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Synagogue goes up in flames – New York Post

Posted By on May 15, 2017


New York Post
Synagogue goes up in flames
New York Post
A vacant synagogue on the Lower East Side mysteriously went up in flames on Sunday night sending massive plumes of thick, black smoke billowing across downtown Manhattan. The blaze broke out at the historic Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue ...
Fire destroys historic synagogue in ManhattanFOX 61
Cause Of Fire At Historic Lower East Side Synagogue Under InvestigationCBS New York
Fire Damages New York's Beth Hamedrash Hagodol SynagogueNew York Times
Jewish Telegraphic Agency -NY1
all 50 news articles »

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Synagogue goes up in flames - New York Post

Antique sacred texts worth $400G returned to Brooklyn synagogue … – New York Daily News

Posted By on May 15, 2017


New York Daily News
Antique sacred texts worth $400G returned to Brooklyn synagogue ...
New York Daily News
Religious texts worth more than $400000 were returned to a Brooklyn synagogue Friday a little over a month after they were snatched.

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Antique sacred texts worth $400G returned to Brooklyn synagogue ... - New York Daily News

Gospel choir and synagogue record double firsts | San Diego … – San Diego Jewish World

Posted By on May 15, 2017

Posted on 13 May 2017.

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison

Ken Anderson

SAN DIEGO It was a double first Saturday night at Tifereth Israel Synagogue. It was the first time that the Conservative Jewish congregationhad ever hosted a gospel choir. And, it was the first time that the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir San Diego had ever performed in a synagogue anywhere.

MLKCCSD, as the choir is known, had performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and at the Vatican during a European tour, but never before in a Jewish house of worship, according to choir director Ken Anderson.

When we said to the choir that were going to perform at a synagogue everyone said Really! This is amazing to be invited to a synagogue, said Anderson, who also is a music instructor at Grossmont College in neighboring El Cajon. This is amazing, to wear a yarmulke and to know that it stays on, no matter how I shake my head Its perfect.

His reaction to the performance which included eight songs, three of them solos?

Its kind of a bit of coming home, because it starts with the God of Israel of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Anderson said. When I came here to view the place, I got to see one of the handwritten Torahs and to know that they are still doing that, the old tradition by hand, character after character, line after line. It is kind of like stepping into the Bible, the Old Testament. And it is amazing being here, this place of worship

The evening started with a Havdalah service led by Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal, who officially retires at the end of June. The congregation sang the traditional Havdalah songs with a little extra gusto, but they were no match for the power of the nearly 100-strong gospel choir whose soloists included Billie Collins, Dale Fleming and Anderson himself.

Collins sang Total Praise; Fleming Oh Freedom, and Anderson, substituting for regular soloist Arnessa Rickett, who was ill, I Will Bless the Lord at All Times.

Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir San Diego performs on bima at Tifereth Israel Synagogue. Windows in the background depict the Burning Bush encountered by Moses

Other selections included a pair of Negro spirituals, Glory, Glory Hallelujah, and Every Time I Feel the Spirit, as well as Every Praise is to Our God, and one in which the Jewish congregation rose to its feet to join in, This Little Light of Mine.

Introducing gospel to the Jewish audience, Anderson said: When we clap our hands we clap for the Lord Maybe youve seen people clapping their hands and shouting Hallelujah on TV and you always wanted to try that. The congregation laughed. Just wave your hands and pray, Anderson continued, and shout Hallelujah, Glory, Praise the Lord, and Amen. The congregation followed his instructions, however tentatively.

The play list was especially tailored for the Jewish congregation the praise in the songs was for God, with no mention made of Jesus or other figures in Christian Scriptures.

Stressing the connection between Judaism and Gospel, Anderson related that the spirituals themselves were songs that we used in the Southern states God is so amazing that a man can communicate his love even in a wicked time. The slaves began to take stories from the Bible and formed code songs. They especially were drawn to the story of the Children of Israel, their bondage in Egypt, and Moses leadership to take them to the Promised Land because that was the situation that they found themselves in

They understood that the churches in the South were abusing the Bible in words to justify slavery; so they gravitated towards God and awayfrom their owners. When she sang, she was away from her brothers and sisters so thats why she sang Hes got my brothers and my sisters in his hands, Hes got the whole world in his hands.

And when a baby was born, the baby was taken from her to another plantation, and that is why she sang, Hes got my little bitty baby, in His hands, Hes got the whole world in his hands.

It was important for her to understand that in spite of the evil that she was in the midst of, God was in control and one day he was going to end this, and so they came up with songs that said things like, Lord help me to hold out

When they sang about going to heaven and the Promised Land, it was a code name for freedom, and when they sang about Moses, or Joshua, or any leader in the Bible, it was a code name for Harriet Tubman and other abolitionists like her.

The congregation listened to the spirituals and the gospel music with mounting enthusiasm giving standing ovations for the solos, most especially for Flemings rendition of Oh Freedom, in which she sang ever and ever higher. In this song, the recurring vow is Before Ill be a Slave, Ill be Buried in My Grave.

How did the Jewish congregation react? Before Fleming completed heremotional rendition of Oh Freedom, many were dabbing tears from their eyes.

Typical of Jewish functions, there was a reception in the social hall following the program wherethe choir and congregation broke bread together.

* Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via [emailprotected]

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Gospel choir and synagogue record double firsts | San Diego ... - San Diego Jewish World

Exploring the largest synagogue in Europe: the Dohny Street synagogue in Budapest – Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

Posted By on May 15, 2017

Budapest greeted me with a gorgeous sunset as I woke up, ready to explore the beautiful Hungarian capital and its historical Jewish Quarter.

