Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

Erika Schwartz and her mother, Jolan Hornstein, appear in a June 1948 photo shortly after moving to New York. Schwartz, who was born in a Hungarian ghetto one day before Nazis sealed it off, escaped to Budapest in the nick of time, making her one of the youngest Holocaust survivors. The mother and daughter later moved to the United States after the war ended. (Erika Schwartz)

When Erika Schwartz started attending a Holocaust survivor group over 40 years ago, she didnt quite fit in.

Born in the Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, ghetto one day before the Nazis sealed it off in 1944, she had the paperwork to prove she is one of the youngest remaining survivors alive today at 79. But despite most of her entire family being murdered before World War II ended, it wasnt until about nine years ago that others started taking her story seriously.

As an infant, Schwartzs father helped her and her mother escape to Budapest with the right paperwork, where the two lived disguised as Christians into the early years of the Soviet Unions control. Her father, a labor camp escapee, lived on the run to avoid making his family a target. Before long, he was returned to the Hidegseg labor camp in Hungary and murdered, too.

At age 4, Erika was sent after her mother to the United States. It wasnt until she was about 70 that she started to tell the story.

I got the sense that people didnt really see me as a Holocaust survivor. I didnt remember people getting slaughtered in front of me, she said. The fact that Id lost my entire family didnt seem to matter. It was difficult to have that sense of loss and feel that it wasnt important enough that everyone else who remembered it was more important.

The Thaler Holocaust Remembrance Fund welcomes guest speaker Erika Schwartz. The Holocaust survivor will share her story at two appearances in Cedar Rapids.

Monday, April 1 at 7 p.m. at Coe Colleges Sinclair Auditorium, 1220 First Ave. NE, Cedar Rapids

Tuesday, April 2 at 1:30 p.m. in Kirkwood Community Colleges Ballantyne Auditorium, 6301 Kirkwood Blvd. SW, Cedar Rapids

Events are free and no tickets are required. Tuesdays event will be available to watch via livestream at kirkwood.edu/vod/12583.

For more information, call Jim Bernstein at (319) 573-2221.

Unlike many survivors, Schwartzs story starts with her mothers memories about how parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins were exterminated. But her mothers personal experience never recounted aloud to her affected her all the same.

After being emotionally destroyed by the loss of her entire family, her mother who had post-traumatic stress disorder led a nomadic lifestyle. By the time she was an adolescent, Schwartz had attended nine elementary schools.

Despite that her most vivid memory of Hungary was playing with pebbles around a train station as her mother left the country, she inherited all the same effects of trauma as an adult low self-esteem, bitterness and a struggle to find meaning in life that lasted until she was middle-aged.

After growing up with a mother who refused to talk about her personal experiences, Schwartz started to shun her family history, too. For about a third of her life, she refused to think, talk or read about what had happened as she battled depression.

I needed to reprogram what was in my head, the Missouri resident said.

The need to speak out wasnt realized until she was called at a religious ceremony in her former California home. In a room of about 350 people, survivors of the Holocaust were asked to stand to be honored.

She resisted the urge, until her husband jabbed her. After heeding his call, she was the only one in the room standing.

Thats when it hit me that, being one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, I had an obligation, she said. I needed to bear witness to what had happened to my family.

The next day, she called the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles, where she learned how to document the story of her mother, and her own story.

Now, many of her lectures are geared toward students who have similarities: they have no firsthand memories of the Holocaust, and theyre growing up in an era when antisemitism is again on public display. Impacted by a history beyond her control, her story has touched students whose lives also have been a byproduct of their parents trauma.

With a message of hope, Erika tells stories of finding joy again. Today, she tells others how she lives a life happier than shes ever been against the backdrop of tragedies hard-earned through years of research that would alter her family forever.

I was walking around with my head in a black cloud until my mid-40s, she said. I had an epiphany that I didnt have to spend the rest of my life in that head space.

In addition to the story of those who impacted her, she tells the story others who cant speak even ones shes never met. In 2017, for example, she placed a headstone on her youngest aunts grave in Hungary, where for 73 years she had been buried anonymously.

With antisemitism on a rise and a sharp increase in violence against Jews domestically and abroad, her message plays a role for the next generation.

