Poland: Far-right group leads anti-Semitic protest at Auschwitz during commemoration ceremony

Via Independent:

Far-right Polish nationalists organised an anti-Semitic protest during a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at Auschwitz.

The small group of hardline activists held their demonstration inside the former concentration camp at the same time as the official Holocaust commemorations on Sunday.

The 50 protestors from the Polish Independence Movement were led by Piotr Rybak, who was once jailed for burning an effigy of a Jew.

Mr Rybak told reporters they were there to oppose the official – and historically accurate – narrative that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis with the active collaboration of some Poles.

"It's time to fight against Jewry and free Poland from them,” Mr Rybak said, a Polish newspaper reported.

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Greece: Jewish cemetery memorial in Thessaloniki targeted, again

Via ekathimerini:

A monument on the campus of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University (AUT) which commemorates a Jewish cemetery destroyed by the Nazis was targeted again by vandals on Friday.

The perpetrators smashed the marble commemorative signs placed in the old cemetary which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1942.

This is the third time the monument has been targeted. In July 2018, vandals twice daubed paint and painted a cross on the monument.

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Belgium: Vandals damage Holocaust memorial in Ghent

Via JNS:

Vandals damage a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent on the eve of a Kristallnacht commemoration. 

Vandals damaged a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent, some 50 kilometers west of Brussels, on the eve of a Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) commemoration.

The so-called Michaël Lustig monument, in the shape of a dreidel, is located at the confluence of a major canal. It was ripped off its foundation and left on its side.

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Estonia: Holocaust victim memorials vandalised at Kalevi-Liiva

Via err.ee:

Sometime Saturday overnight or on Sunday, just days ahead of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, unidentified individuals vandalised multiple Holocaust memorials at Kalevi-Liiva, Harju County, the execution site of thousands of victims of Nazism.

The memorials were tagged with a swastika, penises and antisemitic and Nazi messages as well as burned, likely using a blowtorch.

The vandalism was discovered by local residents, who notified the police, the municipal government and Estonia's Jewish community about it.

Jewish Community of Estonia chairwoman Alla Jakobson said that she was shaken and outraged by the news.

"I can't call these Nazi-sympathisers who attack the memory of innocent victims with such brutality and anger human," she said. "The memory of the dead has always been regarded with such great respect and honour in Estonia, regardless of ethnicity. An Estonian resident cannot act like this, which is why I am sure that the memorial was vandalised by people who hate Estonia, and this should also be seen as a provocation timed to coincide with the Day of Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Estonia."

Jakobson also thanked those who alerted the authorities and the Jewish community to the incident.

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Romania: Ten Jewish tombstones smashed in capital

Via Times of Israel:

An anti-Semitism organization said Tuesday that vandals smashed 10 tombstones at a cemetery in the Romanian capital in “a premeditated act.”

The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania said the tombstones were broken into pieces at the Jewish cemetery in southern Bucharest overnight Monday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis are commemorated in Israel.

The center called for an investigation and for the perpetrators to face justice.

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Germany: Holocaust memorial vandalized

Via Watch: Antisemitism in Europe:

A swastika was smeared on the memorial for the synagogue in Eisenach in the night following the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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France: Antisemitic tags found at the Museum of the Resistance

Via CFCA:

Toulouse - "Shoah, phony story." This Holocaust-denying and antisemitic inscription has been tagged twice in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday on the outer windows of the Departmental Museum of Resistance and Deportation, located on the fairways of the Demoiselles (allées des Demoiselles).

UK: London Mayor Bombarded by Anti-Semitic Abuse After Attending Holocaust Event

Via Forward:

London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s attendance at a Holocaust commemoration event last week inspired praise by many, but did not sit well with some in the Twittersphere, with some responding with virulently anti-Israel comments and even Holocaust denial.

On Sunday, Mayor Khan, the London-born son of Pakistani immigrants and first Muslim mayor of London, tweeted: “So important to reflect, remember and educate about the 6 million Jewish lives lost in the Holocaust,” referring to his visit to the Holocaust memorial event, his first official mayoral act.

As of Monday evening, the post had attracted more than 1,500 “likes” and was shared 950 times, with responses such as: “Thank you for attending the Yom HaShoah event. The event made me proud to be British for so many reasons. We are all one.”

But among the other responses was blatant Holocaust denial, including a comment that “much of the so-called ‘holocaust’ has been faked, including the post-1945 Auschwitz construction,” suggesting that much of the Auschwitz site was built after World War II.

