Holocaust Memorial Day

Christians United for Israel
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day when we remember the six million Jews and others who were brutally murdered at the hands of the Nazis and their conspirators. We extend our hand of friendship to the Jewish people on this solemn day and renew our commitment to be a ‘light in the darkness’, speaking out against all forms of antisemitism wherever it exists and standing in solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people.

Remembrance and education are key to ensuring “Never Again”. We’ve selected some of our most viewed items that we trust will equip you as you engage in remembering the Holocaust.
Visit our Holocaust Remembrance resources page
https://www.cufi.org.uk/HolocaustRemembrance/


Remembrance and education are key to ensuring “Never Again”. We’ve selected some of our most viewed items that we trust will equip you as you engage in remembering the Holocaust.

Latest

‘Looking on is not Christian behaviour’ – Bonhoeffer and the Christian response to antisemitism

Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognised the important role that the church played in combating injustice and suffering and worked tirelessly to influence his Christian brethren.
But when the church in Germany fell silent, Bonhoeffer held onto principles that are worth adopting today. We should be alert to the disturbing warning signs that accompany an evil in our midst that bears the same hallmarks.

Click here to read more
https://www.cufi.org.uk/news/looking-on-is-not-christian-behaviour-bonhoeffer-and-the-christian-response-to-antisemitism/

Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the original Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) notations used for the same calendar era. The two notation systems are numerically equivalent: "2024 CE" and "AD 2024" each describe the current year; "400 BCE" and "400 BC" are the same year.


‘Dark Road’ – A Powerful Holocaust Drama
This play on the Holocaust tells the powerful story of a young German woman, Greta, and her journey down the ‘Dark Road’ into Naziism. Greta is transformed from a person of innocence into one of darkness who loses herself and those she loves along the way. Have tissues at the ready as this emotional performance will impact you just as it did us, and even the actors on stage as they performed it.
Click here to watch on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwO3jsXzqoE


Never Again means standing with Israel
Antisemitism, or Jew hatred, is what fuelled the Holocaust. It also fuelled the Hamas massacres of 7th October 2023. It is antisemitism that fuels the global movement of hatred against Israel that has infected hearts and minds of people in all the major areas of influence, from the halls of power in Westminster, to the newsrooms of broadcasters, and to the lecture halls of the world’s most prestigious universities.
Read more Visit our Holocaust Remembrance resources page
https://www.cufi.org.uk/HolocaustRemembrance/

Christians United for Israel UK
Watch Episode 40 of the CUFI UK Podcast
The Two-State Delusion / 'Never Again' Means Standing with Israel

Alex and Alastair discuss the so-called 'Two-State Solution' and why the world's blind belief in it is a mistake. They look at what Israel says, what the Palestinians say, what the UN says, what the UK says and, most importantly, what the Bible says about this key issue. They also look at Holocaust Memorial Day and why saying 'Never Again' is not complete without standing with Israel today.


Listen or watch on the following platforms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA7_OCDXBqs

https://rumble.com/v497yzf-fzs-ep40.html

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/for-zions-sake/id1674652650

https://open.spotify.com/show/2LKj4qtMEa6tXzchNg0fcJ

Join CUFI weekly as we sit down to discuss current issues affecting Israel. We’ll be presenting the FACTS, sharing opinion and providing an insight and perspective into the very latest stories.

Please remember to Like, Share and Comment. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support CUFI UK further, please consider making a donation to our work. Thank you!

Holocaust Memorial Day
27th January 2024
On Saturday 27th January, the UK commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day to remember the 6 million Jews and others who were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. This year we have produced a special ‘Never Again’ candle that we invite you to light in memory of the victims and in prayerful commitment to not be silent in the face of evil. The reality is that Israel is surrounded by enemies that want to annihilate the Jewish people, just like the Nazis tried to do. This was proven to the world by the genocidal attack by Hamas on 7th October. Yet, unbelievably, there are those in our own country who deny this, ignore or downplay the atrocity, and even turn blame upon Israel. Please join us in lighting a candle on 27th January pledging to not allow the atrocities of the Holocaust to ever be repeated.

'Never Again' Candle
Frankincense & Myrrh Fragrance
The candle is available in two sizes, small £6.50 (9cl) and large £12.50 (30cl).
Order by 12 noon Tuesday 23rd Jan for expected Friday delivery.