The most astonishing part is whats happening in this country and how brazenly open it is, Schwartz said.

She urges students today to study not just the Holocaust, but the events that led up to it and the parallels they have today for Jews and other marginalized groups through proliferating propaganda that have pitted groups against each other from all sides.

Youll see it happening in this country now, she said. Im not talking about just Jews.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.

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One of youngest Holocaust survivors brings new story to remembrance to Cedar Rapids - The Gazette

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

A new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam aims to tell the full story of the persecution of Dutch Jews during World War II.

As Flip Delmonte walks around the soon to be opened National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, he's reminded of the city's dark history.

Delmonte was just a baby when a relative and the Dutch resistance spirited him away from a teacher training college in Amsterdam's Jewish quarter during the Dutch capital's World War II Nazi Occupation.

His parents were detained across the street at a theatre used by the Germans as a collection point for Jews to be deported to death camps in eastern Europe.They were among the 102,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands and murdered in the camps.

The college Delmonte, now 80, was taken from as a baby has been transformed into the new museum that will be officially opened on 10 Marchby King Willem-Alexander.

The Jewish people were murdered. There are people, children who survived and we cannot forget them. They must be remembered also in the future, Delmonte, who is deaf, says through an interpreter.

The museum tells the story of the Holocaust throughvideo images, photos, scale models and mementoes of the Dutch victims of Nazi occupation.

Three-quarters of the pre-war Jewish population of the Netherlands were murdered by the Nazis, the largest proportion anywhere in Europe.

Head Curator Annemiek Gringold pulled together exhibition rooms that show the atrocities of the Holocaust, and also small mementoes of the lives lost - a collection of 10 buttons excavated from the grounds of Sobibor.

Perhaps this is the closest I can come to the thousands and thousands of anonymous people that were rushed into the gas chamber," Gringold says.

"This is something that they chose to wear, and it is one of the last items that they touched, she adds.

For Gringold, the museum opens at a vital time.The generation that survived the Shoah (Holocaust) is slowly leaving us, she says.

"It is our responsibility, we feel, in the Jewish Cultural Quarter, to tell their story from generation to the next. For the Netherlands, to know about this history, to be aware of where anti-Semitism might lead to in certain circumstances.

The walls of one room are filled from floor to ceiling with the texts of hundreds of laws discriminating against Jews that were enacted by the German occupiers of the Netherlands, to show how the Nazi regime, assisted by Dutch civil servants, dehumanized Jews ahead of operations to round them up and send them to their deaths.

Delmonte was happy to contribute a photograph to the museum, but he kept his most treasured keepsake for himself.

I have a cookie plate at home which used to be my mothers and my aunt has given that to me at my birthday," he says. "I still have that at home. So thats very special for me.

The National Holocaust Museum is situated in the Dutch capital's historic Jewish Quarter and officially opens on 10 March.

Video editor Theo Farrant

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New Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam aims to tell full story of persecution of Dutch Jews - Euronews

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

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At His Oscar Moment, Jonathan Glazer Hijacks His Jewishness and the Holocaust - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

Not long after Feigele (Vladka) Peltels father died of pneumonia in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, the 17-year-old found herself at a lecture about Yiddish author I.L. Peretz hosted by her social democratic youth group, Tsukunft (The Future). She doesnt precisely remember the talk, but she does recall the energy in the room.

I still remember the atmosphere, the uplift, that in the ghettowith so much starvation and the typhoid epidemic which started and hunger and miserywe were talking about literature. And a young girl was talking to older people, and they were listening... And this kind of hope was constantly in the life of the ghetto.

Vladka saw this kind of hope in the secret schools that arose after the Nazis prohibited Jews access to education. She saw it in the way youth groups organized in the Warsaw Ghetto, which at its height held 500,000 people. And she saw it in her mother, in the way she kept their home neat and her children fed despite having no money, no soap and hot water, and no husband.

It was not the guns and the revolt. But it was the inner strength, it was the tradition, the morality, the ethic which our mothers lived and our generations before us lived, and it was expressed in simple, little things, in 1,000 instances of resistance [that] we take it for granted, Vladka said in a 1996 interview for the USC Shoah Foundations Visual History Archive.

