France: TV cuts Facebook live feed from Jewish cemetery after anti-Semitic abuse

Via euronews:

A French TV channel said on Wednesday it had been forced to cut short a live Facebook broadcast from a desecrated Jewish cemetery in eastern France because of an onslaught of anti-Semitic commentary.

Separately, two swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans were found painted in red on a monument at a different cemetery near Lyon.

(...)

France 3 television said it went live from the first cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim on Tuesday as President Emmanuel Macron was visiting to pay his respects after more than 90 graves were vandalised with swastikas and anti-Semitic abuse.

But as it broadcast footage online to its more than 1.3 million Facebook followers, the feed was inundated with anti-Semitic commentary and abuse.

"We are talking about explicit death threats, comments that were openly anti-Semitic and racist, including "Heil Hitler", "dirty Jew" or "dirty Jews", comments that were addressed at Emmanuel Macron and representatives of the Jewish community," the channel said in a statement explaining its decision.

"Within minutes, the number of vile and illegal comments had gone well beyond our capacity to moderate them," it explained, adding that it would have taken 10 or 20 staff to handle the onslaught. "We refuse to traffic in hatred."

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Ukraine: Mall displays Nazi swastika on staircase

Via Jerusalem Post:

A shopping mall in Ukraine that is located on a street named for a collaborator with the Nazis decorated a staircase with a large swastika.

Images and footage from inside the Horodok shopping mall on Kiev’s Bandera Avenue surfaced Monday on Facebook.

They show shoppers climbing up and down the staircase, whose middle-section stairs feature a large swastika locked in a white rhombus encircled by red, similar to Nazi Germany’s flag. The street where the shopping mall is located is named for Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who briefly collaborated with Nazi Germany in its fight against Russia.

His troops are believed to have killed thousands of Jews.

The street used to be Called Moscow Avenue. It was named for Bandera in 2016 despite protests by some Jewish community leaders and Ukrainian Poles, whose community also suffered war crimes by Bandera’s troops.

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France: 80 graves vandalised at Jewish cemetery in eastern France

Via Local:

Swastikas and anti-Semitic tags were found daubed over 80 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France on Tuesday on the day of nationwide marches against a rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

The damage was discovered on Tuesday morning at a cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany in the Alsace region, a statement from the regional security office said.

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France: Outrage as swastikas, 'Jews' scrawled on Jewish symbols

Via France24:

A tree planted in a Paris suburb in memory of a young Jewish man who was tortured to death in 2006 has been chopped down, authorities said Monday, confirming the latest in a series of anti-Semitic acts in France.

Ilan Halimi was kidnapped by a gang that demanded huge sums of money from his family, believing them to be rich because he was Jewish.

After being tortured for three weeks, the 23-year-old cellphone salesman was found dumped next to a railway in the southern suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. He died while being brought to hospital.

On Monday, municipal workers sent to prepare a memorial site for a annual remembrance ceremony this week discovered that a tree planted in his honour had been chopped down and a second one partly sawn through, local officials told AFP.

The police are investigating the incident, which the French government's special representative on racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination, Frederic Potier, described as "ignominious".

It is the latest in a series of anti-Semitic acts and attacks that have raised fears of a new wave of anti-Jewish violence in a country that is home to Europe's biggest Jewish population.

In two separate incidents in the past two days, swastikas were drawn on Paris postboxes containing portraits of late Holocaust survivor Simone Veil and the word Juden (German for Jews) was sprayed on the window of a bagel bakery in the capital.

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France: Paris bagel shop window vandalized by Yellow Vest protesters

Via Kann News:

A Jewish bagel shop's window was vandalized by Yellow Vest protesters.  The word "Juden" was graffitied on the Bagelstein shop window

Greece: Holocaust Memorial in Thessaloniki sprayed with Swastika

Via Ekathimerini:

Unknown assailants spray-painted a black Swastika on the Holocaust Memorial on the northern port city of Thessaloniki's Eleftherias Square late on Friday or in the early hours of Saturday.

The assailants are believed to have been part of a rally held earlier on Friday by protesters opposed to the name deal Greece signed over the summer with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Local website Voria published photographs of demonstrators in that rally giving the Nazi salute.

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France: Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti

Via Times of Israel:

Several tombstones were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti at a Jewish cemetery near the French city of Strasbourg.

The incident was discovered Tuesday in Herrlisheim, a northern suburb, the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities said in a statement. “CRIF = ZOG” and the digits 88 were written on the tombstones. ZOG stands for “Zionist occupation government,” and the number is code for Adolf Hitler.

It’s the fourth time in two months that graffiti featuring far-right anti-Semitic rhetoric has been discovered at sites linked to Jews in the eastern Alsace region. In two incidents, Jewish mayors were the targets.

