Tuesday 30 September 2014

Flemish Minister Calls for Ritual Slaughter Ban in Belgium

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The European Jewish Association (EJA) has voiced its concern over plans to implement a total ban on the practice of Jewish ritual slaughter in Belgium, insisting the move is a violation of freedom of religion. 

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the EJA's general director, spoke out Monday after Flemish Minister for Animal Welfare Ben Weyts told Belgian television he would actively pursue a total ban on the practice of animal slaughter without pre-stunning. If successful, the move could be implemented by 2015. 

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Monday 29 September 2014

New Party in Germany Expels Official Over Antisemitic Cartoon

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A new German party that recently won seats in several regional legislatures is moving to expel an official accused of posting an anti-Semitic cartoon on his Facebook page.

The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party's branch in eastern Brandenburg state said Monday it decided to start expulsion proceedings against Jan-Ulrich Weiss. 

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Vatican to Donate 100,000 Euros for Upkeep of Auschwitz

FSWC Reports:

From AFP via ynetnews.com:

The Vatican has pledged 100,000 euros ($125,000) towards preserving the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in southern Poland, the site's museum said Monday.

"Given our limited resources, the amount is small," Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said.

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Sunday 28 September 2014

Swastika Sprayed on Holocaust Memorial in Kiev

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

As Jews worldwide began celebrations on Rosh Hashanah eve Wednesday, a Nazi swastika was found spray-painted on a Holocaust memorial in Ukraine's capital of Kiev. 

Specifically, the monument commemorates the Jews murdered by Nazis in Babi Yar during the war, an event whose anniversary is due to be marked on September 29. 

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Man Fires BB Gun at Jews in Baltimore on Rosh Hashana

FSWC Reports:

From The Jewish Press:

An unidentified man, possibly of Middle Eastern descent, shot at Orthodox Jews on Rosh HaShanah with a BB gun and blasted a hole in a synagogue window in the Baltimore area late Thursday afternoon.

No one was injured. But residents in the heavily Jewish-populated area are worried.

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Monday 22 September 2014

Prominent Members of American Jewish Community Join Holocaust Organization of Memorial Ceremonies Marking 70th Anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau Liberation

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

As the years go by, we move further away from the Holocaust. The number of survivors drops, and it becomes increasingly difficult to remind the world of the horrors they went through. 

Three leading American Jews have decided to undertake the important mission of preventing the world from forgetting. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder and Israeli-American media tycoon Haim Saban have joined the organization coordinating the memorial ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps by the Soviet Army. 

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Egypt's Jewish Community Reduced to a Dozen Members

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

On the eve of Jewish New Year 5775, what was once the second biggest Jewish community in the world is on the verge of disappearing. 

Until the 1950s, there were around 100,000 Jews living in Egypt. Now, only 12 remain. 

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U.S. Senate Candidate Runs Antisemitic Campaign

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Campaign signs placed on the main roads of Kentucky reading "With Jews We Lose" have generated much controversy in recent weeks for their anti-Semitic language. Standing behind the slogan is write-in candidate for US Senate Robert Ransdell, a former organizer for the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

Ransdell's campaign "seeks to show white people the facts regarding the Jewish role in America's decline", as his website "The White Guard" puts it. The root of problems in America, Rendell writes on the site, is the Jewish population that "controls our media of news and entertainment," as well as "the banks of America and the world". The Jewish people, he adds, also "manipulate and control our government." He vows, however, that "the time for basic losing is over."

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Sunday 21 September 2014

Hitler's Last Surviving Food Taster Tells German TV of the Horrors of Her Job

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Being one of Adolf Hitler's food tasters, meal time for Margot Woelk was literally a Russian roulette. 96-year-old Woelk told German TV channel RBB of the horrifying meals that reduced her and her friends to tears of relief every time they discovered the food was not poisoned and their lives were spared once more. From among her food-tasting friends, Woelk is the only woman who survived. 