In her testimony, Vladka said much of that initial hope felt in the Warsaw Ghetto was crushed on July 22, 1942, when the deportations from Warsaw began, and, building by building, block by block, the Germans began clearing out the ghetto. Between July and September 1942, the Nazis deported more than 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. Vladkas mother, Hanna, her younger sister, Henia, and her little brother, Chaim, were among those forced out of their homes and taken away in cattle cars.

By October 1942, when deportations paused, more than 20 youth groups and underground units had coalesced into a united front. And Vladka channeled her despair at losing her family into fighting the Nazis.

With her light complexion and high cheekbones, Vladka was asked to operate outside the ghetto, disguised as a Polish woman. Over the next few months, Vladka bribed guards and used secret passages to sneak in and out of the ghetto. She smuggled weapons in phony bottles and dynamite wrapped in greasy paper to look like butter. What she smuggled out of the ghetto was just as important: information that had come through the underground, including the first reports that nearly everyone deported to Treblinka was killed on arrival a devastating realization for Vladka about her own familys fate.

She had one of the first maps of the Treblinka death camp in her shoe when she met Benjamin Miedzyrzecki (later shortened to Meed), whom she recruited to work for the resistance. The two fell in love, even among the death and despair around them.

It was very important that I knew that I have somebody so close who cares, who, if I will not exist, is a person who will find out maybe, who will look for me, Vladka said.

When the Nazis restarted deportations from Warsaw in January 1943, Jewish defiance disrupted German efforts. The resistance received word of a final deportation just before Passover, and on April 19, 1943, some 700 young Jewish fighters fought back at German troops entering the ghetto.

When the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising started, Vladka was outside of the ghetto, still disguised as a Pole. She managed to get in contact with uprising leaders, and she began working to distribute appeals for help to resistance organizations outside the ghetto. But in the process, she and uprising leader Abraham Blum were arrested. With the help of her Polish collaborator, Vladka was able to get away. Abraham Blum was murdered by the Gestapo.

After weeks of hand-to-hand combat, the Germans began burning and leveling buildings. From the balcony of an apartment outside the ghetto walls, Vladka heard the gunfire, saw black smoke, and watched people jumping from windows.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was quashed after 27 days. Some 7,000 Jews were killed, and 42,000 were deported. On May 16, the Nazis blew up the Great Synagogue of Warsaw, once the largest Jewish house of worship in the world. The entire ghetto had been destroyed.

Over the following months, Vladka and Benjamin worked to extricate fighters from underground bunkers in the rubble and those in hiding outside the ghetto. They helped get money and provisions to Jews in hiding, to partisan units, and to resistance cells in camps and ghettos around Poland.

In August 1944, Vladka fought alongside Poles in the Polish Uprising in Warsaw, a two-month battle between the Polish Home Army and the Germans. Vladka, Ben, and his parents survived disguised as Christians for the remaining few months of the war in a small village.

After the war, Vladka and Ben went back to Warsaw to find the few Jews who had survived in hiding and then moved to odz, where Vladka became the director of the Jewish Cultural Department, which was responsible for organizing the Jews who were trickling back into the city to look for lost family members.

Among those survivors in odz, Vladka saw the same signs of hope she had seen in the early days of the Warsaw ghettosurvivors still willing to pray, still wanting to live, to love, to sing.

None of my family survived. Absolutely nobody. ButI organized at that time, the first Jewish event ofsurvivors for survivors. I did it with all my soul, what I still had in me. And with Jewish songs, Vladka said in her testimony.

Vladka and Benjamin married in 1945 and moved to New York City the following year. A series of 27 articles Vladka wrote for the Yiddish Daily Forward became one of the earliest chronicles of the Holocaust. In 1948, she published a book, On Both Sides of the Wall, which was translated from Yiddish in 1972.

Benjamin, who died in 2006, gave his testimony to the Visual History Archive in 1999. Vladka and Benjamin had two children and five grandchildren and were founders of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, were involved in the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and created numerous educational, remembrance, and survivor resource organizations.

Vladka died in 2012.