Order your candle today
https://store.cufi.org.uk/category-s/167.htm

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/a-monumental-error?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
A monumental error
The government's Holocaust centre obsession rides roughshod over memory and law

Melanie Phillips
9 hr ago

The proposed Holocaust memorial centre in Westminster
It’s groundhog day all over again for the long-planned Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Westminster’s Victoria Tower Gardens.

This huge, brutalist construction would destroy a quiet green oasis valued by local residents. Last July, the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that the structure was prohibited by a 1900 Act of Parliament, passed to protect the park from such developments.

Yet now the government — which previously overrode Westminster council’s objections — has declared it will legislate to cancel out that 1900 law.

It will thus ride roughshod over a historic legal protection for the local community. Is this really a desirable context for a project supposedly devoted to memory and law as a defence against oppressive and arbitrary power?

There are more fundamental objections to the memorial’s supposed message.

Although the Nazis murdered many types of people in the Holocaust, their principal driver was the intention to wipe the Jews alone off the face of the earth. Yet much Holocaust memorialising denies the unique characteristics of antisemitism and the genocide of the Jews.

A graphic example was provided by the UK Online Commemoration for Holocaust Memorial Day last month. Its 23 sections referred to “genocides” in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia and Darfur, to “the Nazi persecution of gay people” and to “people being persecuted simply because they were Ordinary People who belonged to a particular group”.

But there was no mention of the genocide of the Jews other than two fleeting references in personal messages from Michael Gove and Sir Keir Starmer. The chief executive and chair of trustees of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust didn’t mention it, urging reflection instead on “the Holocaust, the Nazi persecution of other groups and more recent genocides”.

In evidence to the planning inquiry, the memorial’s architect said he envisaged a place to mark the murder of six million Jews, Roma and “all victims of Nazi persecution”; and to reflect on “the murder of the millions of Cambodians by the Pol Pot regime, the million Rwandans murdered by the Interahamwe and the thousands of Muslim men and boys murdered in Bosnia”.

In its 1939 white paper, the British government tore up its legal obligation to settle the Jews in Palestine. Instead, it barred entry to those desperate to flee Nazi Europe, causing untold numbers to be murdered and making Britain an accessory to the Holocaust.

Will the memorial really deal with this? The Holocaust Memorial Trust claims it will provide “an honest reflection of Britain’s role”. Yet the project’s supporters simultaneously claim that situating it next to Parliament demonstrates that democratic “British values” will prevent such horrors happening again. Well, which is it? It can’t be both.

If it were really to address Jew-hatred, it would show that the Nazi period wasn’t an aberration but on a continuum stretching back to earliest times — and encompassing the war waged against Israel today.

It would accordingly highlight the Nazi-themed incitement against Jews incessantly pumped out by the Palestinian Authority, whose leader is a self-professed disciple of Haj Amin al Husseini — the Nazis’ ally in Palestine, who promised Hitler he would annihilate every Jew in the Middle East.

There’s no indication it will focus on any of these things. As the leading protester Baroness Deech wrote in a letter to The Times this week, the promoters “envisage visitors leaving the learning centre, seeing the Palace of Westminster and realising that British democracy prevents genocide and antisemitism. History has shown no such thing. It will engender complacency and a sense of ‘job done’”.

Today’s epidemic of antisemitism is perpetrated mainly by Palestinian Arab supporters, Muslims and communities radicalised by Black Power.

Jewish grandees say the Westminster memorial is essential to help protect the community against antisemitism. Yet these establishment figures are silent about the Muslim or black antisemitism driving the Jew-hatred in Britain, America and Europe. They are silent about the tsunami of incitement against Jews from the Palestinian Authority.

Instead, these Jewish leaders label those who do speak about these sources of Jew-hatred as Islamophobes, racists and extremists, and treat them as pariahs.

The Jewish dignitaries promoting the Westminster memorial are establishment toadies and Tory party donors. Government ministers, who very decently want to do the right thing by the Jews, may think the community is united in support. Not so.

Last October, a debate about it hosted by the National Jewish Assembly was attended on Zoom by more than 100 members of the Jewish community. Digital polls recorded 62 per cent opposed at the start of the debate and 82 per cent opposed at the end.

