Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

April in Spain John Banville Faber, 16.99

here is no clear distinction to be made between John Banvilles crime novels and his other fiction. There is the same elegant pacing, crafted prose and detailed examination of relationships personal, social and political that won him the Booker Prize. As Benjamin Black or under his own name, crime as a genre suits Banville.

In April in Spain, the heavy-drinking, Irish state pathologist Quirke, familiar from the Benjamin Black novels, returns. We meet him on holidays with Evelyn, his Austrian psychiatrist wife, in Donostia in the Basque country.

Jewish Evelyn, having escaped the inevitable inWorld War II, tracked through Europe, eventually settling in Dublin where she has achieved surprising career success given the era. She has revealed little of her past and throughout their stay in Donostia, Quirke is constantly amazed as details of Evelyns history are incidentally drip-fed.

Theirs is a loving and intellectually equal relationship with Quirke gently probing the mysteries of his wifes story and Evelyn amused and tolerant of Quirkes quirks. Their conversations are like tennis matches with Evelyn always, to Quirkes mind, having the last word. And in that way the rally petered to a close, with a score of love-all.

Running alongside the goings- on in Donostia is the parallel story of Terry Tice, an Irish-born London dweller who kills to order, loves his gun and flees back to Ireland after he kills his spiv patron Percy, a fat old poofter who was, pre-murder, granted minor sexual privileges by Tice.

The central plot unfolds among the visceral descriptions of Basque cuisine, language, weather and architecture when Quirke recognises a young Irish woman he overhears in a bar and tries to establish how he knows her.

When Quirke accidentally cuts himself while trying to open oysters with a pair of scissors, a visit to the hospital lands him in the off-handish care of an Irish doctor the woman from the bar.

Quirke becomes increasingly convinced that Dr Angela Lawless is, in fact, April Latimer, a friend of Quirkes own daughter Phoebe. April, a member of an Irish political dynasty, disappeared, presumed dead at the hand of her brother who admitted her murder before apparently killing himself.

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Tice, meanwhile, ambles around Dublin, far from the abusive orphanage of his childhood, reading Brighton Rock, in search of a useful place for his criminal skills. Tension builds as we come to understand that the stories of Tice and April Latimer will inevitably clash.

The book is not a mile-a-minute crime thriller. Banville calls the reader to take time, to savour the intricate descriptions of people and place. Whether it is the hat shop assistants long, tapering honey-coloured hands and night-black hair or a mans posture inclined to the leeward side of Cape Perineum, Banville slowly steeps the reader in his prose.

And he is not content with considering only the microcosm of Donostia and its mysteries. The churn of the political and social world of post-independence and post-emergency Ireland the grip of church and certain political parties is a constant backdrop treated with all the intelligence and nuance that weve come to expect from Banville.

This is a slow-burning mystery, a love story and a study of the corruption and power of the Irish political elite quite a lot to pack into one crime novel. Banville has achieved it with grace and poise.

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Basque in the glory of John Banville's elegant thriller April in Spain - Independent.ie

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

For the past few years, stories of Al Brown have always mentioned his cap.

Hes been rarely without one, this past decade or so. Hes made a basic, brimmed baseball-style cap part of what we might call, oxymoronically, an informal uniform, typically rounded out by a loose shirt or jacket over a T-shirt, jeans, and signature heavy-rimmed glasses.

Though Brown runs several businesses, he is never in a tie. And though he is indisputably one of New Zealands most successful chefs, he is rarely seen in chefs whites. Thats just not for him.

LAWRENCE SMITH

If the jacket fits: Al Brown in his casual uniform of cap, shirt, and glasses.

As Kiwis, we feel really uncomfortable or awkward in formal situations, he says. Im not saying for everyone, but thats certainly how I feel about it.

READ MORE:* The art of drinking and appreciating wine* 'A terrific palate': Who's in charge when celebrity chefs aren't in the kitchen?* Al Brown's Depot reverses 'no reservations' policy after huge post-Covid losses * Al Brown wants you to feel comfortable

The claim makes sense if you look at the Brown of the past 10 years. When he opened Depot at Aucklands SkyCity, Brown made casual dining cool. With bare tabletops, wine poured from taps and served in tumblers, and save one blip a no reservations policy, Depot was a stark, even aggressive contrast to the stuffy fine dining that had dominated New Zealands restaurant scene.

And yet Browns name is writ large, quite literally, on one of our most iconic fine dining establishments: Logan Brown, the restaurant he opened with Steve Logan in 1996 in the former National Bank building on Wellingtons upper Cuba St, and which still carries his moniker.

MONIQUE FORD/Stuff

Though Brown left Logan Brown more than a decade ago, the iconic fine dining restaurant still carries his name.

I thought when I trained to be a chef, like so many New Zealanders do, and why were so successful in so many industries, is we feel we have to be the best in that industry. So if Im learning to cook Id better do fine dining, Im going to show the world that I can do this.