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Ukraine: Israeli flag burned at Babi Yar memorial on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Via CFCA:

Kyiv - A group of young people burned the flag of Israel near the Menora memorial, at the Babi Yar in Kyiv; Vitali Klitschko, the Kyiv Mayor, requested law enforcement authorities to investigate this act of vandalism.

"Video surveillance recorded the group of young vandals burning the flag of the state of Israel near the Menora memorial, at the Babi Yar. This happened on the national Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the Jewish people all over the world remember the 6 million victims of Nazism, who perished during World War II," the press service of Kyiv City State Administration quoted Klitschko as saying.

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Sweden: Nazi movement burns Israeli flag to protest counterfeiting of Western history by Zionism

Via CFCA:

Stockholm - A day before the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (26/1) a handful of extreme right activists of the Nordic Resistance Movement (Svenska motståndsrörelsen), held a symbolic demonstration in Sergel Square. They burned the Israeli flag. Through this symbolic act they showed their disgust from the counterfeiting of the Western history by Zionism.

Then the activists declared a boundless love for their people when they hung a banner over one of the busiest roads of Sweden which read: ‘vi Älskar Arier’ (‘we like Aryans’).

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Greece: Volos City Council refused to adopt a resolution commemorating the Holocaust

Via Against Antisemitism:

The majority of the municipal council of Volos, a coastal port city in Thessaly, has reportedly refused to adopt a resolution commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. The opposition which initiated the resolution accused the president of the municipal council, George Moulas, of complicity with the Nazi Golden Dawn party.

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Sweden: Nazis mark Holocaust Memorial Day with Holocaust-denying banner

Via CFCA:

Stockholm – Motståndsrörelsen, a Nazi group puts up Holocaust Denial banner over highway. The banner reads (in Swedish) "The Holocaust is a bluff"

Norway: Speaker at Holocaust memorial says Jews are not speaking out enough against Israel

Via MIFF:

On International Holocaust Day the Jewish community in Trondheim held a memorial ceremony.

Among the speakers was Professor Bernt Hagtvet from the University of Oslo.  After half an hour talking about the Holocaust and antisemitism, he started talking about Israel, the "elephant in the room".  "It's tragic that the state that was established to prevent this type of identification, this type of oppression, has become the Jewish state of Israel."  He said he does not, of course, blame Norwegian Jews for Israel's policies, but that he doesn't hear enough Jews speak out.  "What is happening in Palestine is a tragedy like no other, and it's clear that the right-wing Zionist right is responsible for it."

"The Israeli left is gone, and we are left to deal with an expanding robber-state which is a tragedy for the Jews."

When he was challenged on that last sentence, he doubled down, saying that Israel is occupying another country and treats Palestinians in an almost-racist way.  "Go and see how border checkpoints treat pregnant women. It's incomparably degrading and is extra-tragic because the Israeli-left has been so weak".

The next lecturer, focusing on antisemitism in Norway, pointed out how anti-Israel attitudes directly influence anti-Jewish attitudes.

France: Jews compared to Nazis in Holocaust Memorial event

Almost every line in this article deserves a post of its own.

Via BBC:

Today talk is of the successful Holocaust Day event which has just been held, in which children (of all denominations) staged an evening of readings and dance.

According to Michele Teboul's friend Edith, it was a very moving occasion - only marred by a young Muslim child whose text "had to include a reference to what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. Why?"

Michele tells the tale of how she led a delegation to Israel, and after months of work had a deal ready to be signed twinning a Marseille lycee with a secondary school in Haifa - only for the scheme to be nixed by the teaching body at the French school.

She says it is hard to reach out to the Muslim community in Marseille. "Sometimes an imam comes for a meeting, to talk about Jewish-Muslim relations. But they always refuse to be photographed with a Jew. They are afraid of their own extremists."

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UK: Scottish politician criticised after describing Israel's condemnation of Iran as 'inappropriate'

The Jewish Chronicle reports:

Former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond has been criticised after he said it was “inappropriate” for an Israeli official to condemn Iran during a Holocaust Memorial Day event.

Mr Salmond’s comments came on the same day that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had marked last week’s memorial day by denying the Shoah.

Now an SNP MP and the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Salmond also represents Britain at the Council of Europe.

He said it was wrong for Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, to criticise Iran president Hassan Rouhani’s visits to France and Italy at the council ahead of an HMD service.

Mr Salmond said there was a “time and place for international politics” and that Mr Oren had been wrong to make the critical comments “during a solemn commemoration service”.