The memorial’s backers refuse to discuss the project with its opponents. The Board of Deputies has never debated it.

Instead, various politicians, officials and Jewish community bigwigs have attacked both Jewish and non-Jewish opponents with emotional blackmail, bullying and character assassination, including spurious accusations of antisemitism.

The Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, has referred to this project as a “sacred task”. It is not. It threatens to be a desecration of memory, an abuse of civic engagement and a shameful betrayal of the slaughtered Jewish millions.

Jewish Chronicle

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https://www.israelunwired.com/then-they-came-for-me/
‘THEN THEY CAME FOR ME’?
written by Benjamin Kerstein February 7, 2023 683 views
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The Nazis’ Generalplan Ost proves that while the antisemites may not be coming for everybody, they are coming for almost everybody.

(JNS) International Holocaust Remembrance Day has put me in mind of a famous poem by German clergyman Martin Niemöller about the rise of Nazism:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist


Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

It is the final stanza that is most often quoted, usually as a moral imperative. It holds that indifference, lack of empathy, and people’s inability to see the humanity of the “other” leads not only to unthinkable horrors but ultimately to one’s own demise.


Tyrants like the Nazis never stop, it asserts. Eventually, they come for everybody. Thus, the duty to resist them is universal.

Many Jews take this imperative very seriously. They are intent on speaking out whenever they see the slightest sign of racism and hate. Moreover, they hold, the Jews are a kind of “canary in the coal mine.” When non-Jews see antisemitism rising, they should understand that everyone is in danger, not just the Jews.

Some of us, however, are skeptical of this. The Nazis, after all, were not coming for racially “pure” Germans—their “Aryan master race.” Those Germans had every reason to believe that “they” would never come for “them,” and those Germans were not wrong.

Jews, then, have a right to conclude that the “canary in the coal mine” theory is mistaken. By and large, non-Jews are not threatened by antisemitism. As such, they have no real incentive to fight it. There are, of course, extraordinary people who will fight it anyway out of sheer moral conviction. But at the moment of truth, such people have usually proven few and far between.

WHAT’S IN A JEWISH NAME? THE ANSWER TO GROWING JEW-HATRED TODAY
written by Sara Lehmann February 1, 2023 719 views
“Max Lehmann, 18/03/1892, Mainz, Germany, Murdered in Bergen Belsen camp.” A name, a date, a place. An identity – a Jewish identity.

Max Lehmann was my husband’s grandfather. I found his information on a page in the “The Book of Names”, when I attended the Yad Vashem unveiling of its new exhibit in the UN Headquarters last Thursday. Timed to coincide with the 2023 International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, along with Israel’s Permanent Mission to the UN, presented “The Book of Names of Holocaust Victims”. It contains the names of 4,800,000 Holocaust victims, and whenever possible, their date of birth, and their place of birth and death.

The book is mammoth. It stands a length of 26.45 feet, is 6.56 feet high and 3.3 feet wide. A strip of light runs the length of the inside of the book, illuminating it, and contains the blank pages of more than 1 million identities of victims that have not yet been recovered.

The irony of installing a temporary exhibit memorializing the 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims at the UN was likely not lost on attendees. The speakers at the event – United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, and Yad Vashem Chairman Ambassador Dani Dayan – all mentioned current challenges facing Jews and the State of Israel. Erdan, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, referenced the rise of anti-Semitism, including in the halls of the UN.

That is why this book belongs in that place. It is an indisputable answer to growing trends of Holocaust denial. You cannot argue with evidence in black and white. However, growing trends of anti-Semitism pose a far graver threat, and its origins are not as concrete.

Recovering the Jewish identities of Holocaust victims defies the Nazi goal of eradicating Jewish identity. Nazis began their anti-Semitic crusade with edicts aimed at stripping away Judaism from Jews, until they reached their final solution. A video at the UN event shows a Holocaust survivor detailing the horror of her father having his beard pulled out by Nazis, illustrating the Nazi goal of pulling out the Jewish essence of their victims.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Hatred of Jews has returned with physical violence against “identifiable Jews”, the inescapable moniker of the Orthodox. Attacks on Jews in NYC rose 41% in 2022, with the crimes incurring little retribution, if any. And in addition to blatant extremist anti-Semites, there are the figurative but mounting in-your-face assaults by anti-Israel BDS proponents in academia, corporations, the media, and among politicians.