When she was 25 years old, Woelk was recruited along with 14 other women to sample the Nazi leader's food, to make sure it wasn't poisoned. 

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France's Chief Rabbi Says French Society Has Become Indifferent Towards Antisemitism

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

France's government has reacted strongly to a rising tide of anti-Semitic acts this year but French society seems indifferent to the threat they present, the country's newly elected chief rabbi said on Tuesday.

Haim Korsia, who was elected in June, recalled the huge crowds that demonstrated in Paris in 1990 after a Jewish cemetery was desecrated in the southeastern town of Carpentras.

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Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum Named Amongst World's Top Museums by Popular Travel Website

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Israel's Yad Vashem Museum, one of the world's biggest Holocaust memorials in the world, has been named the 10th best museum in the world by the popular TripAdvisor travel website, which relies on reviews and comments of tourists and travelers from around the world. 

The museum received excellent reviews from its visitors. "Not an easy place to visit, but I cannot think of any place more important to go," one review said. "Everyone should go to see how plain and common the faces of evil were." 

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Wednesday 17 September 2014

Archaeologists Unearth Sobibor's Gas Chambers

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Yad Vashem announced this week that it discovered the exact location of the gas chambers at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, thanks to the tireless work of archaeologists at the site.

Yoram Haimi, one of the archaeologists, said "this is a tremendous achievement for me and my research team." 

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New York City Police: Hate Crimes Up Against Both Jews and Muslims

FSWC Reports:

From the Associated Press via ynetnews.com:

Suspected hate crimes against Jews and Muslims have increased in New York City following unrest overseas this summer, but the attacks are random and not from any organized group, police officials said Wednesday. 

Deputy Chief Michael Osgood, who heads the special victims division, said there's been an increase since July 1, when reports about the unrest in Gaza and radical Islamist group ISIS became front-page news. 

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Tuesday 16 September 2014

Belgian Synagogue Hit by Arson Attack

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A Belgian synagogue was the target of a suspected arson attack early Tuesday morning in the Anderlecht neighborhood of Brussels. 

Jewish community officials said it was not immediately clear whether it was an anti-Semitic attack, although the building had been the target of petrol bombs in 2010. 

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Israeli Artist Depicts Pain of Rootless Jews in Berlin Exhibition

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

Moshe Gershuni's expressive, historically loaded art, which places symbols of the Holocaust in a religious setting and seeks to polarize opinion about current Israeli society, seems unlikely to reward the casual viewer.

Titled "No Father No Mother", the retrospective of paintings and ceramics since 1979 in the New National Gallery is the first solo show by an Israeli artist to be opened at Berlin's premier location for modern art. 
 
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Monday 15 September 2014

Antisemitic Attacks Nearly Double in France

FSWC Reports:

From AFP via ynetnews.com:

Anti-Semitic attacks nearly doubled in France in the first seven months of the year, the country's main Jewish group says. 

On Sunday, Paris police arrested a convicted anti-Semite and radical black power activist after he arrived in France to promote a new book, a police source told AFP.

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93 Year-Old Former Auschwitz Guard Charged

FSWC Reports:

From the Associated Press:

A 93-year-old man has been charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving as an SS guard at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp, prosecutors said Monday.

Oskar Groening is accused of helping operate the death camp in occupied Poland between May and June 1944, when some 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought there and at least 300,000 almost immediately gassed to death.

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Security Guard at Leading British Retailer Fired Over Antisemitism, After Blocking Jewish Children From Entering Store in London

FSWC Reports:

From the Jewish Chronicle:

Leading retailer Sports Direct has apologised to customers after a security guard allegedly barred “Jews” from entering its store.

The security guard was removed from the store after he told Jewish students they could not enter the branch in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, on Friday afternoon. 

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Iraqi Show Portrays ISIS Leader as Spawn of Satan and Jewish Woman

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

An upcoming new Iraqi television show will tell its own version of the story of Islamic State's rise to power. In the trailer for the satirical show, posted online by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the radical Islamist organization's leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, mockingly referred to as the "ISIS-ling," comes into the world hatching from an egg laid as a result from the union of a pitchfork-wielding devil and a Jewish woman wearing a large Star of David necklace. 