I began my trip first focused on exploring the citys major attractions such as the Szechenyi Thermal Baths, where I was gladly able to relieve my sore back after a cramped bus ride. Then I visited the classical zoo first created in the 1866. It was teeming with adorable baby animals. The zoo was followed by a tour of the Hungarian National Gallery, displaying the rich history of Hungarys past and present artistic masterpieces.

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Exploring the largest synagogue in Europe: the Dohny Street synagogue in Budapest - Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

A feminist Rabbi has been waging a quiet battle for gender equality at his Delhi synagogue – Quartz

Posted By on May 15, 2017


Quartz
A feminist Rabbi has been waging a quiet battle for gender equality at his Delhi synagogue
Quartz
Every Friday evening, the skull-capped figure of Rabbi Ezekiel Isaac Malekar enters the Judah Hyam Hall synagogue on Humayun Road in Delhi, and sets up the place in preparation for the weekly Shabbat service. Not much setting up is required ...

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A feminist Rabbi has been waging a quiet battle for gender equality at his Delhi synagogue - Quartz

Jewish Home MK retracts support for naming streets after gays – Arutz Sheva

Posted By on May 15, 2017

MK Shuli Mualem-Refaeli (Jewish Home) retracted her signature from a bill proposing to change a significant portion of Israel's street names to be named after women, Arabs, LGBTs, and Sephardic Jews.

Explaining her decision, Mualem-Refaeli said she had not properly understood the implications of the way the law was written, or that it required a high percentage of streets to be named after the above groups.

Speaking to a Jewish Home activist, she said, "The bill which was shown to me, and which I signed, is different than the current draft. As a result of this discrepancy, I am retracting my signature."

The proposed law would require 40% of Israel's streets to be named after women, Sephardic Jews, Arabs, homosexual homo sapiens of both genders, and transgender individuals.

The proposal, which is actually an amendment to the Municipalities Ordinance (proper representation of names of public places), was submitted by MKs Merav Michaeli (Zionist Union), Michal Rozin (Meretz), Zahava Galon (Meretz) and another 24 MKs.

Most of the signatories were from the opposition, but some coalition MKs, such as Rachel Azaria (Kulanu), Merav Ben Ari (Kulanu), Tali Ploskov (Kulanu), Yifat Shasha-Biton (Kulanu), Sharren Haskel (Likud), and Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beytenu), also signed the bill.

The proposal states, "A significant portion of public places in Israeli cities are named for persons they wish to commemorate because of their public activity, but the personalities who are commemorated are almost always men, with a significant surplus representation of Ashkenazic Jews. For example, in the city of Tel Aviv, only 2.5% (62 of 2,439) of all names commemorated in streets belong to women."

"The purpose of the bill is to bring greater heterogeneity in commemorating public work in public places of various cities, especially with regard to women, Sephardic Jews, Arabs, and people known as lesbian, gay, transsexual, and bisexual.

"It is therefore proposed that in names of the persons who are commemorated there will be representation of at least 40% of each of the types. Until such representation is achieved, 90% of the names commemorated by a municipality will be the names of women, Sephardim, Arabs or people known as lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual."

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Jewish Home MK retracts support for naming streets after gays - Arutz Sheva

How May became Jewish American Heritage Month – The Times of Israel

Posted By on May 15, 2017

JTA Only one religious group in the US has a federally proclaimed month celebrating their history: the Jews. In 2006, President George W. Bush officially declared May as Jewish American Heritage Month.

Yet Jewish American Heritage Month, or JAHM, hardly seems a priority not in the government, not in the media, not even within the Jewish community. There is not a single paid employee working to organize the commemoration, and neither the federal government nor any Jewish organization or foundation is funding its operations. (By contrast, for example, the organization that coordinates Womens History Month lists four staff members and 16 sponsors.)

To tell you the truth, Im very disappointed, said Marcia Zerivitz, who was one of the driving forces behind lobbying Congress to establish the month. We have struggled, we have been financially under-capitalized, we have struggled to get any money to do much of anything.

The current annual budget for JAHM is about $10,000 and consists entirely of individual donations, according to Ivy Barsky, the director of the National Museum of American Jewish History and a member of the JAHM advisory committee.

Its its own tiny little 501(c)(3), all with people who run their own institutions volunteering some time to work on JAHM, Barsky told JTA. So like any of these things, until it has a dedicated staff person, its always going to be a little patched together.

Barsky hopes to change that. Her Philadelphia museum recently took over from the Cincinnati-based American Jewish Archives as JAHMs public face and organizer. She hopes that with the museums support, the heritage month can raise its profile both within and outside the Jewish community.

One of the original goals of Jewish American Heritage Month that we havent necessarily realized as well as wed like is teaching the non-Jewish world in America about the contributions of American Jewry to this country, Barsky said.

The museum is providing some financial and staff support, but Barsky hopes to obtain funding from corporations and foundations. Manischewitz has served as a sponsor, promoting JAHM on its products, and Empire Kosher Poultry provided funding, but the two kosher food producers are no longer doing so.

Educating the wider American public was the goal of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who in 2005 introduced legislation in Congress to establish the month with the late Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican at the time (he later switched parties) and also Jewish.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz sitting for an interview in the spin room inside the Wynn Resorts Ltd. resort and casino before the first Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, October 13, 2015. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images/JTA)

If you educated and raised awareness about contributions throughout American history all over the country, it would make people more familiar with the Jewish community and our people and hopefully impact a reduction of anti-Semitism and intolerance, Wasserman Schultz told JTA about the inspiration for the legislation.