Former Labour Friends of Israel chairman John Woodcock MP said Mr Salmond, who visited Iran in December, had displayed “breath-taking pomposity”.

Read this on Axel Salmond:
Scottish politician compares Islamic State terrorism to the policies of Israel

Germany: Jewish cemetery vandalized on Holocaust Memorial Day

Via Ostsee Zeitung (h/t Honestly Concerned):

The Jewish cemetery in Kröpelin has once again been vandalized, apparently on Holocaust Memorial Day.  Six tombstones were overturned.

The Jewish cemetery has been repeatedly targeted for vandalism over the past few years.  No perpetrators have been arrested.

Belgium: "We are Eichmann" graffiti

 Via Twitter:  Graffiti on a wall at a Brussels arts college saying "We are Eichmann!"

Germany: Bremen Jewish community accuses pro-Palestinians of antisemitism

The speaker in this event is Arn Strohmeyer who wrote the book "Antisemitism - Philosemitism and the Palestine conflict, Hitler's long and disastrous shadow".




Strohmeyer  denies that he 'ever questioned Israel's right to exist', but it really doesn't take a genious to figure out that this is not 'criticism of Israeli policies' but rather 'criticism of the very basis of Israel's foundation'.


Via Jerusalem Post (h/t Honestly Concerned)

German cultural center cancels anti-Israel event ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day

The director of the publicly-funded cultural center in the northern Germany city of Bremen on Monday pulled the plug on an anti-Israel event seeking to demonize the Jewish state.

The event, “Antisemitismus – Philosemitism and the Palestinian Conflict” was organized by the German-Palestinian Society and the Middle East Forum Bremen.

(...)

The anti-Zionist talk was slated to take place one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday.

André Städler, spokesman for Bremen’s Mayor Carsten Sieling, told the Post that he “welcomes” the decision to cancel the event, adding, “Bremen sharply condemns every form of anti-Semitism including attempts to question Israel’s right to exist.”

The deputy representative of the Bremen Jewish community, Grigori Pantijelew, told the Post on Monday that “Arn Strohmeyer, Detlef Griesche and other members of this group have defamed the Jewish community in Bremen for years.”

(...)

In an email to the Post, Strohmeyer wrote the he is “very outraged” that his talk was canceled. He said the refusal means that “freedom of speech was threatened in a bad manner.”

He said his lecture will still take place at another location.

“I have never questioned Israel’s right to exist and never will.” He added that “the allegation of anti-Semitism from certain Jewish circles serves as an instrument to silence critics of Israel’s policies.”

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Netherlands: Anti-racism group to dicuss 'Israeli racism' on Kristallnacht event

Via JTA:

Hanin Zoabi, an Arab-Israeli lawmaker who recently called for a Palestinian uprising, is scheduled to speak about racism in Israel at a Holocaust commemoration event in the Dutch capital.

Zoabi’s attendance at the event organized in Amsterdam on Nov. 8 by Platform Stop Racism and Exclusion, a far-left group that is shunned by local Jews for its members’ perceived animosity toward Israel and sympathy for Hamas, was announced last week.

Zoabi currently is under investigation in Israel for saying in an interview for a Hamas publication that: “Hundreds of worshipers should go up to al-Aqsa to confront an Israeli conspiracy there. Thousands of our people’s ascents there would turn these events into a real intifada.” She later said her words were “not a call to amplify the attacks.”
Breaking News

The Dutch group that invited her wrote on its Facebook page that in previous years it “paid attention to racism in the world (Germany, Austria, Greece) but not in Israel. Given recent events, discussing racism in Israel is unavoidable.” Zoabi will speak on “Israeli discrimination against Palestinians,” the text read.

The event where Zoabi will speak is in commemoration of Kristallnacht — the German-language name for pogroms perpetrated in 1938 against Austrian and German Jews that Holocaust historians see as the opening shot in the Nazi-led campaign of violence against Jews and their extermination.  more

Poland: Antisemitic protest "let's defend Poland"

Via CFCA and Poznan Gazeta:

An antisemitic demo was held in Poznan on January 27th, Holocaust Memorial Day.  The demo was held in front of the local Synagogue under the title "let's defend Poland so we won't turn into a second Palestine".

The organizers claimed it was not antisemitic at all.  They were protesting Israeli 'terrorism' against Palestinians.  But the organizers are also upset that Jews profit of the Holocaust (hence the date of chosen for the demo), and that the Polish government is being controlled by the Germans and Russians with the aid of Jewish financiers.

Not antisemitic at all.

Four people were arrested.