Greek Jews call for the abolition of the 'burning of the Judas'

Via Against antisemitism – Ενάντια στον αντισημιτισμό:

The ‘burning of the Judas’ in the village of Tolo, on the Peloponnese peninsula

(Easter 2018). Screenshot via YouTube

Announcement by the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece:

During the Easter holidays, various customs take place in our country. One of these is the “burning of the effigy of Judas”, which takes place in some areas of the country. This custom perpetuates stereotyped perceptions against the Jews. It is significant that the custom has almost been eliminated in the rest of Europe.

In the past, we, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, have repeatedly proceeded with representations to competent bodies in order to stop the custom in our country. The fact that the Church of Greece, with its Synodic Circulars of 1891, 1910 and 1918, demanded that “these customs are expressly forbidden” is of particular significance.

We believe that this custom not only offends the Greek Jewish community but also affects every effort towards the understanding and respect of common values ​​that characterise Judaism and Christianity. 

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UK: ‘Beware of Jews’ road sign was part of project on identity, artist reveals

Via The Jewish Chronicle:

An artist has said he was behind a road sign apparently mimicking Charedi Jews and confirmed that the project was not intended to cause offence.

Franck Allais, who works as a freelance photographer, said he intended his work to be part of a project on identity, and that the sign was not an antisemitic statement.

Mr Allais said he was upset his work had caused offence to people in the community.

Police were investigating after the sign, showing an image of a Jewish man in traditional dress, seemed to warn about the presence of Jews in Stamford Hill, north London.

The sign was fixed to a lamppost near a synagogue in Clapton Common. It appeared along with another image in the area which showed a woman pulling a shopping trolley, a man pushing his wheelchair and a cat.

The image of the Jewish figure initially sparked confusion over whether it was intended as an antisemitic slur.

But Mr Allais told the Guardian: “It was a project about crossing the road … how everyone is different, everyone has an identity.

“There is not only one sign in the street. I put more signs up in the street, but only this one got noticed. I am sorry for any offence caused.”

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France: Paris museum labels Auschwitz a ‘Bauhaus architectural achievement’

It is worth noting that the Bauhaus exhibition at the Musée des Arts décoratifs opened in October and that it took two months before the CRIF reacted.

Télérama writes: "In response to the protests against what Michel Weinfeld (the son of Jean Weinfeld, a Bauhaus architect) describes as "rather heavy clumsiness," Olivier Gabet, director of the Museum of Decorative Arts, strongly denies "addressing this serious question lightly". In the days to come, he will add to the exhibition a text stating that "this map presents a selection of achievements by a number of former professors and students of the Bauhaus after their passage at the school. It mentions places and dates in the historiography of the Bauhaus and in the biographies of each of them. The legacy and critical fortune of the Bauhaus espouses the tragic history of the 20th century, and the personal trajectories of some of its former members do not always reflect the generous and progressive ideals of this pioneering school of modernity"."

Via The Jerusalem Post:

French arts museum defined the death camp Auschwitz as “an architectural achievement of the Bauhaus movement.” 

The “Spirit of the Bauhaus,” which opened in October at the Museum of Decorative Arts, includes SS officer Fritz Ertl’s designs for the extermination camp among the major achievements of the modernist art movement and school active in the years preceding the rise of Nazism. Historians of the movement have debated whether the school, which was denounced as decadent by the Nazi regime, bears responsibility for disciples who went on to work for the Third Reich. 

Francis Kalifat, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, wrote a letter of protest Friday to the museum director. 

In his statement, which Kalifat also sent to Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay, who is Jewish, he wrote: “The Bauhaus movement has enough lovely projects that make it unnecessary to insult the memory” of approximately 1 million Jews who were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 

Bauhaus was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that gave its name to the utilitarian architectural style perfected by many of the school’s graduates. 

Tel Aviv, where many German Jews immigrated in the 1920s and ’30s, is one of the world’s most Bauhaus-rich cities, with more than 4,000 buildings classified as belonging to that style. 

After the Nazis shuttered the school in 1933, most of its artists and architects left the country. Some who remained worked for the Nazis with various degrees of enthusiasm, according to Nicholas Fox Weber, the author of a book on the subject.

Ertl, who trained at Bauhaus from 1928 to 1931, became a member of the Waffen-SS in 1941 and contributed the plans of the barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau, according to Le Figaro. He and another architect, Walter Dejaco, were tried in Vienna in 1972 and acquitted on charges of abetting mass murder.  

Poland: Director of Polish Culture Institute in Berlin fired for ‘too much Jewish content’

Artnet News:

The cultural manager and director of the polish culture institute in Berlin, Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, was fired this past Tuesday from her position. According to the German left-leaning daily TAZ that broke the story, Poland’s right-wing PiS-led government called for her immediate departure due to her programming, which included “too much Jewish-themed content,” as Poland’s ambassador in Germany Andrzej Przyłębski had complained. 

The institute’s spokesperson, Marcin Zastrożny, confirmed to TAZ this past Friday that Wielga-Skolimowska, whose contract should have continued until summer 2017, has been dismissed “effective immediately.” 