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UK: Racist who gave Nazi salutes and shouted 'child killers' during anti-Semitism rally is jailed for six months

Via Daily Mail:

A racist who gave Nazi salutes during an anti-Semitism rally then tried to claim it was 'freedom of speech' has been jailed.

Catering assistant Joseph Brogan, 27, shouted 'child killers' and 'you people should live in Israel' as hundreds of people, including MPs and rabbis, took part in a march.

As marshals at the rally in Manchester intervened, Brogan continued to hurl profanities and then raised his arm to mimic the Nazi salute before he was arrested.

One of the abused security staff later revealed members of his family had perished in the Holocaust.

Brogan, from Openshaw in Manchester admitted racially aggravated threatening behaviour but later tried to claim he was giving his opinion on 'Zionism'.

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France: Jewish mayor’s home covered with anti-Semitic graffiti

Via JTA:

The home of a Jewish mayor in France was covered with anti-Semitic graffiti including swastikas and “Dirty Jew, get out.”

The graffiti were spray-painted Friday on the home of Etienne Wolf, mayor of Brumath, near Strasbourg in France’s east, France3 reported. Police have no suspects in the incident, which occurred on the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms by the Nazis against German and Austrian Jews.

“Mayor Marx = Jude,” a reference to the communist ideologue Karl Marx, followed by the German-language word for “Jew,” also was painted on the house along with several swastikas and the words “Dirty Jew, get out.” Another tag read “Jews want to destroy Whites.”

Wolf discovered the tags early in the morning when he came out to get his newspaper.

“It stunned me. I wondered what I had done to deserve this,” Wolf, whose town has approximately 10,000 residents, told France3.

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Moldova: Jewish cemetery vandalized

Via Artuz 7:

A Jewish cemetery in Moldova was vandalized by unidentified individuals who painted a swastika on one of the headstones.

The Nazi symbol was discovered Monday at the cemetery in Chisinau, the capital of the East European country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, the news website Point reported Wednesday.

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Russia: Swastikas daubed on Chabad center in cradle of Lubavitch Hasidic movement

Via JTA:

Anti-Semitic slogans were scrawled on the fence of a Jewish cultural center in the Russian village of Lyubavichi, the cradle of the Chabad Hasidic movement.

The inscriptions, reading “Jews out of Russia, our land” and featuring the Baltic variant of the swastika, were spray-painted on the wall of the Hatzer Raboteinu Nesieinu Belubavitch last week but reported Tuesday in the Russian-language media, the news site Cursor reported.

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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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Germany: Merkel bows to Trump demand on Nazi guard

Via Politico:

The U.S. deported a New York man who served as a guard at a Nazi labor camp to Germany late Monday, resolving a more than decade-long dispute between Washington and Berlin over who should take responsibility for the suspected war criminal.

U.S. immigration authorities flew Jakiw Palij, who turned 95 last week, on a government jet from a New Jersey airport to Düsseldorf, where he arrived early Tuesday before being transferred by ambulance to a care facility near Münster.

Though the case received little attention in Germany over the years, it was often front page news in New York, where protestors regularly gathered in front of Palij’s home demanding he be deported. President Donald Trump, who grew up in the New York borough of Queens, where Palij has lived for nearly seven decades, instructed Richard Grenell, his ambassador to Germany, to make resolving the case a priority.

“I felt very strongly that the German government had a moral obligation and they accepted that,” Grenell said at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin on Tuesday.

In recent years the U.S. failed to deport another eight suspected Nazi collaborators before they died because Germany refused to accept them, insisting it had no legal basis to do so.

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Bosnia: Jewish Community, Sarajevo Mayor Urge Action over Anti-Semitic Graffiti

Via Inside Sarajevo:

Bosnian Jewish Community denounced two recent anti-Semitic incidents and urged the authorities to act.

A prominent member of the Bosnian Jewish Community posted on Facebook photos of anti-Semitic graffiti in two residential buildings in Sarajevo and Tuzla, featuring Nazi swastika and word “Juden”. According to the post, members of the Bosnian Jewish community live in those buildings.

“We have received the news with deep indignation and disappointment, aware that those incidents will not threaten the good neighborly relations that the Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina have built and are building with their fellow citizens of other ethnic and religious groups. We appeal to the authorities to identify and sanction the perpetrators in accordance with the law,” said the Jewish Community.

The Jewish Community said that they have always attached great importance to the absence of anti-Semitic incidents in Bosnia.

Sarajevo mayor also issued a statement, condemning the incidents.

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Germany: JFK School latest site of anti-Semitic bullying in Berlin

Via Handelsblatt Global:

Just days after a Berlin court sentenced a man for an anti-Semitic attack, Berlin’s prestigious John F. Kennedy School acknowledged that a student had been the victim of months of anti-Semitic bullying.