For all the valor Vladka saw among the resistance fighters, in her testimony it was her mother and other mothers, she wanted to honor.

We talk about uprising. We talk about resistance. But about these simple, quiet, and dedicated souls, we give very little attention. And I think history has to see them a little bit more sharp, as they were.

Vladka Meed on the Aryan side of Warsaw, posing in Theater Square, 1944. ( From The Light of Days by Judy Batalion, William Morrow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Benjamin [Miedzyzecki] Meed)

Vladka Meeds false identification card, issued in the name of Stanisawa Wchalska, 1943.( From The Light of Days by Judy Batalion, William Morrow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Benjamin [Miedzyzecki] Meed)

Vladka Meed giving her testimony for USC Shoah Foundations Visual History Archive, 1996.

Read about resistance fighterFaye Schulman.

Read about resistance fighterAnna Heilman.

See Vladka Meeds full testimony here.

Vladka Meeds story was featured in The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos by Judy Batalion. Watch Judy Batalion in conversation with Nancy Spielberg at a June 2021 event hosted by the USC Shoah Foundation, in partnership with Writer's Bloc and Holocaust Museum LA.

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She Smuggled Love, Hope, and Dynamite Over the Ghetto Walls - USC Shoah Foundation |

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

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USC Shoah Foundation partners with National Library of Israel - Park Labrea News/Beverly Press

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

(March 6, 2024 / JNS)

World Jewry is facing its most dangerous period since the end of the Holocaust nearly eight decades ago, the head of the University of Southern Californias Shoah Foundation said on Tuesday.

The denial of the Holocaust and the attack of Oct. 7 are yet another version of antisemitic conspiracy theories which date back to ancient, centuries-old thinking blaming Jews for [ones] own suffering, USCSF executive director Robert J. Williams told JNS during a visit to Israel.

I didnt think it would ever be this bad, said Williams, a Holocaust scholar who also serves as UNESCO chair on Antisemitism and Holocaust Research and as an adviser to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This is the most dangerous moment for Jews since 1945.

Whats more, the Jew-hatred is now coming from multiple sources, he said.

We knew about antisemitism on the left but were led to believe that it is not as deep and present as from religious extremists on the right, he said, but it is just as real a threat.

Williams noted that while denialism was a fact of life in todays modern world, such distortion and omission of crimes against Jews is inherently antisemitic and a persistent historic theme dating back to the infamous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

He panned a very subjective anti-Israel media culture in allowing conspiracy theories to germinate.

The media bias against Israel is part of the denial; whether it is intentional or otherwise the effect is the same, he said.

Contributing to the historical record of Oct. 7

With 56,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors and a new focus on antisemitism and the collection of Holocaust testimonies, the USC Shoah Foundation decided in the days after the Oct. 7 attack to gather victims testimonies and has amassed more than 400 video testimonials to date.

We are contributing to the factual record of the crimes that took place [on Oct. 7] and have come here on a research trip to see not only who [the victims] are but where they lived, he said.

His visit to Israel included a tour of areas in the south hardest hit during the massacre, as well as a stop at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and a meeting with President Isaac Herzog.The visit was punctuated by an event inaugurating a joint partnership formed with the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

The uniqueness of the Holocaust

According to Williams, since he took over the foundation last year, its renewed focus on the Holocaust and antisemitismprivate donors had reportedly sought such a shift from an earlier, more general focus on genocidestemmed from a sense that branching out would minimize the role of the Holocaust.

If were opening the door to move past the Shoah but not doing right by the Shoah, you risk distracting people from understanding why the Holocaust was so important, he said, calling the systematic murder of 6 million Jews during World War II one of the seminal events in human history which shape the world we live in.

I hope that this can be a moment to address antisemitism with eyes wide open and know that it knows no political, cultural, social or religious bounds, he said.

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USC Shoah Foundation: We're in most dangerous era for Jews since Holocaust - JNS.org

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

March 28, 2024 @ 11:00 am

Very little has been recorded about same-sex desire and relationships in concentration camps and ghettos during the Holocaust, leaving us with questions about how queer relationships were viewed and what stories may have been erased.