Poland’s foreign ministry operates some 24 culture institutes around the world, tasked with promoting Polish art and culture abroad. Wielga-Skolimowska has helmed the Berlin branch since 2013, and her programming was considered thoughtful and serious by critics. 

But her ideas didn’t sit well with the cultural politics of the ruling national-conservative, right-wing party, who’s been in power since the October 2015 elections. In a recent internal assessment of the institute carried out by the foreign ministry, her work received a negative evaluation due to the focus on Jewish themes, and insufficient engagement with social media, the Berliner Zeitungreports. 

Earlier this year, Poland’s minister of culture, Piotr Gliński (PiS) called for an end to the “culture of shame” regarding WWII and the Holocaust, and Wielga-Skolimowska’s work has irked the government ever since.

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Germany: Art exhibit show swastika turning into a Jewish star

Via Tapfer im Nirgendwo:

Exhibition at the ART.FAIR in Cologne shows a swastika, which turns into a blue and white Star of David, when viewed from a different angle.  (video clip here)

UK: Israeli Fringe performers concerned at ‘growing UK anti-Semitism

From Jewish News:

Israeli performers have raised concerns about “growing anti-Semitism in the UK” as they returned to the Edinburgh Festival following an absence sparked by targeted protests. 

The International Shalom Festival will bring Israeli performers to Edinburgh on Wednesday for the first time since 2014. 

Organisers say Israeli arts companies were deterred from visiting Edinburgh last year “following targeted protests and demonstrations in 2012, and threats of disruption in 2014 to Israeli performers”.

They say the event has received no funding from the State of Israel, and the festival has received cross-party political support in Scotland.  [...]

SNP MSP John Mason said: “For too long people have jumped to support either Palestine or Israel with little concern for the other side. We need more events like this so we all have a better understanding of all sides in that region.”

Conservative MSP Jackson Carlaw said: “The Edinburgh Festival is an opportunity for all to show their talents. It should not be a place for discrimination of one type of performer, Israeli.

“Too often in the past there have been problems with artists who may have received sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy being targeted.

“The Shalom Festival is a positive fightback.”

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Belgian high school ‘proud’ of teacher honored at Iran’s Holocaust cartoon show

One can safely assume that if a teacher in Germany, France, UK, Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe had taken part in the anti-semitic Teheran cartoon contest, there would have been some criticism, and it is doubtful that it would have been a cause for "pride" for many.  Sadly, not in Belgium.  No criticism, only pride.  It should also be noted that the Holocaust and the fight against antisemitism is often used in Europe as a political tool to fight the Far Right.

Background: Belgium: Catholic school supports teacher who won prize at Iran Holocaust-mocking cartoon contest 

Cnaan Liphshiz writes @ JTA

Faculty at a Catholic high school in Belgium said they were proud of a senior teacher who won an award and a cash prize at Iran’s controversial cartoon contest about the Holocaust.

Luc Descheemaeker, who this summer retired from the Sint-Jozefs Institute high school in the city of Torhout, 60 miles west of Antwerp, accepted a “special prize” at the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest in Tehran in May for a drawing of the words “arbeit macht frei” over a wall with guard posts — presumably comparing Israel’s security barrier along the West Bank with the gates at Auschwitz.

The German sentence, which means “work sets you free,” was featured on a gate of the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. Descheemaeker, who spoke at the competition via a video uplink from Belgium, won $1,000 for the cartoon, organizers said. The first-prize entry was a drawing of a cash register shaped like Auschwitz.

UNESCO, the United Nations educational organization, has condemned the cartoon contest — the second organized in Iran since 2006 — as aiming “at a mockery of the genocide of the Jewish people, a tragic page of humanity’s history.”  [...]

Asked by JTA whether the school is proud specifically of Descheemaeker’s award, director Paul Vanthournout said Wednesday that the school had no position on the award [...]            

But Vanthournout confirmed the school was proud of Descheemaeker’s work within the institution, where he taught plastic arts and cultural sciences. Descheemaeker has put on educational plays about the Holocaust at school, Vanthournout said. In 2002, Descheemaeker won a royal distinction from Queen Paola of Belgium for staging a play about the Holocaust for children, an adaptation of Art Spiegelman’s award-winning graphic memoir “Maus.”

“I understand you find criticism on Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza unpleasant,” Vanthournout wrote to JTA, “but your consideration of it as anti-Semitic is exaggerated.”

According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – an intergovernmental organization with 31 member states, including Belgium – “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of modern anti-Semitism.

Vanthournout said the school’s position is that the Holocaust, which he said “featured atrocities of hitherto unseen proportions,” cannot be compared or likened to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. But the Holocaust, he added, “cannot serve as an alibi to solving conflicts with violence.”

According to the Belgian school’s newsletter, which published an interview in June with Descheemaeker ahead of his retirement, the former teacher has accepted an offer to travel to Tehran to be a judge at the competition’s next edition.

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Germany: Munich state museum profited from Nazi-looted art

The JTA reports:

A state museum in Munich profited from art looted by the Nazis at least until the 1990s, a new investigation has revealed.