The show is called "The Superstitious State," which, according to MEMRI, is a play on the words "khilafa" ("caliphate") and "khirafa" ("superstition"). 

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Sunday 14 September 2014

Brussels Jewish Museum Re-opens Four Months After Shooting

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

Four months after a shooting that killed four people, the Brussels Jewish Museum opened its doors to the public again on Sunday in a solemn ceremony attended by Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo.

The museum in central Brussels had been closed since the May 24 attack by a gunman who opened fire in the museum with a Kalashnikov rifle, killing an Israeli couple, a French woman and a Belgian man.
 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel Addresses Rally Against Antisemitism

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

Germany will do all it can to fight anti-Semitism, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a speech on Sunday, following a surge of abuse against Jews and spreading anti-Israeli sentiment aroused by the Gaza conflict. 

Merkel made her pledge to thousands at a landmark rally protesting a rise in anti-Semitism that authorities and Jewish leaders blame mainly on Muslim extremists and young immigrants, saying anyone who attacks Jews is attacking all of Germany
 
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Wednesday 10 September 2014

Bones of Jews Murdered in Sobibor Death Camp to be Buried

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Nearly 250,000 Jews were murdered in Sobibor, one of the six death camps the Nazis built in Poland as part of their "final solution to the Jewish question." None of these Jews have a grave. They were brought to the camp in the Lublin area and poisoned to death in gas chambers, and their bodies were burned or thrown in pits. 

But some of them will soon get a grave thanks to the initiative and efforts of the From the Depths association, led by Jonny Daniels. Daniels has succeeded in convincing the Polish authorities to allow him to collect the bones scattered at the former death camp and the surrounding woods. 

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Sunday 7 September 2014

Torah Given to Polish Family by Jew Killed in the Holocaust Arrives in Israel

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

On one of the autumn days of 1942, a Jew living in Josefov, a tiny town in northern Poland, knocked on his non-Jewish neighbor's door. 

"I know that the Germans are about to carry out an operation in the next few hours and that we will be sent to a camp. I am giving you a book which is very important to the Jews, and asking you to keep it until I return," he told the surprised neighbor. 

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel Pledges to do her Utmost to Fight Antisemitism

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday she would do everything she could to fight anti-Semitism in Germany, amid reports of attacks and a spike in anti-Israel sentiment since the Gaza conflict.

In her weekly podcast, Merkel said she was alarmed that Jewish institutions in Germany still needed police protection and called for a big turnout at a rally against anti-Semitism that she was planning to address in Berlin next weekend.

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Friday 5 September 2014

70 Heads of State to Attend Holocaust Memorial at Auschwitz Marking 70th Anniversary of the End of WWII

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Russian President Vladimir Putin will head his country's delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland on January 27. 

Some 70 presidents and prime ministers from around the world have already confirmed their participation in the 2015 ceremony, which will mark 70 years since the end of World War II. 

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Thursday 4 September 2014

Shanghai Museum Unveils Wall Commemorating WWII Jewish Refugees

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum unveiled Tuesday a 34-meter long wall engraved with the names of 13,732 Jews who fled the horrors of Nazi Europe during World War II to find refuge in China. 

According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, the wall was built on the grounds of the former site of Ohel Moshe Synagogue. The commemoration wall was unveiled a day before China marked the 69-year anniversary for its victory over Japan.

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Germany to Compensate Child Holocaust Survivors

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com with contribution from the Associated Press:

Almost 70 years after the end of World War II, 75,000 Holocaust survivors will finally get recognition from the German government. The Claims Conference said Thursday it reached an agreement with the German government for $250 million in additional financial assistance for child survivors of the Holocaust. 

The fund and the German Finance Ministry agreed late Wednesday to one-time payments of 2,500 euros ($3,280 or NIS 12,000) for special psychological and medical care for survivors.

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