Yet there is a more malignant and enigmatic threat to Jewish identity today, and it comes from Jews themselves. In a perverse twist of affairs, some Jews seem to be suffering an identity crisis regarding the Jewish state vis-a-vis themselves.

Since the formation of the rightwing and religious coalition under Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel faces a crescendo of condemnation against its new government for its efforts to strengthen Israel’s Jewish character. The loudest voices in the chorus are leftwing Jews in Israel and the Diaspora.

This is nothing new. Back in 2018, the Netanyahu government was slammed by these same leftists for passing the “nation-state bill”, a legal assertion of Jewish identity. Among other things, the bill enshrined the Jewish nature of the state, established Hebrew as its official language and even instituted Shabbos as Israel’s official day of rest. At the time of its passing, one of its architects, then MK Avi Dichter, declared that its aim is to “prevent even the slightest thought, let alone attempt, to transform Israel to a country of all its citizens” – a catch phrase for a non-Jewish state.

Outrage ensued, especially by non-Orthodox Diaspora Jews. Rick Jacobs, head of Reform Judaism, claimed the “damage…is enormous”, and Steven Wernick, head of Conservative Judaism, protested the bill in a letter to the Israeli government and said “Israel is losing its soul”.

Fast forward to today. The same opponents are at it again with a vengeance. Netanyahu’s government has mobilized leftist Jews worldwide, some using Nazi imagery and accusing the government of ending democracy.

Terrorists are slaughtering Jews in Neve Yaakov and elsewhere in Israel, but to the leftists, the rightwing government is the enemy. Mere mention of “judicial reform”, through which the coalition endeavors to undo progressive judicial overreach, is enough to send protestors spilling into the streets of Tel Aviv and onto the pages of mainstream and social media. In the immediate aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack on Jewish worshipers at the Neve Yaakov shul, a group of judicial reform opponents in Tel Aviv were waving PLO flags.

Every day brings another condemnation by leftists for daring to reverse progressive policies they worked hard to cultivate. Any attempt to bolster the Jewish identity of the state, such as amending the Law of Return or safeguarding kashrus, is attacked.

To this end, Reform and Conservative denominations in America have linked arms with mainstream Jewish organizations, like the Jewish Federation and the AJC, and progressive Jewish politicians, such as Democrats Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Brad Sherman and Sen. Jacky Rosen. Even previously considered moderates like the ADL’s Abe Foxman responded to coalition plans by saying, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”

Their aim is to turn Israel’s government into a pariah on the world stage and is indifferent to collateral damage to Jews everywhere. Last week, Eynat Guez, founder and CEO of Israel’s Papaya Global, valued at $3.7 billion, announced that the company plans to withdraw all its funds from Israel due to concerns about judicial reform plans.

The Jewish state is now attacked precisely because it seeks to preserve its Jewish identity. Sadly, these culprits have an astonishing track record, having wiped out the Jewish identity of millions of Diaspora Jewry through assimilation – the silent Holocaust, for which there is no Book of Names. Indeed, commenting on proposals to amend the Law of Return, Foxman claimed that, “If Israel becomes a fundamentalist religious state…it will cut Israel off from 70% of world Jewry, who won’t qualify into their definition of ‘who is a Jew’.”

At this time of year, we read about Yetzias Mitzrayim and how the Jews merited redemption from Egypt because they clung to three identifying Jewish characteristics –clothing, language and names. For that merit to stand by us now, Jews need to keep the “Jewish” in their Jewish identity.
WHAT’S IN A JEWISH NAME? THE ANSWER TO GROWING JEW-HATRED TODAY
written by Sara Lehmann February 1, 2023 719 views
“Max Lehmann, 18/03/1892, Mainz, Germany, Murdered in Bergen Belsen camp.” A name, a date, a place. An identity – a Jewish identity.

Max Lehmann was my husband’s grandfather. I found his information on a page in the “The Book of Names”, when I attended the Yad Vashem unveiling of its new exhibit in the UN Headquarters last Thursday. Timed to coincide with the 2023 International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, along with Israel’s Permanent Mission to the UN, presented “The Book of Names of Holocaust Victims”. It contains the names of 4,800,000 Holocaust victims, and whenever possible, their date of birth, and their place of birth and death.

