Sweden: Malmö Jewish community 'takes back' Kristallnacht memorial event

Photo: Bernard Mikulic

Via SVT:

This year the Jewish community of Malmö organized its own Kristallnacht memorial event, saying that in recent years the organizers of the municipal event overlooked the memory of the Jewish experience and antisemitic hatred.

Jehoshua Kaufman of the Jewish community says that the day had been 'kidnapped by very extreme groups'.   Various left-wing and radical left-wing groups have turned the day into an 'anti-racism' day, but without commemorating the events of Kristallnacht itself, the message falls flat. 

Kristallnacht was a way for the Nazis to see how far the Germans were willing to go.  Many Germans either participated or turned away, while the rest of the world shrugged.  The message should be: we must be active and act.  Do not turn away when you see hatred.

Norway: "Jew-Free" Kristallnacht ceremony in Bergen

The Kristallnacht memorial ceremony in Bergen once again boycotted Jews.

The organizers, staunch anti-Zionists who support boycotting Israel, did not invite any Jews to the official municipal ceremony.  Dozens of organizations were invited to join in planning the event, representing all the different communities in Bergen - except the Jewish community.

A few days prior to the event, the organizers tried to dismiss criticism by inviting a couple of Jews.  The Jews refused to play along and cover up for the organizers' antisemitism.

Jewish activist On Elpeleg says he came to the memorial ceremony in order to give out leaflets on behalf of the Jewish community asking to include all minorities in the future, but was roughly pushed away.

In 2014, Anti-racism group "Nye SOS Rasisme" demanded a "memorial Without Zionists" and boycotted the event when Jews were invited.

Germany: Organizers of Kristallnacht memorial sought to ban Israeli flag

Via Jerusalem Post:

Organizers from the “Walk of Remembrance” to commemorate the persecution of Jews in the northern German city of Oldenburg attempted on Thursday to ban the Israeli flag from the ceremony.

“I wanted to participate in the march with my Israeli flag as a sign of solidarity with Israel – the state of survivors of the Holocaust. No sooner that I rolled out the flag, a teacher came to me and demanded that I roll back the flag,” Rolf Woltersdorf, a member of the German- Israel Friendship Society (DIG) in Oldenburg, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

The Holocaust remembrance event is a yearly memorial march in remembrance of the deportation of Oldenburg Jews to concentration camps and the destruction of the synagogue in 1938. Pupils from local schools contribute to the content of the event.

Woltersdorf said one organizer “wanted to remove me with physical violence” because of his Israeli flag. He added that some of the marchers supported his solidarity with Israel.

Woltersdorf said as he continued to march, an active member of the DIG urged him to remove the flag.

Cordula Behrens, an educator with the society, draped herself in an Israeli flag. A teacher confronted Behrens and said the flag has nothing to do with the memory of dead Jews.

Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi-hunter and the head of its Jerusalem office, told the Post on Thursday: “This is part of a new trend to use the Holocaust to besmirch and delegitimize Israel. The only good Jew is a dead Jew for these people. It is a very dangerous thing because they are ostensibly trying to remember the Holocaust but these are distorted lessons of the Holocaust. It is the ultimate insult.”

Manfred Klöpper, the former head of the German trade union association in the city of Wilhelmshaven and a member of the Left Party, confronted Woltersdorf and Behrens, asking why on this commemoration day the “national symbol” from Israel is displayed. Woltersdorf told Klöpper the Oldenburg Rabbi Alina Treiger is praying right now for the “nation of Israel.” Klöpper responded: “That does not interest me at all.”
Klöpper told the Post on Tuesday: “I asked why the flag was displayed.” When asked if the Israeli flag should be shown, he said “yes.”

read more

Netherlands: Anti-Israel group holds Kristallnacht event in synagogue

Via JTA:

Dutch Jews warned against political abuse of the Holocaust’s memory following an Amsterdam synagogue’s controversial decision to host a commemoration that was organized by an anti-Israel group.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, issued a statement condemning this perceived abuse on Wednesday, the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” pogrom in 1938 against Austrian and German Jews that many Holocaust historians view as the opening shot in the Nazi-led campaign of violence against the Jews.

CIDI’s statement followed weeks of debate over the planned hosting on Nov. 9 at the Uilenburger Shul of a memorial organized 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.

“Abuse of the memorial event of this horrible night by political interest groups, be they left or right wing, is painful and objectionable,” CIDI wrote.

(...)

Platform Stop Racism and Exclusion, previously known as NBK, has been commemorating Kristallnacht since 1992, often with the Jewish community. But in 2010, the Central Jewish Board severed its ties with the group because of its perceived attempt to tie the Holocaust to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

NBK activist Miriyam Aouragh in 2004 organized a commemoration service in Amsterdam for Ahmed Yassin, a Hamas leader whom Israel killed that year. In 2009, NBK’s Kristallnacht commemoration featured a speech by Yassin Elforkani, an imam who that year said Jews in Damascus used blood to make matzah.