She managed to get 250 Democrats and Republicans to sign on as co-sponsors for the bill, which the House passed unanimously. Zerivitz had lobbied for the month to be in January, to coincide with Florida Jewish History Month, but it was changed to May to concur with Jewish Heritage Week, which President Jimmy Carter proclaimed in 1980.

Following the resolutions passage in the Senate, George W. Bush proclaimed the month. It was observed for the first time in 2006.

Wasserman Schultz, who resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee last year following an email leak that suggested the organization was biased against presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, recalled the joy she felt upon the heritage months proclamation.

It was exhilarating. It was the first legislation that I passed as a member of Congress, and Im the first Jewish woman to represent Florida in Congress, so it was very significant for me personally, she said, citing experiences with anti-Semitism both in New York, where she grew up, and in Florida.

But has the legislation lived up to its expectations?

While calling the month still a work in progress, Wasserman Schultz said she is very satisfied with how its been celebrated.

However, Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, disagrees. At the time of the proclamation, there was considerable excitement, but JAHM has yet to live up to its potential, he said.

So much money is spent on Jewish education in the United States that the fact that we have not been able to harness this golden opportunity given to us by the government, and really develop a month that would affect every American Jew, is a sign of the disorganization that weve seen ultimately its a sign of a problem, Sarna told JTA.

JAHMs website lists 17 events this month, most of them hosted by local groups, including a poetry reading organized by a social justice group in Connecticut and an event about Jews and jazz at a Florida library. The Library of Congress, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco are each hosting one event, and the National Museum of Jewish History is hosting two events.

Every Jewish newspaper and media outlet should be focused on American Jewish history during that month, Sarna said. Programming materials should be sent to every rabbi, every synagogue. Synagogues should be encouraged to have a speaker dealing with American Jewish history.

To be sure, JAHM celebrations have had some highlights over the years.

In 2010, President Barack Obama hosted the first Jewish American Heritage Month reception at the White House with such Jewish luminaries as Sandy Koufax and musician Regina Spektor, but the program was cut in 2013 due to the budget sequester. Also in 2010, Jewish-American astronaut Garret Reisman brought the original proclamation with him aboard the Atlantis space shuttle.

File photo showing then-President Barack Obama at a reception in the East Room of the White House in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, May 17, 2011 (Dennis Brack/Pool/Getty Images)

Jewish groups, however, have been hesitant to commit money to the commemoration.

I would think that all these national [Jewish] organizations would get behind it, but everyone is struggling for funding, said Zerivitz, who is on the JAHM board.

[The] Holocaust gets the emotions going in the American Jewish community, and Holocaust things are much easier to fund than American Jewish history things, she added.

Barsky said she looks to more prominent national commemorations for inspiration.

We hope well be able to fundraise and get some great attention for Jewish American Heritage Month, so that this can grow into something a little more akin to Womens History Month in March or African-American History Month in February, she said. Weve definitely got a vision for making it pretty big.

Sarna also is optimistic about JAHMs future.

This is a lot easier than making peace in the Middle East, believe me, he said.

Jewish American Heritage Month is celebrated every year in May. (Top left, clockwise, Obama photo: Aude Guerrucci/Pool/Getty Images; Wasserman Schultz photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images; Calendar photo: Dafne Cholet/Flickr, CC BY 2.0; Menorah photo: National Museum of American Jewish History; Trump photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images, Museum photo: Jeff Goldberg/Esto)

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How May became Jewish American Heritage Month - The Times of Israel

Criticism of Holocaust denial – Wikipedia

Posted By on May 15, 2017

Criticism of Holocaust denial is directed against people who claim that the genocide of Jews during World War II in the Holocaust[1] did not occur in the manner or to the extent described by reputable scholarship. Key elements of such claims are the rejection of any of the following:

The methodologies of Holocaust deniers has been criticized as being based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores extensive historical evidence to the contrary.[4]

The claims of deniers are grounded in flawed research, biased statements, and, in some cases, deliberately falsified evidence.[5][6] Courts of law have also rejected Holocaust denial claims (see Fred A. Leuchter and David Irving) and passed several laws against holocaust denial in 14 European countries. The Nizkor Project, a group opposed to Holocaust denial claims, analyzes these claims for instances where the evidence used by Holocaust deniers has been altered or manufactured.[7][8][9]

While most eminent historians, such as Ian Kershaw, Raul Hilberg, and Martin Broszat, believe that no document exists showing that Hitler ordered the Holocaust, other evidence conclusively demonstrates that Hitler knew about and ordered the genocide. In addition to statements from Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler indicating that Hitler orchestrated the Holocaust, several statements from Hitler himself reveal his genocidal intentions toward Jewry.[10]

In a letter dated 1919 Hitler mentions that an "unshakable" aim of a strong national government must be "the removal of the Jews".[11][12]

In Mein Kampf, Hitler argued that a war against Jews would have saved Germany from losing World War I:[13]

If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.[14]

Hitler declared in his infamous speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939:

Today I want to be a prophet once more: if international Jewry succeeds in plunging the nations into another world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe![15][16][17]

In a speech on 30 January 1942, Hitler repeated his prophecy of 1939:

. . . [T]he war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely with the uprooting of the Aryans, but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews. Now for the first time they will not bleed other people to death, but for the first time the old Jewish law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, will be applied. And -- world Jewry may as well know this -- the further these battles [of the war] spread, the more anti-Semitism will spread. It will find nourishment in every prison camp and in every family when it discovers the ultimate reason for the sacrifices it has to make. And the hour will come when the most evil universal enemy of all time will be finished, as least for a thousand years.[18]

During the war, Goebbels often published articles which included Hitler's prophecy of 1939, in 1943 he published an article entitled "The War and the Jews" which stated:

None of the Fhrer's prophetic words has come so inevitably true as his prediction that if Jewry succeeded in provoking a second world war, the result would be not the destruction of the Aryan race, but rather the wiping out of the Jewish race. This process is of vast importance, and will have unforeseeable consequences that will require time. But it can no longer be halted. It must only be guided in the right direction.[19]

In a draft of an internal memorandum, dated September 18, 1941, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler wrote that "[i]n principle the Fuehrer's time is no longer to be burdened with these matters;" the memorandum goes on to outline Himmler's vision, including "The delivery of anti-social elements from the execution of their sentences to the Reich Fuehrer of SS to be worked to death. Persons under protective arrest, Jews, Gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians, Poles with more than 3-year sentences, Czechs and Germans with more than 5-year sentences [...] First of all, the worst anti-social elements amongst those just mentioned are to be handed over; I shall inform the Fuhrer of this trough [sic] Reichsleiter Bormann."[20]

Nevertheless, and in contrast to the T4 euthanasia program, no document written or signed by Hitler ordering the Holocaust has ever been found. Deniers have claimed that this lack of order shows genocide was not Nazi policy.

When David Irving unsuccessfully sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel, he considered that a document signed by Hitler ordering the 'Final Solution' would be the only convincing proof of Hitler's responsibility, yet was content to accuse Winston Churchill responsible for ordering the assassination of General Sikorski, despite having no documentary evidence to support this claim. Mr Justice Gray concluded that this was a double standard.[21]

Historians have documented evidence that as Germany's defeat became imminent and the Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be captured and brought to trial, great effort was made to destroy all evidence of mass extermination. Heinrich Himmler instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria, and other signs of mass extermination.[22] As one of many examples, the bodies of the 25,000 mostly Latvian Jews whom Friedrich Jeckeln and the soldiers under his command had shot at Rumbula (near Riga) in late 1941 were dug up and burned in 1943.[23] Similar operations were undertaken at Belzec, Treblinka and other death camps.[22] In the infamous Posen speeches of October 1943 such as the one on October 4, Himmler explicitly referred to the extermination of the Jews of Europe and further stated that the genocide must be permanently kept secret:

I also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30, 1934, to perform our duty as ordered and put comrades who had failed up against the wall and execute them, we also never spoke about it, nor will we ever speak about it. Let us thank God that we had within us enough self-evident fortitude never to discuss it among us, and we never talked about it. Every one of us was horrified, and yet every one clearly understood that we would do it next time, when the order is given and when it becomes necessary.

I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, to the extermination of the Jewish people.[24][25]

Historian Peter Longerich states that Hitler "...avoided giving a clear written order to exterminate Jewish civilians."[10] Wide protest was evoked when Hitler's authorisation of the T4 program became public knowledge in Germany, and he was forced to put a halt to it as a result (nonetheless it continued discreetly).[26] This made Hitler realise that such undertakings must be done secretly in order to avoid criticism. Critics also point out that if Hitler did sign such an order in the first place, it would have been one of the first documents to be destroyed."[10]

Felix Kersten wrote in his memoirs that after a discussion with Himmler, the SS-Reichsfhrer revealed that the extermination of the Jews was Hitler's express order and had indeed been delegated to him by the Fhrer.[27]

Many statements from the Nazis from 1941 onwards addressed the imminent extermination of the Jews.[28]

In a draft of an internal memorandum, dated October 25, 1941, Heinrich Himmler wrote:

Joseph Goebbels had frequent discussions with Hitler about the fate of the Jews, a subject which they discussed almost every time they met, and frequently wrote about it in his personal diary.[30] In his personal diary he wrote:

In November 1941, Goebbels published an article "The Jews are to blame" which returned back to Hitler's prophecy of 1939 and stated that world Jewry was suffering a "gradual process of extermination".[28]

On March 13, 1945, Goebbels wrote in his diary that the "rest of the world" should follow Germany's example in "destroying the Jews", he wrote also about how the Jews in Germany at that point had been almost totally destroyed.[32] This diary contains numerous other references to the mass extermination of Jews, including how "tens of thousands of them are liquidated" in eastern occupied territory,[33] and that "the greater the number of Jews liquidated, the more consolidated will the situation in Europe be after this war."[34] When speaking about this document under oath, David Irving is quoted as saying "There is no explicit reference...to the liquidation of Jews" and critics of Holocaust denial consequently state that it is dishonest to say such a thing when it is entirely contradicted by the diary of one of Hitler's closest associates.[35][36]David Cole has previously stated that those who consider themselves revisionists have yet to provide an adequate explanation of this document.[37]

When questioned by interrogators if orders for the extermination of Jews were delegated in writing by Himmler, Adolf Eichmann states:

I never saw a written order, Herr Hauptmann. All I know is that Heydrich said to me: "The Fhrer has ordered the physical extermination of the Jews." He said that as clearly and surely as I'm repeating it now.[38]

Critics state that Eichmann gives a virtually identical account of this in his memoirs, and state that it is also asserted that Eichmann never even asked for a written order, on the basis that "Hitler's wish as expressed through Himmler and Heydrich was good enough for him".[10] Eichmann's memoirs were recorded by Willem Sassen before he was captured, and Eichmann's lawyer tried to prevent them from being presented as evidence to avoid any detriment against his case.[39]