On March 28, Dr. Anna Hjkov, a third-generation descendant of Holocaust survivors and pioneer of queer Holocaust history, will discuss why including queer narratives is crucial to developing a deeper understanding of Nazi persecution and societal resistance.

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Start: March 28, 2024 / 11:00 AM

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'I did not want to die without having kissed a woman' - USC Shoah Foundation |

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

(March 6, 2024 / JNS)

A majority of countries have made no progress on Holocaust art restitution over the last quarter century, a report released on Monday shows.

Twenty-four of 47 countries surveyed have made minimal to no progress in art and cultural property restitution, compared to only seven countries that have made major progress in the field.

The report, Holocaust-Era Looted Cultural Property: A Current Worldwide Overview, was authored by the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) and the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference).

It was released at an event held together with the U.S. State Department at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The seven countries that have made major progress since a landmark conference on the issue in Washington in 1998 are Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The two dozen countries that have made little or no progress are Albania, Australia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and Uruguay.

Of the millions of works of art and cultural property stolen by the Nazis, countless objects still have not been returned to their owners, said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a video address. Today, too many governments, museums, dealers, galleries, and individuals still resist restitution efforts while heirs confront staggering legal and financial barriers as they go up against opponents whose resources vastly outmatch their own.

Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, said, This report underscores the critical need for advancement in art and cultural property restitution.

We urge other countries, as well as museums, auction houses, dealers and private possessors to join us in ensuring justice and that rightful owners and their heirs are reunited with their cultural treasures, Taylor said.

Colette Avital, who survived the Holocaust in Romania and is chairperson of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, said, For us Holocaust survivors, [these] works of art are part of our cultural heritage, part of our lives, part of our past.

They are the silent witnesses of the lives and loves of individuals, families and communities who were murdered cruelly and whose memories we cherish, said Avital, a former member of Knesset for the Labor Party.

The Nazis looted about 20% of the art in Europe, and more than 100,000 items have not been returned to their rightful owners.

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Most countries refuse to budge on Shoah art restitution - JNS.org

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

The vengeful, scheming, genocidal response unleashed since October last year in Gaza, by Israel, has prompted a profoundly intensified global review of the punishing history related to the establishment of the State of Israel and its colonial-settler expansion ever since 1948.

An exceptional commentator, Pankaj Mishra, has now contributed an avidly argued, candid extended essay situated within this framework. Entitled, The Shoah after Gaza, it has recently been published in the London Review of Books.

Mishra begins by outlining the enduring malevolent impact on Israeli thinking about modern Jewish history and the subsequent shaping of Israels view of itself by Menachem Begin, who became Prime Minister in 1977. He had previously been the leader of the Zionist, militant-terrorist Irgun group. Mishra describes him as:

[A] demagogue from Poland, who turned the murder of six million jews into an intense national preoccupation and a new basis for Israeli identity. The Israeli establishment began to produce and disseminate a very particular version of the Shoah [or Holocaust] that could be used to legitimise a militant and expansionist Zionism.

Certain, apt comparative reflections on the menacing political impact of amplified Hindu nationalism in India are also woven into the article.

The case convincingly made is that the roots of the mass slaughter in Gaza we are now witnessing in horror may be found in these vehement, self-justifying (and self-absolving) politics from many decades ago. Right now, Mishra says:

Every day is poisoned by the awareness that while we go about our lives hundreds of ordinary people like ourselves are being murdered, or being forced to witness the murder of their children. Adding that, Bidens stubborn malice and cruelty to the Palestinians is just one of the gruesome riddles presented to us by Western politicians and journalists.

This article compels one to think, right through to the final paragraph, where Mishra concludes:

Against the acts of savagery, and the propaganda by omission and obfuscation, countless millions now proclaim, in public spaces and on digital media, their furious resentments. In the process, they risk permanently embittering their lives. But perhaps, their outrage alone will alleviate, for now, the Palestinian feeling of absolute loneliness, and go some way towards redeeming the memory of the Shoah.

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Thinking intensely about the holocaust, Israel and Gaza - Pearls and Irritations

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

A recent listening session hosted by Columbia Universitys new Task Force on Antisemitism devolved into chaos, with a task force leader yelling at students who questioned the groups refusal to define antisemitism, according to sources at the university. Meanwhile, the school is preparing to spend up to $135,000 to hire someone to support the task force, which was propped up just weeks after Hamass October 7 attack on Israel.