The book is mammoth. It stands a length of 26.45 feet, is 6.56 feet high and 3.3 feet wide. A strip of light runs the length of the inside of the book, illuminating it, and contains the blank pages of more than 1 million identities of victims that have not yet been recovered.

The irony of installing a temporary exhibit memorializing the 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims at the UN was likely not lost on attendees. The speakers at the event – United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, and Yad Vashem Chairman Ambassador Dani Dayan – all mentioned current challenges facing Jews and the State of Israel. Erdan, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, referenced the rise of anti-Semitism, including in the halls of the UN.

That is why this book belongs in that place. It is an indisputable answer to growing trends of Holocaust denial. You cannot argue with evidence in black and white. However, growing trends of anti-Semitism pose a far graver threat, and its origins are not as concrete.

Recovering the Jewish identities of Holocaust victims defies the Nazi goal of eradicating Jewish identity. Nazis began their anti-Semitic crusade with edicts aimed at stripping away Judaism from Jews, until they reached their final solution. A video at the UN event shows a Holocaust survivor detailing the horror of her father having his beard pulled out by Nazis, illustrating the Nazi goal of pulling out the Jewish essence of their victims.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Hatred of Jews has returned with physical violence against “identifiable Jews”, the inescapable moniker of the Orthodox. Attacks on Jews in NYC rose 41% in 2022, with the crimes incurring little retribution, if any. And in addition to blatant extremist anti-Semites, there are the figurative but mounting in-your-face assaults by anti-Israel BDS proponents in academia, corporations, the media, and among politicians.

Yet there is a more malignant and enigmatic threat to Jewish identity today, and it comes from Jews themselves. In a perverse twist of affairs, some Jews seem to be suffering an identity crisis regarding the Jewish state vis-a-vis themselves.

Since the formation of the rightwing and religious coalition under Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel faces a crescendo of condemnation against its new government for its efforts to strengthen Israel’s Jewish character. The loudest voices in the chorus are leftwing Jews in Israel and the Diaspora.

This is nothing new. Back in 2018, the Netanyahu government was slammed by these same leftists for passing the “nation-state bill”, a legal assertion of Jewish identity. Among other things, the bill enshrined the Jewish nature of the state, established Hebrew as its official language and even instituted Shabbos as Israel’s official day of rest. At the time of its passing, one of its architects, then MK Avi Dichter, declared that its aim is to “prevent even the slightest thought, let alone attempt, to transform Israel to a country of all its citizens” – a catch phrase for a non-Jewish state.

Outrage ensued, especially by non-Orthodox Diaspora Jews. Rick Jacobs, head of Reform Judaism, claimed the “damage…is enormous”, and Steven Wernick, head of Conservative Judaism, protested the bill in a letter to the Israeli government and said “Israel is losing its soul”.

Fast forward to today. The same opponents are at it again with a vengeance. Netanyahu’s government has mobilized leftist Jews worldwide, some using Nazi imagery and accusing the government of ending democracy.

Terrorists are slaughtering Jews in Neve Yaakov and elsewhere in Israel, but to the leftists, the rightwing government is the enemy. Mere mention of “judicial reform”, through which the coalition endeavors to undo progressive judicial overreach, is enough to send protestors spilling into the streets of Tel Aviv and onto the pages of mainstream and social media. In the immediate aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack on Jewish worshipers at the Neve Yaakov shul, a group of judicial reform opponents in Tel Aviv were waving PLO flags.

Every day brings another condemnation by leftists for daring to reverse progressive policies they worked hard to cultivate. Any attempt to bolster the Jewish identity of the state, such as amending the Law of Return or safeguarding kashrus, is attacked.

To this end, Reform and Conservative denominations in America have linked arms with mainstream Jewish organizations, like the Jewish Federation and the AJC, and progressive Jewish politicians, such as Democrats Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Brad Sherman and Sen. Jacky Rosen. Even previously considered moderates like the ADL’s Abe Foxman responded to coalition plans by saying, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”

Their aim is to turn Israel’s government into a pariah on the world stage and is indifferent to collateral damage to Jews everywhere. Last week, Eynat Guez, founder and CEO of Israel’s Papaya Global, valued at $3.7 billion, announced that the company plans to withdraw all its funds from Israel due to concerns about judicial reform plans.