School officials are still unclear of the scope of the bullying, but a newspaper report said students had put swastika stickers on the Jewish ninth-grader’s backpack, made remarks about trains to Auschwitz and blew smoke in his face, saying it should remind him of the fate of his forefathers.

“There wasn’t enough effort in the beginning to rectify the situation,” Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, told Tagesspiegel, a sister publication of Handelsblatt Global. Ms. Berger had been in touch with the school administration for weeks and said the complaints were originally dismissed as juvenile pranks. She first contacted the school by letter on June 12 but has yet to receive a reply.

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UK: First year Anti-Semitic physics group chat exposed

Via The Tab:

Shocking anti-Semitic messages from a University of Manchester Physics group chat have tonight been exposed, where one student twice commented that "6 million Jews ain't enough" and another called for an invasion of Poland.

The messages were sent to a "1st Year Physics" Facebook group chat, broadcasting them to over 200 fellow students, originally reported the Mancunion.

The abhorrent conversation was initiated when a student asked the group if they would rather become an engineer or a Neo-Nazi.

Another student replied "Pfft, why you asking that? Tis an easy question. Now brb while I make some lebensraum."

Lebensraum was an ideological principle of Nazism, referring to a territorial expansion into Eastern European countries and the removal or genocide of their populations.

When another student replied "I would rather die tbh," the student that instigated the conversation told him "Don't be a Jew."

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Switzerland: Neo-Nazi convicted of antisemitic assault on Orthodox Jew

Via Jerusalem Post:

A 30-year-old Swiss neo-Nazi who in 2015 assaulted an Orthodox Jew in Zurich was on Tuesday sentenced to 24 months in prison.

In July 2015, the unnamed man performed a Nazi salute, spat on and verbally assaulted a Jewish man. The assault took place during in the middle of the day during Shabbat in Wiedikon, the Jewish quarter of Zurich.

In addition to his sentence, the court also fined the man 1000 francs, roughly $1058, and ordered him to pay 3000 francs ($3175) to the victim.

He had been previously sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013 for a different assault. He served only 12 months of the original sentence. An amendment in the canton's penal code revoked the prior sentence because of the latest court proceeding. 

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Netherlands: Major poet was a Nazi supporter and antisemite

Via Bad News From the Netherlands blog, AD and Trouw (in Dutch)

Lucebert (1987)

Recently the literature expert Wim Hazeu has discovered that one of the most famous post-war Dutch poets Lucebert was a volunteer worker in the German weapons industry. He also wrote letters with an antisemitic content, such as: “Only when all Germanic tribes are united, the Jew will no longer have the opportunity to incite blood against similar blood.” He signed letters with “Sieg Heil” and “Heil Hitler”.  

He has always denied his Nazi past and received major Dutch literary awards. 

Germany: 4th-tier club highlighting anti-Semitism in soccer

Via AP:

Despite being threatened with exclusion from Germany's northeast regional league, Babelsberg is refusing to pay a fine in a case that has turned a spotlight on anti-Semitism in German soccer.

Babelsberg is refusing to pay a 7,000-euro ($8,500) fine imposed by the Northeast German Soccer Federation (NOFV) after its fans chanted "Nazi pigs out" at Energie Cottbus supporters during a fourth-tier league game between the sides last April.

The club says its fans were reacting to right-wing chants from mostly masked Cottbus supporters, including, "Ticks, gypsies and Jews," and "Work sets you free" - a reference to Nazi concentration camps. Cottbus fans also performed Nazi salutes, as can be seen in a video circulated by the Berlin-based Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism.

While both clubs were fined for the trouble, which included the use of pyrotechnics by both sides and attempts to storm the pitch from Cottbus supporters, Babelsberg was particularly aggrieved that the NOFV made no mention of the Cottbus fans' chanting in its report, focusing only on the home supporters' response.

The NOFV said on Monday it was unaware of any right-wing chanting or Hitler salutes when it made its initial judgment. It was to hold a press conference on the matter on Thursday.

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Austria Investigates Fraternity's Nazi Songbook

Via Haaretz:

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Wednesday prosecutors are investigating a student fraternity whose songbook contains Nazi lyrics.

Kurz wrote on Twitter that there should be "zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, racism or praising Nazi tyranny."

His comments come after a report revealed a Freedom Party candidate for state office, Udo Landbauer, was a member of the fraternity with the songbook. Many have raised concerns about Kurz's decision to form a new coalition government with the nationalist, anti-migrant Freedom Party.

The book contains the line "step on the gas, you old Germans, we will reach seven million" — an apparent reference to the 6 million Jews the Nazis killed in the Holocaust. 

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