During a closed-door meeting last week, Professor Ester Fuchs, who is one of the chairs of the task force, invoked a Supreme Court justices famous line about pornography: I know it when I see it.

The task force is not going to parse words on the definition of antisemitism but will take an experientially oriented approach, Fuchs said. She added that they would not delve into which of the 25 definitions of antisemitism the group would subscribe to, because thats not the purpose of what were doing.

The task forces ambiguous mandate is concerning students and faculty who worry that not defining antisemitism could stifle criticism of Israels actions or hinder efforts to tamp down actual instances of antisemitism. In a leaked email exchange about the task force obtained by LitHub, one professor suggested that, since the task force is unwilling to define antisemitism, the group may as well be named The Task Force on, Like, Campus Vibes.

Amid the campus debate over the task forces purpose, the university has opened a 35-hour per week job posting for a research director for the group, with a salary range of $110,000-$135,000. The Director will work for at least one year with the possibility of an extension and will hire and supervise a staff of up to three Research Assistants, the job description notes. Among the directors responsibilities will be to design and execute an academically rigorous program of qualitative research on anti-Semitism at Columbia.

The resources the university is devoting to the task force stands in stark contrast to its handling of other issues plaguing the campus. While the task force has said it is concerned about other forms of discrimination, including Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry, Columbia has not set up any specific processes to study those issues. It has, however, banned two student groups for holding unauthorized protests for Gaza, and it has moved slowly on an investigation into a chemical attack during a Palestine solidarity protest in January.

The task force, announced on November 1, released its first report of recommendations this week. The report addresses everything from campus demonstrations to disciplinary enforcement, leaving faculty worried that the task force has too broad of a scope.

I dont even see why this task force gets to weigh in on events policies. If we wanted to have a task force on protests, we could have had one of those except we already have a Senate Rules Committee that put in a lot of work on the new events policy, said Professor Joseph Howley, a member of the universitys Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine group, and the chair of one of the schools core undergraduate classes, Literature Humanities.

Im still waiting to hear from the administration anything about the only actual violence that has occurred on our campus around this conflict: which has been against Palestinian students and pro-Palestinian Jewish students, Howley told The Intercept. Im still waiting to hear anything from the institution about that. Why have we not set up a task force just to look into that?

Over the last several weeks, the task force has hosted open listening sessions with students. Sources familiar with the meetings have told The Intercept that faculty hosting the sessions have dismissed, belittled, and even forced students out of the room.

In a session on February 29, students asked how the task force defined antisemitism. Professor Gil Zussman said that defining antisemitism was not a top priority for the task force, which would rather move forward with its work. Numerous students pounced, objecting to the idea of moving forward without defining the term the task force was ostensibly focused on. Some argued that not defining it could stifle criticism of Israels actions. Others pointed out that not defining antisemitism could hinder enforcement against it.

In the session Fuchs and Professor Rebecca Kobrin hosted on March 1, similar rifts emerged.

Multiple Jewish students spoke up in that meeting, saying they were worried that their anti-Zionism could be conflated with antisemitism. One Jewish student, who said their grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, described feeling like their Judaism was being erased and worried that the task force wasnt taking their perspective seriously. They said that they didnt feel comfortable being on campus if other students could feel comfortable calling them a Nazi simply because they didnt agree with what is happening in Palestine.

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Much of the conversation centered on the lack of an agreed-upon definition for antisemitism. After Fuchs invoked the I know it when I see it line, a Jewish student said they were extremely alarmed over the task force not defining antisemitism. That led to a tense exchange in which Fuchs repeatedly interrupted the student and briskly reminded the room that the meeting was confidential. When the student pushed back, the task force co-chair called out the student for taking notes and beginning their question in a very provocative, antagonistic tone.

For several minutes, Fuchs continued to interrupt the student as they expressed concern about how the group was put together and about how faculty and student dissent is being disregarded.

Fuchs at one point responded that it was not appropriate for the student to suggest that she had spoken over them.