The Jewish state is now attacked precisely because it seeks to preserve its Jewish identity. Sadly, these culprits have an astonishing track record, having wiped out the Jewish identity of millions of Diaspora Jewry through assimilation – the silent Holocaust, for which there is no Book of Names. Indeed, commenting on proposals to amend the Law of Return, Foxman claimed that, “If Israel becomes a fundamentalist religious state…it will cut Israel off from 70% of world Jewry, who won’t qualify into their definition of ‘who is a Jew’.”

At this time of year, we read about Yetzias Mitzrayim and how the Jews merited redemption from Egypt because they clung to three identifying Jewish characteristics –clothing, language and names. For that merit to stand by us now, Jews need to keep the “Jewish” in their Jewish identity.

WATCH MEIR PANIM’S VIRTUAL TOUR OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU, THE LARGEST NAZI DEATH CAMP.

https://meirpanim.org/auschwitz-virtual-tour/?utm_campaign=Auschwitz+Virtual+Tour+January+2023+-+Recap&utm_medium=email&utm_source=CC

Friday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

As world Jewry witnesses the growth of Jew-hatred all around us today, it is a perfect time to reflect upon the one and only true solution to ensure "Never Again".

For those interested in the audio version or in listening to our long-form interviews at a quicker speed, then best to use one of the podcast services:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2WTGEVCLLeR2fzDCOB1NEo?si=yKcnuX5OSJ2p91Z8id2PTA

https://unitedwithisrael.org/__trashed/?

Jan 27, 2023

“The Abraham Accords have allowed us to have these conversations on the Holocaust,” said Matan Dansker of Israel-IS, an Israel-based organization which fosters dialog.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

A few years ago, the likelihood of Arabs and Israelis meeting online to discuss Holocaust education would have been unthinkable. But on Thursday night more than 70 people from across the Middle East and around the world gathered to talk about the lessons of the Nazi genocide.

The United Arab Emirates became the first Arab country to begin introducing Holocaust education into its curriculum.

“The Abraham Accords have allowed us to have these conversations on the Holocaust,” said Matan Dansker of Israel-IS, an Israel-based organization which fosters dialog, who moderated the event. The gathering was organized by Israel-IS and the Mimouna Association, which works to preserve Moroccan-Jewish heritage.

Participants came from Israel, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and the US. Several others did not indicate their nationality. Several stressed that the lessons of the Holocaust, including the slogan, “Never again,” will amount to nothing without education.

“Holocaust education is an essential component of pursuing human rights,” said Reva Gorelick, a program director for the American Jewish Committee, who is based in Abu Dhabi.

The challenge, participants agreed, was on educating youth.

“The work in the field of the Holocaust is difficult, especially with youth,” said Murad Awdallah, Yad Vashem’s Arab director. He noted that educational materials produced by Yad Vashem not only must be tailored for different age groups, they must also be translated into different languages.

He also noted that even Jews have lesser awareness of the suffering of North African Jews. The 400,000 Jews who lived under pro-Nazi regimes in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya endured varying degrees of discriminatory laws. Hundreds of Libyan Jews deported to Eastern European concentration camps are among the six million killed.

Awdallah also noted that some Arabs refused to cooperate with the Nazis. These included Morocco’s King Mohammed V, who refused to sign off on the Vichy regime’s effort to discriminate or deport his 250,000 Jewish subjects. Awdallah also noted Dr. Mohammed Helmy, an Egyptian doctor practicing in Berlin who saved a Jewish family at great personal risk. In 2013, Helmy became the first Arab honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

https://www.israel365news.com/366044/mozambique-jews-christians-and-muslims-join-in-remembering-the-holocaust/?
Mozambique: Jews, Christians, and Muslims join in commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day
A friend is devoted at all times; A brother is born to share adversity.
PROVERBS 17:15
(THE ISRAEL BIBLE)

Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ
HOLOCAUST
JANUARY 27, 2023
4 MIN READ
Home » Mozambique: Jews, Christians, and Muslims join in commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day


While the Holocaust raged during World War II, Mozambique became a rare haven for Jews fleeing the horrors of Europe. Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day the community of about 45-50 Jews is joined by their non-Jewish neighbors to declare “Never Again.”