In a speech, David Irving states that Heydrich told Eichmann, "The Fhrer has given the order for the physical destruction of the Jews".[36] Irving admits that this contradicts his view that "Hitler wasn't involved", but explains it by suggesting that a completely different meaning can be construed, i.e. "the extirpation of Judaism" as opposed to the physical destruction of Jews if one changes "just one or two words".[36] Critics of this view state that historians should not change words if their documents contradict their claims,[36] and consequently point out five instances where Eichmann unambiguously states "physical extermination" during his interrogation.[36][40]

At a conference in 1941 discussing the Jewish Question, Alfred Rosenberg said:

Some six million Jews still live in the East, and this question can only be solved by a biological extermination of the whole of Jewry in Europe. The Jewish Question will only be solved for Germany when the last Jew has left German territory, and for Europe when not a single Jew stands on the European continent as far as the Urals... And to this end it is necessary to force them beyond the Urals or otherwise bring about their eradication.[28]

Congruent with the evidence that shows Hitler was responsible for the order to kill Jews, there is also evidence that shows he was made aware of the process. In December 1942 Hitler received a document from Himmler entitled, "Report to the Fhrer on Combating Partisans", stating that 363,211 Jews had been killed by Einsatzgruppen in AugustNovember 1942.[41] This document was marked "Shown to the Fhrer".[10]

As noted by Peter Longerich, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mller sent a telegram on August 2, 1941, ordering that "especially interesting illustrative" material should be sent to Berlin because, "the Fhrer should be presented with continuous reports on the work of Einsatzgruppen in the East from here".[42] Because of this, critics of Holocaust denial reject the suggestion that Hitler lost interest in anti-semitism after attaining power in 1933, finding it "hard to believe that a man who had lost his anti-semitism was so interested in situational reports on the killings of Jewish men, women and children while engaged in a war."[43]

Critics of Holocaust denial state that the claim by deniers of no Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews is completely discredited by Himmler in a speech made on October 4, 1943 to a gathering of SS officers in Pozna, where he said:

Ich meine jetzt die "Judenevakuierung", die Ausrottung des jdischen Volkes. Es gehrt zu den Dingen, die man leicht ausspricht. Das jdische Volk wird ausgerottet, sagt ein jeder Parteigenosse 'ganz klar, steht in unserem Programm, Ausschaltung der Juden, Ausrottung, machen wir.'[44]

I am currently talking about the "evacuation of the Jews", the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people are being exterminated,' every Party member says, 'perfectly clear, it's written in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, and we do that.'

In addition to the Posen speeches, studies have shown that the mass of ordinary Germans at the time knew about the existence of the death and concentration camps:[45]

Hitler exterminated the Jews of Europe. But he did not do so alone. The task was so enormous, complex, time-consuming, and mentally and economically demanding that it took the best efforts of millions of Germans All spheres of life in Germany actively participated: Businessmen, policemen, bankers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, railroad and factory workers, chemists, pharmacists, foremen, production managers, economists, manufacturers, jewelers, diplomats, civil servants, propagandists, film makers and film stars, professors, teachers, politicians, mayors, party members, construction experts, art dealers, architects, landlords, janitors, truck drivers, clerks, industrialists, scientists, generals, and even shopkeepersall were essential cogs in the machinery that accomplished the final solution.[46] - Konnilyn G. Feig

There have been claims by Holocaust deniers that the gas chambers which mainstream historians believe were for the massacre of civilians never existed, but rather that the structures identified as gas chambers actually served other purposes. These other purposes include cadaver storage, delousing, and disinfection. A similar argument is sometimes used that claims gas was not used to murder Jews and other victims,[47][48] and that many gas chambers were also built after the war just for show. A document advancing this theory is the Leuchter report by Fred A. Leuchter, a paper stating that only traces of cyanide were found when he examined samples taken from one of the Auschwitz gas chambers in 1988. This is often cited as evidence that gas was not used in the chambers, as no trace amounts remain. Despite the difficulty of finding traces of this material 50 years later, in February, 1990, Professor Jan Markiewicz, Director of the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakw, redid the analysis.[49] Markiewicz and his team used microdiffusion techniques to test for cyanide in samples from the suspected gas chambers, from delousing chambers, and from control areas elsewhere within Auschwitz. The control samples tested negative, while cyanide residue was found in high concentrations in the delousing chambers, and lower concentrations in the homicidal gas chambers. This is consistent with the amounts required to kill lice and humans.[50]

The search for cyanide in the bricks of buildings said to be gas chambers was important, because the pesticide Zyklon B would generate such a residue. This was the gas most often cited as the instrument of death for prisoners in the gas chambers, supported by both testimony and evidence collected of Nazi policy.[51][52]

Another claim made by Holocaust deniers is that there were no specially-constructed vents in the gas chambers through which Zyklon B could be released.[53] The BBC offers a response showing that this requires disregard of much documentation:

Deniers have said for years that physical evidence is lacking because they have seen no holes in the roof of the Birkenau gas chamber where the Zyklon was poured in. (In some of the gas chambers the Zyklon B was poured in through the roof, while in others it was thrown in through the windows.) The roof was dynamited at war's end, and today lies broken in pieces, but three of the four original holes were positively identified in a recent paper. Their location in the concrete matches with eyewitness testimony, aerial photos from 1944, and a ground photo from 1943. The physical evidence shows unmistakably that the Zyklon holes were cast into the concrete when the building was constructed.[54]

Leuchter's comment that the camp was "untouched" has been dismissed as nonsense by the Holocaust scholar Robert Jan van Pelt, who explains that the absence of most of the would-be rubble from the crematoria is because the local Polish population returning to the area after the war rebuilt farmhouses to the west with bricks salvaged from rubble in the camp area including from the Birkenau crematoria.[55]