Last year, the alternative memorial event organized by Platform Stop Racism and Exclusion was hosted at a municipal building and featured a lecture by the Arab-Israeli lawmaker Hanin Zoabi, who likened Israel’s actions to those of Nazi Germany. Citing the definition for anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the Central Jewish Board called the comparison anti-Semitic in its statement last week.

read more

Germany: Neo-Nazis publish list of Jewish businesses

Via CFCA:

Berlin -  On the anniversary of the so called "Reichsprogromnacht" of 1938 a Berlin based group of neo-Nazis posted a map with 70 Jewish institutions on Facebook.

The post was displayed with „Juden unter uns!" ("Jews among us!") and "Heute ist ein schöner Tag" ("Today is a beautiful day"). The map included locations like synagogues, schools and child care houses, stores, restaurants and cemeteries.

read more

Germany: Herzl plaque vandalized on anniversary of Kristallnacht

Via Everyday Antisemitism, RIAS:

RIAS has reported another incident of vandalism in Berlin on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Kreuzberg’s Mehringplatz is home to the „Pfad der Visionäre” (“Path of World Visionaries”) installation. This features panels set into the ground, quoting selected personalities from UN Nations. Each panel includes the flag of the country of the person’s origin.

Theodor Herzl represents Israel. On 9th November 2015, the 77th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the glass covering the panel was destroyed and the Israeli flag scratched off. It was the only panel to receive such treatment.

Germany: Holocaust memorials targeted with anti-Zionist, Holocaust-denying graffiti in honor of Kristallnacht

Via Autonome Neuköllner Antifa (Translation with thanks to Daniel):


A Shoah memorial at the Levetzowstraße was defaced with slogans [first of these is a linguistic pun in German] “Lied joke 1058”, “learn the truth, read revisionist list”, “listen to the truth no matter who tells it”

Another Shoah memorial at the Putlitzbrücke was defaced “gas chamber lie” ,”Holohoax, the perpetrators are Zionists”, “9/11 false flag”

Another memorial on the Ellen-Epstein-Straße, the historical railways at the deportation train station from the project “They were our neighbours”,  was defaced with “All a lie!”

Property in Marzahn-Mitte and two more installations in Marzahn were damaged with anti-semitic graffiti. A glass window has a big J painted on it and a star of david.

Germany: Kristallnacht memorial march participants harassed

Via Autonome Neuköllner Antifa (Translation with thanks to Daniel):

Since 1990 (every year for the memory of the pogrom night of 9th of november) there is a memorial demonstration from the Levetzowstrasse to the memorial at Putlitzbrücke.

This year, several times people were making slogans “Freedom for Palestine” “Free, free Palestine” from the edge of the demonstration. "F*cking ( literal shit) Jews” was also heard. Someone threw a two liter tetrapack from a dark window, that missed participants by chance alone.

Netherlands: Anti-racist party commemorates Kristallnacht by comparing Jews to Nazis

Via Times of Israel:

Denouncing Israel for “racist policies” against the Palestinians, firebrand MK Hanin Zoabi of the Joint (Arab) List party accused the Jewish state of crimes akin to those committed by the Nazis. She was speaking at an event marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht in the heart of Amsterdam’s decimated Jewish quarter on Sunday.

Organized by the city’s far-left Platform Stop Racism and Exclusion, the commemoration drew more than 200 attendees, with dozens of them wearing kippot or draped in Israeli flags.

Leading up to Zoabi’s speech, several organizers delivered remarks comparing the Holocaust to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. At least half a dozen pro-Israel protesters were escorted from the gathering by security personnel and uniformed Amsterdam city police, when at various points they yelled in protest of the speakers’ condemnations of Israel.  more

Sweden: Jews not invited to Kristallnacht commemoration because they might "feel unwelcomed"

We could try to make Jews feel more welcome at an event dedicated to Jew-hatred.  Or we could simply exclude them.  


Annika Hernroth-Rothstein @ Israel Hayom:

Next week, on the night between November 9 and 10, the Workers' Party in the northern Swedish city of Umeå is arranging a rally in memory of Kristallnacht. Although this sounds like an honorable and well-meaning initiative, it has been met by a fair amount of criticism and pushback from media outlets and members of the Jewish community.

The organizers of the event "Umeå against Nazism" have chosen not to invite Umeå's Jewish community, nor will any Jewish speakers appear at the event. When members of that community contacted the main organizer, Jan Hägglund, a member of Umeå's local council for the Workers' Party, they were told that Jews had been excluded from the memorial because "they might perceive it as an unwelcoming or even unsafe situation."

"In previous years, we have had a lot of Palestinian flags at these rallies, and even one banner where the Israeli flag was equated with a swastika. The Jewish community wasn't invited because we assumed they might be uncomfortable around that sort of thing."

Beyond that, the Facebook page promoting the event has also made sure the Jews are far from front and center on November 9, but chooses instead to highlight the issue of immigration and racism in general, making the pogroms against Jews a mere afterthought.