Just over half of Mozambique’s population is Christian and around 28% is Muslim, but Sam Levy, who moved to Mozambique 30 years ago from New York and is one of the lay leaders in the capital city Maputo, told Israel365 News that the Jews are a treasured by the other faiths.

“There is no discernible anti-Semitism in the country,” Levy said. “More the opposite. I call it philosemitism.”

“The Jewish community is welcomed among all the faiths,” he said. “We have cordial relations with all groups in the country – Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Bahai, among others. Mozambique actively cultivates tolerance along many dimensions.”

Indeed, if a picture is worth a thousand words, the images of the community commemorating the day speak volumes.


Mozambique Jewish community (Photo courtesy Domingos Gomes)

A member of the Jewish community of Mozambique (Photo Sandra Rodrigues)
” We occasionally host student groups,” Levy said. “Muslim students, Christian students, adults as well as young people. And we will also go to their communities. There are a lot of common interfaith events, particularly on national holidays, especially Mozambique’s National Peace and Reconciliation day, which is October 4. It is really a model in terms of interfaith dialogue and mutual respect.”


A non-Jewish friend of the Jewish community of Mozambique (Photo Sandra Rodrigues)
While the Holocaust devastated European Jewry, the small Jewish community in Mozambique was untouched and actually flourished. The community reached its peak in 1942, thanks to immigration restrictions in other countries and the effects of World War II. Mozambique was a sanctuary for Jews looking to escape Nazi Germany. That’s when as many as 500 people made up Maputo’s Jewish population.


The Honen Dalim Synagogue in Maputo, Mozambique (Photo courtesy)
“The Holocaust Day observances are not new,” Levy said “We do it more or less every year, but we are sometimes joined by people from other faiths. Last year, for instance, we worked with the Catholic Church and screened the movie, Schindler’s List, to the young catechists. Our member, Michael Roup, introduced the film, and told them about what the Holocaust was and why it’s important to remember it.”


Andrew Cunningham with members of the Mozambique community (Photo via twitter)
“This year that campaign spread and we are telling more people about the Holocaust,” Levy said. “It’s going well. It’s sponsored by the African Jewish Congress with the support of the World Jewish Congress and they are spreading the word all across southern and eastern Africa to raise awareness.”


A member of the Jewish community of Mozambique (Photo Sandra Rodrigues)
The community has a long history that has waxed and waned. During the 15-year civil war, lasting from 1977 to 1992, a high percentage of Jews left Maputo. The synagogue was abandoned and the cemetery was vandalized. However, by 1989, the synagogue was back in Jewish hands and regular Shabbat services were restored between 1993 and 1994. In 2012, the synagogue was completely restored.


Sandra Rodrigues, a member of the Jewish community of Mozambique (Photo courtesy)
“The numbers are small and much reduced since COVID when some of the foreign families or members of the community left,” Levy said. “But I am sure the community will grow again.”


Mozambique Jewish Community on Sukkoth joined by friends (Photo courtesy)

https://www.cufi.org.uk/news/cleverly-we-owe-it-to-the-6-million-to-reflect-learn-grieve-and-remember/
Cleverly: “We owe it to the 6 million…to reflect, learn, grieve, and remember”
Jan 26, 2023 | News

Cleverly: “We owe it to the 6 million…to reflect, learn, grieve, and remember”
The UK Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, gave an impassioned speech at the Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, held on Tuesday at the Foreign Office and attended by CUFI, in which the minister challenged whether we would have personally had the courage to rally to the defence of the Holocaust’s victims.

In the speech, Mr Cleverly recalled his visit to the disused Radegast station in Lodz in Poland telling of the 200,000 Jewish men, women and children who were transported to Nazi death camps from there. “I stood where they would have stood, and I saw what they saw; the crude wooden cattle trucks, drawn up by the platform,” Cleverly shared, before giving some examples of some of the victims.

“Now our only possible response is to mean it, heart and soul, when we say the words ‘never again’,” the Foreign Secretary challenged.

Cleverly then continued to explain the bravery of the people of Denmark, saying, “But there were, at the time, some ordinary people who meant it when they said to themselves that they would not stand by, and they would not watch others being transported to their deaths.”