This motivator to prove he can be the best at whatever he does is one that has been with Brown for all of his adult life. Now 56, he is, by his own admission, a perfectionist and, like many perfectionists, the drive to continually best not only others but himself is a blessing and a curse.

It comes, Brown says, from never feeling fit for purpose, going right back to his adoption as a baby by a farming family in Wairarapa.

They kept adopting until they had a son to take over the farm, and I was a pretty gentle, creative, sensitive little guy, and I wasnt it I always carried with me the idea that I wasnt fit for purpose or damaged goods a little bit, and that led to my perfectionism.

Brown went off to boarding school as a young child. Hard already for a sensitive little guy, it was made even harder when that sensitive little guy was dyslexic.

I was hopeless at school, he says. I was hopeless in a traditional classroom environment. Having been called back to repeat the fifth form, Brown was eventually expelled for rolling cheap joints. He went shepherding in Hawkes Bay after leaving school, not out of any particular compulsion but because, he says, I just did what I was told. Then his parents separated, and this break from the natural order triggered in Brown a realisation that he didnt have to follow a prescribed path.

I didnt like docking and shearing and dagging and drenching, he says. However, I loved eeling. Loading my .22 and going and shooting a rabbit and getting Mum to cook it up. Brown may have struggled with English and maths, but he was good with his hands. He took off to the United States, where he trained at the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont before hopping around cooking gigs in North America and Europe.

Then came Logan Brown, which became Wellingtons premiere upscale restaurant. Im really proud of what we did, Brown says. But it felt like the jacket didnt fit, for me personally. He shrugged off the ill-fitting jacket (chefs whites, presumably) temporarily in 2006 when he and Logan made Hunger for the Wild, a TVNZ series in which the pair left their kitchen to source the seafood, meat and produce they prepared within it.

That led to Browns first book, Go Fish: Recipes and Stories from the New Zealand Coast, and to his next iteration: Al Brown the champion of New Zealand food.

Supplied/Stuff

Brown (L) and Steve Logan (R) prepare pua butties for Kura Broughton on Mataikona beach, Wairarapa, on their TV show Hunger for the Wild.

Until about this point, the expectation was that good New Zealand restaurants served foreign cuisine. French, certainly. Italian had a good look-in, too. There was a bit of an appetite developing for Asian flavours. But seasonality wasnt a thing yet, food miles werent being calculated, nobody cared where the chicken on their plate had been farmed, or how, and that you might go to a nice establishment and be served the kind of food you grew up eating at the kitchen table was unimaginable.

But thats the idea that was forming for Brown. By the time the final season of Hunger for the Wild aired, Brown was leaving Logan Brown after 12 years, without another job to go to.

I started thinking, where are my food memories, wheres the connection to food and to good times and to hospitality, he says. I gave that a lot of thought and it just kept coming back to the same places, and that was baches, cribs and camping grounds where Id grown up and that informality. People would drop by with a smoked kahawai and half a fruit cake at three in the afternoon, and wed wash cups and [make] gin and tonics in plastic cups. Big bottles of beer, and laughter and just these really informal gatherings. Thats what I kept going back to.

Michael Bradley

Depot has been named Aucklands best restaurant on multiple occasions.

It was Peter Gordon, who then had two restaurants at SkyCity, who first brought up the idea of Brown joining him there. I made some flippant comment like, if I was going to get into the restaurant game again all Id do is a small little oyster bar or something like that. And the phone rang again and it was SkyCity, about 10 minutes later, saying hey, weve got a great spot for an oyster bar.

It was 2011 and, Brown says, the country was ready for Depot. I think New Zealand was starting to throw the shackles off and realise that actually what wed always been trying to play down, which was our informality, thats actually what everyone loves about us.

Everyone certainly loved Depot. Awarding the restaurant a hat in 2019, Cuisine named Depot the perfect drop-in, saying: If a restaurants merit can be measured by the buzz of the room, then the lively atmosphere at Depot certainly says a thing or two.

Supplied/Stuff

Brown, second from left, on the set of MasterChef NZ, 2015.

It was followed by The Federal Delicatessen, known as The Fed, an ode to New Yorks Jewish delis, which Brown opened next door in 2013, and then Best Ugly Bagels, shops selling Montreal-style bagels that now has seven outlets in Auckland and Wellington.

Despite some setbacks The Fed was closed for months after a fire in early 2015 Brown was a great success when viewed from the outside. He wrote more books and made more television shows. He was a judge on MasterChef NZ. He released lines of condiments, developed menus for airlines, cooked for dignitaries. Depot, with its bare tables and wine in tumblers, has been named Aucklands best restaurant multiple times.

Finally, Browns jacket was perfectly tailored. But the idea lingered that he himself wasnt fit for purpose.