The organizers of a Kristallnacht-memorial in the town of Uppsala are guilty of a similar "oversight" as they advertise the event "Commemoration of Kristallnacht" without mentioning Jews or synagogues even once. Their description of Kristallnacht reads: "On the night between November 9 and 10 in 1938, 91 people were killed, 3,000 people were sent to concentration camps and 1,000 temples were destroyed." Just like that, Jews are turned into random people and synagogues are miscellaneous temples, diluting the memory they claim to want to honor.    more

Germany: Synagogue memorial desecrated

Via Thüringer Allgemeine (ht/ Honestly Concerned):

A memorial to the synagogue of Eisenach was desecrated with a swastika and antisemitic slogan.  The synagogue was destroyed on  Kristallnacht (Nov 9-10, 1938)

Germany: Memorial plaque vandalized - "We don't want them"

A memorial plaque to the Jews of Wanne-Eickel, at the former site of the town's synagogue was vandalized the day before the Kristallnacht memorial was supposed to take place.  Somebody had written "We don't want them" on the plaque.

More: halloherne, h/t CFCA

Netherlands: Protestant Church pulls out of Kristallnacht event over sponsors

A senior official from the Dutch Protestant Church pulled out of a Holocaust memorial event co-organized by Socialists who commemorated a Hamas leader.

Arjan Plaisier, secretary of the PKN umbrella of Dutch Protestant churches, announced Friday that he would neither be speaking nor attending the Kristallnacht commemoration event organized by the Platform Against Racism and Exclusion.

The platform lists among its Kristallnacht commemoration partners the International Socialists, which in 2004 held a ceremony in memory of Ahmed Yassin, a former spiritual leader of Hamas whom Israel killed that year.

More: JTA

Denmark: Kristallnacht exploited to raise money for Gaza

The Danish Jewish community is upset at the Red-Green Alliance (Socialists) in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen.

The party, together with several other smaller organizations, is organizing an event commemorating Kristallnacht.  Proceeds will be donated to #112Gaza, a charity collecting funds for the purchase of 20 ambulances in Gaza.

Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, the head of the Jewish Community said that they are linking Kristallnacht with support for Gaza's political leadership, who are not willing to tolerate Israel as a neighbor.

The organizers reject the criticism and say the day is not a memorial day for Jews only and that Kristallnacht was the culmination of years of discrimination towards various groups.  The event's slogan is "no to discrimination in all its forms - Kristallnacht never again".

More: JydskeVestkysten here and here

Norway: Anti-racism group demands Jews be excluded from Kristallnacht memorial event

Via Norway, Israel and the Jews:

Dagen's headline to this article is "Demanded Memorial Without Zionists", but as you can see below, the issue wasn't Zionists, it was Jews, plain and simple.

An anti-racism group called "Nye SOS Rasisme" will not take part in the general Kristallnacht memorial march in Bergen, since their demand to exclude representatives of the Jewish community was not accepted.  Anne Sender, a former leader in the community, will speak at the memorial.  It is interesting to note that Anne Sender is a vocal critic of Israel.

"Nye SOS Rasisme" say they will conduct their own procession with banners against Israel, such as "Zionism is Racism".  On their website they explain that the day marks opposition to racism, harassment and genocide, but that today Israel is a racist state.  Zionism means that Jews have their own state, where they will be the majority and where they will have more rights.  Just like Nazis did not want their state to be corrupted by Jews, the Zionists do not want their state corrupted by Palestinians.

Germany: "Don't buy from Jews" painted on shop window

Around the time of the Kristallnacht anniversary somebody wrote "Don't buy from Jews" on a shop window in Berlin-Rummelsburg.

More: Morgenpost

Germany: "Eternal lie" antisemitic sign hung in cemeteries

More from the Kristallnacht antisemitic attacks:

The Jewish cemeteries in Bad Berleburg and Siegen (North Rhine-Westphalia) were desecrated on the night of November 8th. In both places somebody hung a sign saying "The eternal lie lives on" with a star of david.

More: Mittelhessen

Poland: 'Jews out!' painted on synagogue

Antisemitic writings were sprayed on the walls of the synagogue in Dzierzoniów.

The writings said: 'the Aryan fraternity is back', 'Jews out!' (Jude raus), and 'Crystal night' (KrystallNacht). Swastikas were also painted on the synagogue walls

More: CFCA

Latvia: WWI Memorial desecrated with Star of David

The World War I Freedom Fighters memorial in Riga was desecrated with a Star of David on November 9th (Kristallnacht anniversary).  A few days earlier a swastika was painted on a memorial to Janis Cakste, Latvia's first president.

More: NRA, TV-NET

Norway: Professor says Israel is responsible for antisemitism

The Norway, Israel and the Jews blog reports that Trond Andresen, a professor at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim) wrote on his Facebook page that he's boycotting the Kristallnacht ceremony.  His reasons:
1. Jews suffer far less than anybody else, and shouldn't get any special attention because of it
2. Israel is responsible for whatever they do suffer
3. Israel supporters profit from the ceremony

More: Norway, Israel and the Jews, see also Dusken and JTA