“But the hard truth is that when the moment came, there were never enough people like them,” he lamented, “If almost every Jew could be saved in Denmark, why not elsewhere?”

“Today, we must all silently ask ourselves the difficult and searching question, what would I have done? Would I have taken that risk, not just for myself but for my family?”

“And as we answer that profoundly difficult and necessary question in our hearts, we owe it to the 6 million who were not saved to reflect, to learn, to grieve, and above all, to remember.”

Also in the ceremony, Holocaust survivor, Manfred Goldberg BEM shared his moving testimony, including his ordeal at the Riga ghetto, the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland), where he was a slave worker, and his experience on a death march in appalling conditions before finally being liberated.

Other speakers included Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, and Lord Eric Pickles, UK Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues.


Foreign Secretary Jame Cleverly’s Speech in full

Your Excellency the Ambassador of Israel, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I’m deeply honoured to join you on this occasion.

Last year, on a winter evening, I stood on a concrete platform of the disused Radegast station in Lodz in Poland. From this nondescript and functional building, 200,000 Jewish men, women and children were transported to Nazi death camps.

I reflected that there were countless unused buildings like this, scattered across occupied Europe, all being used, to send human beings to be murdered.

Radegast was where the Jews of Lodz ghetto were transported to Chelmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau. I stood where they would have stood, and I saw what they saw; the crude wooden cattle trucks, drawn up by the platform.

Inside the station building, I turned over page after page of neatly typewritten names of the people who were forced at gunpoint onto those trucks.

One of those who was deported to Auschwitz, in her case from Romania, was Olga Lengyel, who lost her parents, lost her husband, and lost her 2 sons. She wrote, and I quote:

Whenever I recall the first days at the camp, I still grow hot and cold with nameless terror. It was a terror that rose for no particular reason, but one that was constantly nourished by strange occurrences whose meaning I sought in vain.

At night the glow of the flames from the chimneys…showed through the crevices in the walls. The shrieks of the sick or the wounded, crowded together in trucks bound for some unknown destination, grated on our nerves.

Sometimes we heard revolver shots, for the SS guards used their guns freely. Above these noises came orders barked in overbearing voices. Nothing would let us forget our slavery.

And then Olga Lengyel asks: “Could such conditions really exist in Europe in the twentieth century?”

Today, every one of us shares a solemn duty to remember that those conditions did indeed exist in Europe in the 20th century, that 6 million men, women and children were consumed by the Holocaust.

Now our only possible response is to mean it, heart and soul, when we say the words ‘never again’.

But there were, at the time, some ordinary people who meant it when they said to themselves that they would not stand by, and they would not watch others being transported to their deaths.

It remains an extraordinary and uplifting fact that ordinary people in Denmark managed to save almost all of their country’s Jews. They were hidden in churches, in hospitals and in family homes, and spirited to coastal towns, from where they were taken to safety in Sweden, on board fishing boats or kayaks or motorboats.

In the town of Elsinore, the escape line was run by Erling Kiaer, the local bookbinder, Thormod Larsen, a policeman, Ove Bruhn, a clerk, and Børge Rønne, the editor of the local newspaper. They called themselves the “Elsinore Sewing Club” and they carried about 700 Jews across the Sound to Sweden.

They knew full well that they were risking their own lives.

And indeed in May 1944, the Nazis arrested Erling Kiaer after intercepting his motorboat, and he was incarcerated in Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany. But he survived until the camp liberation, and he lived until his 77th year, dying in 1980.

The members of the Elsinore Sewing Club – and others like them across occupied Europe – consciously decided to place themselves in the mortal peril in order to save others.

But the hard truth is that when the moment came, there were never enough people like them. If almost every Jew could be saved in Denmark, why not elsewhere?

Today, we must all silently ask ourselves the difficult and searching question, what would I have done? Would I have taken that risk, not just for myself but for my family?

And as we answer that profoundly difficult and necessary question in our hearts, we owe it to the 6 million who were not saved to reflect, to learn, to grieve, and above all, to remember.


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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
Today, the world once again marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We remember the six million Jewish and five million Gentile victims of Nazi terror. We also stand with those being oppressed and murdered today. The world needs to remember so that the sins of yesterday don't turn into the reality of today.
NEVER AGAIN!!!