Another piece of evidence Holocaust deniers frequently question is what happened to the ash after the bodies were cremated. The amount of ash produced in the cremation of a person is about a shoebox full, if done in a proper crematorium. However, eyewitness testimonies documented by Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews describe the burning process used in Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec to have carried out in multiple open-air grills where stacks of bodies were burned on top of metal bars. These grills were operated by burning piles of wood underneath. It has been questioned by Holocaust deniers[56] if it would have been possible to burn hundreds of thousands of corpses using the method as documented by Hilberg, especially when the low efficiency of such burning process, the high amounts of wood required and the often windy weather conditions of the camps are taken into account.[citation needed]

Cremation in the open at the Reinhard death camps (Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec) was discussed at Nuremberg on the 7th April 1946 by Georg Konrad Morgen, SS judge and lawyer who investigated crimes committed in Nazi concentration camps. He stated: "The whole thing was like an assembly line. At the last stop they reached a big room, and were told that this was the bath. When the last one was in, the doors were shut and the gas was let into the room. As soon as death taken place in (sic), the ventilators were started. When the air was breathable, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies. By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel."[57]

There is well-documented evidence that other ash was used as fertilizer in nearby fields.[58][59] Photographs of Treblinka taken by the camp commandant show what looks to be ash piles being distributed by steam shovels.[60]

Another argument used by Holocaust deniers is that testimony on the gas chambers is unreliable. The Institute for Historical Review is one of the organizations which make this assertion. In the words of the IHR:

"Hoss [Hoess] said in his confession that his men would smoke cigarettes as they pulled the dead Jews out of the gas chambers ten minutes after gassing. Isn't Zyklon-B explosive? Highly so. The Hoss confession is obviously false."[61]

The Nizkor Project and other sources have pointed out that the minimal concentration of Zyklon-B to be explosive is 56,000 parts per million, while the amount used to kill a human is 300 parts per million, as is evidenced in "The Merck Index" and the "CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics". In fact, the Nazis' own documentation stated "Danger of explosion: 75 grams of HCN in 1 cubic meter of air. Normal application approx. 810 grams per cubic meter, therefore not explosive."[62]

The Institute for Historical Review publicly offered a reward of $50,000 for verifiable "proof that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz." Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz, submitted his own testimony as proof but it was ignored. He then sued IHR in the United States and the case was subsequently settled for $50,000, plus $40,000 in damages for personal suffering. The court declared the statement that "Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944" was a fact.[63][64][65][66]

The figure of "six million" (which refers only to Jewish victims, and is larger when counting the other ethnic, religious, and minority groups targeted for extinction) is often minimized by such claims to a figure of only one million deaths, or only three hundred thousand deaths. This argument is often met with criticism as the vast majority of scholars, institutions, and even Nazi officials[67] have estimated that no less than five to six million Jews perished during the Holocaust,[68][69][70][71] while some claim the number could possibly be even higher.[72][73][74] With as many as 4.3 million Jewish victims' names collected by Yad Vashem alone,[75] numerous documents and archives discovered after the war gave meticulous accounts of the exterminations that took place at the death camps (such as Auschwitz and Treblinka).[76] The Nizkor project conducted a thorough research about this claim as well, and found the number of Jewish death to be at least 5.65 million.[77]

Deniers claim that these documents are based on Soviet propaganda, primarily from Ilya Ehrenburg's Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and are therefore unreliable. Complicating the matter is that various instances have been reported where the death tolls of particular death camps were claimed to be overstated. These claims vary in verifiability and objectivity. A much-quoted instance of disputing the toll is the "Breitbard Document" (actually a paper by Aaron Breitbart),[78] which describes a commemorative plaque at Auschwitz to the victims that died there, which read, Four million people suffered and died here at the hands of the Nazi murderers between the years 1940 and 1945. In 1990, a new plaque replaced the old one. It now says, May this place where the Nazis assassinated 1,500,000 men, women and children, a majority of them Jews from diverse European countries, be forever for mankind a cry of despair and of warning. The lower numbers are due to the fact that the Soviets "purposely overstated the number of non-Jewish casualties at Auschwitz-Birkenau," according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Holocaust deniers insist that the number of Jews killed therefore be lowered by at least 2.5 million. However, the plaque had never been used as an accurate historical source by mainstream historians.[79][80][81] As early as the 1950s, Raul Hillberg estimated 1.1 million Jewish deaths in Auschwitz.[82]

Holocaust deniers argue that the multiple pre-World War II claims of precisely six million Jews facing extermination, like former New York Governor Martin Glynn's 1919 article The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!, suggests the reported death toll is inaccurate and was invented to fit propaganda.[83]

Holocaust deniers misrepresent and omit information contained in ICRC reports that contradict their claims.[84] Critics argue that Richard Harwood in his "Did Six Million Really Die?" pamphlet could only claim that the ICRC had found no evidence of a policy to exterminate Jews by ignoring key sections of the 1948 report, where the ICRC explicitly states that the systematic extermination of Jews was Nazi policy.[85]

Harwood disputed the notion that homicidal gas chambers were disguised as shower facilities by citing references in the report where ICRC officials inspected bathing facilities. He used their responses to argue that showers functioned as showers and were not part of a killing installation. However this is considered misrepresentation by critics, as the passage Harwood cited is in reference to Allied camps for civilians in Egypt and thus had nothing to do with Nazi concentration camps.[86]