Later, a student asked whether criticism of Israel is antisemitic, prompting Fuchs to escalate further. You think youre so clever, she said to the student, accusing them of trying to back her into a corner. She told the student they were being disruptive and invited the student to leave. The student walked out.

The clearly stated ground rules governing all Task Force listening sessions have been and continue to be that the proceedings are confidential and off the record, Fuchs wrote in a statement to The Intercept. I adhere to those rules even if other participants fail to do so.

Kobrin, for her part, tried to calm tensions in the room. She suggested that they go around the room, giving everyone a chance to speak for five minutes. A student expressed support and suggested that while people speak, the co-hosts not, prompting Fuchs to yell once again. I would suggest that you dont make the rules, the task force co-chair said. This is my meeting, and you dont make the rules, she added, before saying that shed never had such a disrespectful student. Write that down, Fuchs challenged.

Kobrin said the task force intentionally did not land on a specific definition of antisemitism so as not to alienate people with their perceived experiences. She offered that hate, discrimination, or prejudice against Jewish people was a definition, and affirmed a Jewish student who asked whether harassment from pro-Israel Jewish people would fit the definition. Fuchs ultimately said that the task force is not taking political positions and critiques of Israel as antisemitism.

Fuchs also apologized during the meeting, saying that she had felt personally attacked. She reportedly seemed genuinely apologetic for reacting how she did though for some students, it was too little, too late.

On Thursday, a group of students sent a letter to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, Interim Provost Dennis Mitchell, and other officials and student Senate representatives about the meeting. We have no confidence in Dr. Fuchss ability to produce a report reflecting the experiences of all of the members of the Columbia community and ask that she be replaced, they wrote, urging the university to replace Fuchs with an anti-Zionist member.

Despite the tumultuous meetings, the task force has continued its work. On Monday, the committee released its first set of recommendations, focused on the right to protest on campus, ensuring that protests dont interfere with the rights of others at Columbia, and to combat discrimination and harassment.

Although our report focuses on antisemitism, we hope our recommendations will also bolster efforts to combat Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, and other forms of bigotry. We condemn all these toxic forms of hate, and we look forward to working with colleagues and to partnering on initiatives to counter them across the University, wrote co-chairs Fuchs, Nicholas Lemann, and David M. Schizer.

In the report, the task force frames its mandate around federal laws around discrimination and harassment and calls on the university to clarify the meaning of discriminatory harassment and what speech contributes to a hostile learning or working environment.

When members of our community exercise their right to protest, they must be free to do so in safety and without fear. Unfortunately, this has not always been the case in recent months, and this is not acceptable, the report said. The report also notes that the university has a policy of completing investigations into conduct violations within 15 days and recommends that the timeline be extended, so as to give complainants more time, and encourage investigators to get all the facts before acting.

Despite the 15-day policy currently on the books, the university has yet to complete its investigation into an attack on a January 19 rally for Gaza, during which students described a noxious-smelling chemical substance being launched at the crowd.

When asked about the status of the investigation, a university official pointed The Intercept to a statement from January 30 37 days ago that said the investigation is ongoing, and referred to the New York Police Department for more information. The official reiterated that the suspected perpetrators are banned from campus as the investigation proceeds. In recent weeks, Columbia students have told The Intercept that theyve repeatedly seen the suspected assailants on campus and reported them to the authorities. The university official said that the Department of Public Safety has investigated those claims each time and found them to be unsubstantiated.

An NYPD spokesperson told The Intercept that the case is still open and that the department is still investigating on who the people who are wanted, they just havent caught them yet. The spokesperson continued: Theres some people who are wanted that are still, like, unknown.

Meanwhile, in February, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce led by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. sent a letter to university leadership, announcing a congressional investigation into Columbias response to antisemitism and its failure to protect Jewish students. Earlier this week, after a roundtable with Jewish students, Foxx spoke with Fox News about how no student should feel fearful on any college campus in the U.S. Foxxs office did not respond to a question about the chemical attack on Columbias campus or whether the committee would look into the schools response to it.

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Columbia's New Antisemitism Task Force Won't Say What It Thinks Antisemitism Is - The Intercept

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