ran between the electric fence and the back entrance of the barracks. If someone could no longer bear his dreadful existence and deliberately touched the live wire or chanced to rush against it in a fit of nerves, his body, struck dead in an instant, fell into the ditch and lay there until the “Sonderkommando’ came to take it to the crematorium. It was in this ditch that I took refuge after the Appel was over. Feigning death, I lay there motionless. Yet I did not understand myself why I did so: some unknown power seemed to have benumbed my senses, holding my thoughts and movements in suspension.

I had been lying there for a long time, watched only by the glassy stare of several corpses, when suddenly I became aware of a loud rumbling. Till then I seemed to have been in a coma, but this noise brought me back to full consciousness. I recognized it immediately – SS lorries were rolling into the camp. Almost at once they pulled up sharply before Barrack No. 17. The night was dark; only the headlamps of the lorries lit the scene. I held my breath and listened. Curt words of command were clearly audible. I knew what they meant: no one might leave the barracks.
With rifle butts, whips and bare fists they goaded my comrades from the barrack into the lorries. Now and again a shot echoed through the night. The minutes seemed endlessly long. Suddenly I sensed that someone was approaching the ditch.

“Well, what are we to do with these carcasses?” I could recognize the SS soldier by his voice as he addressed his companion. I did not dare to move my head or to look up out of the ditch. I lay there, my arms spread like the other dead bodies. His torch wavered over the corpses. “Look, that one’s still moving,” he yelled. “He’s moving, the stinking carcass.” Cold sweat broke out all over me. I knew that his machine-gun would be trained towards the ditch. I longed to cry out “No, not this way – I don’t want to die like this.” But I was paralyzed. A single shot rang out, followed by a dull groan, then quiet again. He must have finished off someone not yet quite dead – perhaps one of those who had been thrown into the ditch in the afternoon after having been nearly beaten to death.
Minutes passed.
Then the steps receded. They would probably make a special trip for the corpses in the ditch later on.
It was only now that I became aware of the screams and cries that filled the night. One after the other the lorries started off, loaded with human cargo for their fiery destination. The whispered stories that I had heard from the older prisoners about the gas chambers now hit me with dreadful reality. It seemed to be true after all – a thing which even here had seemed unbelievable.
Slowly I lifted up my head as the last of the lorries was passing through the camp gates with its wailing load. Barrack No. 17 gaped wide open in terrible emptiness. I had to get away from it, forget I ever belonged to it, get into some other barrack.
“Away, away from here…Quickly, quickly…”
On all fours I began to crawl along the ditch. I knocked into dead bodies – I climbed over them. My hands were smeared with their blood.
From Night of the Mist, pages 42-43.

If after reading this blood curdling vivid depiction of one day in a concentration camp, anyone could deny the experience of millions of tortured souls, their hearts and souls must be made of stone.
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But despite his unfathomable pain, Eugene Heimler did not become a bitter man. After much internal struggle he moved to England, became a therapist and started helping others overcome their trauma. With unbelievable courage, he even went back to Germany to work with the children of his torturers and began to create healing.

For anyone who wants to become educated about the Holocaust and healing from its wounds, I highly recommend three of Heimler's books, Night of the Mist, A Link in the Chain – A Journey from Auschwitz to Resurrection and Messages – A Survivor's Letter to a Young German. They are all newly published and information can be found on the Heimler website http://www.newholocaustliterature.com/

As Jews it is our responsibility to be a light unto the Nations and to heal the world in the Image of God. Let us use this opportunity in time to educate ourselves and the world about healing and overcoming the obstacles that stand between us.
Published: May 17, 2014