Harwood also claimed that Die Tat, a Swiss tabloid newspaper, published statistics that concluded the number of people who died in Nazi prisons and camps from 1939 to 1945 based on ICRC statistics was "300,000, not all of whom were Jews".[87] The January 19, 1955 edition of Die Tat did indeed give a 300,000 figure, but this was only in reference to "Germans and German Jews" and not nationals of other countries.[88] In the 1978 official bulletin, entitled "False Propaganda", the ICRC denounced Holocaust denial and confirmed that the agency "Never publishedor even compiledstatistics of this kind which are being falsely attributed to it" and stated that its mission was "to help war victims, not to count them",[89][90][91] and questioned how they would have even been able to obtain such statistics had they wanted to, given that they were "only able to enter only a few concentration camps...in the final days of the war".[89][91] The agency states that the figures used are "the number of deaths recorded by the International Tracing Service on the basis of documents found when the camps were closed",[89][91] and accordingly bear no relation to the total death tolls, since the Nazis destroyed much documentation, and that many deaths occurred in camps where prisoners were generally not registered.[89][91] The ICRC considers this misrepresentation as "propaganda",[89][91] and because these claims regarding the ICRC were used for the defense of Ernst Zndel at his trial in 1985, critics state that despite the agency's attempts to demonstrate the truth, Holocaust deniers have continued to rely on ICRC based disinformation.[88] Archives of the International Tracing Service (located in Bad Arolsen) responding to such misrepresentation can be found here.[92] In 1979, the ICRC stated a second time that they have "never tried to compile statistics on the victims of the war",[93] nor "certified the accuracy of the statistics produced by a third party",[93] and state that the authors of such material have "falsified" both claims that the document originates from the ICRC and refers exclusively to Jews.[93]

As well as in personal correspondence, the ICRC has also addressed this misrepresentation by several other means. In 1975, the ICRC wrote to the Board of Deputies of British Jews in London regarding Harwood's citations, stating:

The figures cited by the author of the booklet are based upon statistics falsely attributed to us, evidently for the purpose of giving them credibility, despite the fact that we never publish information of this kind.[94]

Franoise Perret, Comit International de la Croix-Rouge, to Jacob Gerwitz, August 22, 1975.

Similarly, Harwood wrote that the June 4, 1946 edition of Baseler Nachrichten, another Swiss newspaper, reported that a maximum of only one and a half million Jews could be numbered as casualties.[95] Harwood fails to mention that a later article in a later edition of the newspaper acknowledges that the previous article was incorrect, and 5,800,000 was an accurate number of victims.[96] Critics cite this as an example of deniers using partial information to distort legitimate sources.[97]

One Holocaust denial argument is the comparison of the population of Jews before and after the Holocaust. They state that the 1940 World Almanac gives the world Jewish population as 15,319,359, while the 1948 World Almanac gives the world Jewish population as 15,713,638. They therefore claim that either the figures are wrong, or the Holocaust, meaning the deaths of millions of Jews, cannot have happened to any extent similar to the claimed 6 million. Ken McVay writes:

Only in 1949 are postwar estimates employed, the figures given are for estimates made in 1948. A year or two lag seems to be common for various other population estimates given by the World Almanac. The difference between the 1938 and 1948 figures is thus 4,481,491. In 1949, however, the World Almanac gives a revised 1939 population of 16,643,120 giving a difference of between 1938 and 1947 of 5,376,520. Where the extra population between 1938 and 1939 came from is not cited, though one might speculate that it was based upon the Nazi estimates made in 1942 for the Wannsee Conference. Despite the apparent exactness of the numbers listed, the World Almanac warns that all numbers listed are estimates.[98]

Other sources confirm similar numbersand earlier than the 1949 World Almanacfor the Jewish population before and after the war. The 1932 American Jewish Yearbook estimate the total number of Jews in the world at 15,192,218, of whom 9,418,248 resided in Europe. However, the 1947 yearbook states: "Estimates of the world Jewish population have been assembled by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (except for the United States and Canada) and are probably the most authentic available at the present time. The figures reveal that the total Jewish population of the world has decreased by one-third from about 16,600,000 in 1939 to about 11,000,000 in 1946 as the result of the annihilation by the Nazis of more than five and a half million European Jews. In Europe only an estimated 3,642,000 remain of the total Jewish pre-war population of approximately 9,740,000." These numbers are also consistent with the findings of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Appendix III, in 1946.

The Nazis used figures of between 9 and 11 million for the Jewish population of Europe, as evidenced in the notes of the Wannsee Conference. In fact, the Nazis methodically recorded the ongoing reduction of the Jewish population, as in the Korherr Report, which gave the status of the Final Solution through December, 1942. The Hfle Telegram was sent by SS-Sturmbannfhrer Hermann Hfle on January 11, 1943 to SS-Obersturmbannfhrer Adolf Eichmann in Berlin and detailed the number of deaths of Jews in the concentration camps.[99] In the year 1942 alone, the telegram lists 1,274,166 Jews were exterminated[99] in the four camps of Aktion Reinhard. The Korherr Report compiled by an SS statistician, gave a conservative total of 2,454,000 Jews deported to extermination camps or killed by the Einsatzgruppen. The complete status reports of the Einsatzgruppen death squads were found in the archives of the Gestapo when it was searched by the U.S. Army, and the accuracy attested to by the former Einsatzgruppen members who testified during war crime trials and at other times. These reports alone list an additional 1,500,000 or so murders during mass shootings, the vast majority of these victims were Jews. Further, surviving Nazi documentation spells out their plans to murder the Jews of Europe (see the Wannsee Conference), recorded the trains arriving at various death camps, and included photographs and films of many atrocities.