In a joint probe, the Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the British NGO Commission for Looted Art in Europe found that the Bavarian State Galleries and many other such institutions have been sitting on art that was forcibly “purchased” from Jewish collectors under the Nazi regime.  The museums have tried to disguise the origin of the artworks, and even sold some of them without seeking the rightful owners or their heirs, according to the investigation.

The deception began as soon as American authorities handed over the restitution task to the Bavarian administration in 1949, according to the report. Thousands of artworks were in question.

Reportedly, German authorities kept some and sold others at deflated prices, including to members of prominent Nazi families such as the widow of Hermann Goering and Henriette von Schirach (nee Hoffmann), the wife of Hitler’s district governor, or “Gauleiter,” in Vienna.

The newspaper traces the story of how von Schirach came by one small painting, “Picture of a Dutch Square,” by Johannes van der Heydes that originally belonged to a Czech-Jewish couple, the consul general to Vienna, Gottlieb Kraus, and his wife, Mathilde. The Kraus family fled to the United States in April 1938, putting their possessions in storage.

But the property was later confiscated by the Gestapo and artworks were sold to, among others, the planned “Führermuseum” in Linz, Austria, and to the father[-in-law] of von Schirach, Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s official photographer and an art collector.

After the war, the painting was among the thousands of works to be returned to rightful heirs. But the Bavarian State Galleries sold it back to von Schirach for 300 Deutschmark, and she promptly auctioned it off for 16,000 Deutschmarks to the Xanten Cathedral Association; it was on display in the cathedral until 2011.

Meanwhile, the paper reported, the great-grandson of the Krauses, John Graykowski, has been seeking restitution of the family’s collection in vain.

Romania: New culture minister held antisemitic exhibit

Via Attila Somfalvi:

Last Wednesday, Corina Suteu was appointed as the new culture minister.

Suteu once curated an exhibit displaying antisemitic caricatures.  The caricature below displays a chareidi Jew with an SS emblem.

From Notre Dame to Prague, Europe’s anti-Semitism is literally carved in stone

Tony L. Kamins writes in the JTA:

This carving on the facade of Martin Luther’s church in Wittenberg, Germany, shows Jews suckling at a sow’s teat.

Evora cathedral (Portugal).  A Jew and a dog wearing a pointed had. (c. 1330)

 Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris is among the most visited sites on the planet and a splendid example of Gothic architecture. Each year, millions flock to admire and photograph its flying buttresses and statuary, yet few take any real notice of two prominent female statues on either side of the main entrance.

The one on the left is dressed in fine clothing and bathed in light, while the one on the right is disheveled, with a large snake draped over her eyes like a blindfold. A snake draped around Sinagoga blindfolds her.  The statues, known as Ecclesia and Sinagoga, respectively, and generally found in juxtaposition, are a common motif in medieval art and represent the Christian theological concept known as supercessionism, whereby the Church is triumphant and the Synagogue defeated. Sinagoga is depicted here with head bowed, broken staff, the tablets of the law slipping from her hand and a fallen crown at her feet.   Ecclesia stands upright with crowned head and carries a chalice and a staff adorned with the cross.

While the issue of what constitutes free speech and what crosses into incitement to violence was brought to the fore by the deadly January attack on the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, images mocking Jews and Judaism and encouraging anti-Semitic violence have been displayed throughout Europe since the early Middle Ages.

In a time when literacy was uncommon, these images were the political cartoons and posters of the age, and the ridicule and carnage they promoted was both routine and government sanctioned. What’s more, most remain visible if you know where to look. More.

This plaque at the Palazzo Salvadori in Trent, Italy, illustrates the supposed martyrdom of Simon of Trent at the hands of Jews. (Wikimedia Commons)

16th-century depiction of the alleged host profanation by Jews in 1370, in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels. (Wikipedia Commons)

Carpentras Cathedral - the "Jews door", the sculpure represents a rat ball (la boule aux rats). (Wikipedia Commons).

Israel: Antisemitic 'Evolution of Jews' in Arab Technion student work

Via CFCA:

A Jewish female student at the Technion in Haifa was shocked and pained, a few days ago, when her class visited an architecture class, in order to view submissions for an “architectural intervention” project intended for a neighborhood in Haifa. 

The project contained an image that appears to show the four-stage evolution of a Jew in hareidi garb, from an ape.

Artuz 7 reports that the project was created by a female Arab student.

Norway: Museum displays artwork demonizing Israel

Via pro-Israel blog MIFF:

Sørlandet's Museum of Art (SKMU) in Kristiansand recently opened a new exhibition called "Collecting Then and Now for Later".

One of the artworks in this exhibition is "Glem ikke" ("Don't Forget") by Guttorm Guttormsgaard, which displays the 'crimes' of Israel throughout the years, mass-murdering and terrorizing Palestinian refugees.

For example, the 2003 panel says:

2003
Sharon-ISRAEL
mass-murders
REFUGEES
women men
PALESTINIANS
children elderly
LONG LIVE PALESTINE

The museum sees nothing wrong with the piece and think it encourages expressing different opinions.  They certainly don't think it's their job to censure it.  In fact, they bought it.