There are voluminous amounts of testimony from thousands of survivors of the Holocaust,[100] as well as the testimony of captured Nazi officers at the Nuremberg Trials and other times.[101] Holocaust deniers discount the testimony of officers claiming that these witnesses were tortured[3] or that Rudolf Hss allegedly signed a confession written in a language he did not understand (English) or that the Nuremberg Trial did not follow proper judicial procedures. However, Hss's testimony did not consist of merely a signed confession; while in jail he also wrote two volumes of memoirs[102] and gave extensive testimony outside of the Nuremberg proceedings.[103][104] Further, his testimony agrees with that of other contemporary written accounts by Auschwitz officials, such as Pery Broad,[105] an SS man stationed at Auschwitz while Hss was the commandant and the diary kept by SS physician at Auschwitz Johann Kremer, as well as the testimony of hundreds of camp guards and victims.[106] In addition, former SS personnel have criticised Holocaust denial. SS-Oberscharfhrer Josef Klehr has said that anyone who maintains that nobody was gassed at Auschwitz must be "crazy or on the wrong".[107] SS-Unterscharfhrer Oswald Kaduk has stated that he does not consider those who maintain such a thing as normal people.[108] Hearing about Holocaust denial compelled former SS-Rottenfhrer Oskar Grning to publicly speak about what he witnessed at Auschwitz, and denounce Holocaust deniers,[109] stating:

I would like you to believe me. I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections took place. I would like you to believe that these atrocities happened because I was there.[110]

Sonderkommandos provide another key piece of testimony. There were Jewish prisoners who helped march Jews to the gas chambers, and later dragged the bodies to the crematoria. Since they witnessed the entire process, their testimony is vital in confirming that the gas chambers were used for murderous purposes and the scale to which they were used.[111]

Other key testimony comes from non-Jewish survivors of the camps such as Catholic French Resistance member Andr Rogerie who was held in seven different camps, and who as a member of the Resistance was not targeted for extermination but for hard labor and survived. After the war Rogerie wrote and testified extensively about his experiences in the camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau[112] where he viewed and produced the oldest contemporary sketch of a camp crematorium.[113]

Holocaust denial is generally viewed as antisemitic. Walter Reich, professor of international affairs at George Washington University and former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, stated, "The primary motivation for most deniers is anti-Semitism."[114] The Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity describes Holocaust denial as "a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs."[115] According to the Anti-Defamation League, "Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy."[116] French historian Valrie Igounet wrote, "Holocaust denial is a convenient polemical substitute for anti-semitism."[117] In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia published a working definition of antisemitism that included "denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)".[118]

Link:

Criticism of Holocaust denial - Wikipedia

Historian Lipstadt Gives Ted Talk On Holocaust Denial The Forward – Forward

Posted By on May 15, 2017

Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory University historian, has garnered more than a 100,000 views for her TED talk on Holocaust denial and the fight she waged against notorious revisionist David Irving.

There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies, she said at the lecture, given in the United Kingdom in April. Truth is not relative.

Lipstadt was sued in the 90s by Irving after her landmark work on the Holocaust, Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory appeared in Britain, labeling Irving as a denier. She won the lawsuit after a six-year ordeal - which was turned into a book, The Holocaust On Trial, and later a film, Denial.

In the video - watched almost 153,000 times - Lipstadt links the phenomenon of Holocaust denial to the present moment. We live in an age when truth is on the defensive, she said, slamming the Trump White House and the contemporary far-right for its contempt for evidence and facts.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

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Historian Lipstadt Gives Ted Talk On Holocaust Denial The Forward - Forward

Report: Arab-Language Media Promotes Holocaust Denial In Canada – The Daily Caller

Posted By on May 15, 2017

Arab-language media in Canada is promoting Holocaust denial while it spreads other anti-Semitic information, says Amanda Hohmann, national director of Bnai Brith Canadas League for Human Rights.

Bnai Brith Canad is part of an international Jewish human rights organization that tracks anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, Holocaust denial is no longer only coming from its traditional home in the extreme right, Hohmann told the Canadian Presson Tuesday. More and more, Islamist extremists are also co-opting this position and spreading the rhetoric of denial, especially within Arab-language media right here in Canada.

Holocaust denial accounted for 20 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in 2016, way up from five percent in 2015 percent.

Bnai Brith CEO Michael Mostyn cited numerous examples of instances where Arab media has dismissed the Holocaust as a Jewish-inspired hoax or suggested that the Jews deserved what they got under the Nazis. London, Ontarios al-Saraha newspaper actually argued both claims in a report last summer.

The paper was actually promoted as a suggested reading by a local immigration settlement organization that received government funds.

Mostyn said anti-Semitism in increasing in what he described as a made in Canada fashion that has nothing to do with immigration or refugee concerns south of the border.

Hohmann echoes that sentiment, saying anti-Semitism in Canada cannot be blamed on events south of the border.

While some have sought to link the global increase in anti-Semitism to Novembers presidential election in the United States, its worth noting that the months of September through December actually saw a relative decrease in anti-Semitic incidents in Canada, in relation to previous years, Hohmann said.

Bnai Brith Canada is reporting 1,728 such acts for 2016, a 26 percent increase from the year before and the most the group has ever assessed.

That means an average of four to five incidents of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism or violence occurring every day in our country, a country where we pride ourselves as being one of the most tolerant in the world, Mostyn told the Canadian Press.

The numbers, included in the groups 2016 report that was released Tuesday, were based on phone calls to their anti-hate hotline and police data.

Barbara Perry, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, told the Canadian Press that the scope of anti-Semitism in Canada is expanding, moving from its traditional base in Toronto and Montreal to a more national movement, as a result of global pressures.

Although Mostyn says the people who report anti-Semitic incidents are not always Jewish, the percentage of Arab-speaking complainants is very low.

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Report: Arab-Language Media Promotes Holocaust Denial In Canada - The Daily Caller


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