LAWRENCE SMITH

In an empty Depot during alert level 4. The restaurant has suffered due to Covid.

Its brought out the perfectionism that I carry with me, and that has been a double-edged sword, he says. Because Ive been very successful in lots of things that I do and its kind of around that Ill show you all that Im OK, and that Im good, and Im never satisfied.

That, he says, has been a coping mechanism, or what he calls my armour that I carried around on me to protect myself. If he was always reaching for the next thing, he never had to stop and examine how he felt in the moment, and why. And, equally psychologically damaging, he was failing to enjoy any of his success.

The hospitality industry is a difficult one, and difficult in particular ways. With very high overheads and very low margins, its always precarious, even for the most seasoned of restaurateurs. It also comes with a particular lifestyle. Restaurant kitchens are small, Brown notes. Theres no seats, everyones got a knife, theres fire, with orders flicking through that you cant stop. Hospitality tends to attract extreme personalities liquorice allsorts, Brown calls them who like to work hard and play hard.

He compares it to being on stage, in that youre judged for your performance, but theres only the loosest of scripts and even that can go out the window pretty quickly. The best nights, the ones you want, are the most relentless, and after chefs have spent eight or 10 hours on their feet theres the clean-up mopping floors, degreasing range hoods.

And then what do you do after that? Brown asks. The options out there in hospitality are few and far between. Theyre called bars, mainly. So for a lot of people thats where they unwind, and alcohol is a drug and then theres the drugs as well.

Despite his early dalliances with pot, Brown says hes never been a barfly or a big user of any substance. But in that pressure cooker environment, his mental health suffered; he developed anxiety, sleep issues, probably some mild OCD. Its played havoc in my personal life, he says. With that comes a huge amount of shame and regret. He separated from his wife Lizzie Lang, mother of his daughters Alice and Connie, after nearly two decades. A subsequent relationship has also ended.

When we speak, over Zoom, Auckland is in its fourth week of the snap lockdown. Brown is alone in a bubble of one and it is, he says, a bit s. But hes philosophical. These days, hes in regular psychotherapy sessions the best hour of his week, he says gets out for daily walks, and is working on overcoming his feelings of inadequacy.

His restaurants have struggled a bit over the past 18 months or so, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and continual roadworks in the CBD. Depot even reversed that no-reservations policy for a time in February.

LAWRENCE SMITH

Brown says psychotherapy sessions are the best hour of his week.

Brown is philosophical about that, too. Put envy and jealousy aside who wouldnt want to have a supermarket right now as long as some places are doing well that means the money is being passed on and keeps moving, and thats what has to happen, he says. So begrudgingly, Im rooting for anyone whos doing well in this Covid situation.

And of course, because this is Al Brown, he has a new project on the go. In Tipping Point, Brown documents his winemaking journey to create six wines with Constellation Brands. They approached him, Brown says. I never thought an opportunity like that would ever come along. Sure as hell Id been prepping myself for 30 years on drinking the stuff so it would be good to know a little bit more on the backend of that.

He went back to early memories, and the first bottle he remembers drinking. There was a dimpled bottle called the Montana Wohnsiedler Mller-Thurgau, he chuckles. It was vin de table at its best, or worst, depending on how you look at it, but I was at Cobb & Co on an early date and I was probably underage, and I ordered it.

With Tipping Point, he wants to do for wine what Depot did for dining: Demystify it, democratise it, and capture a uniquely New Zealand sensibility.

One thing I cant stand about wine is the anxiety around it. You hand someone a wine list, youre saying, Here, have a bunch of anxiety for the next 10 minutes. We all feel that I dont even know how to pronounce this wine, or is that the right glass, is it meant to be cold, is it meant to be room temperature? Theres all this formality around wine that Ive always hated.

Brown is proud of the wine. He might be getting better at enjoying the moment and his own success. But the old imposter syndrome is always there. Are people going to go, oh theres Al Brown, he does burger patties, he makes mustard, oh now hes making wine?

Though you get the feeling if they did, hed just invite them in and hand them a glass. A tumbler, of course.

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Chef Al Brown on a lifetime of unease and finally finding the jacket that fits - Stuff.co.nz

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

By Abby Seitz

TEL AVIV (JTA) From the outside, HaOgen Cafe looks a lot like the many other espresso spots that line the streets of Tel Aviv.

Located just north of the central Dizengoff Square, it has floor-to-ceiling windows and a colorful chalkboard sidewalk easel that, on a recent weekday, advertised breakfast sandwiches and an upcoming acoustic concert. Inside, a crowd of 20- and 30-somethings sit at tables, typing away at laptops. Its decorated with string lights and floor plants, with upbeat quotes and doodles scribbled in marker on the opaque windows in the back.

But HaOgen also offers something its neighborhood competitors do not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

According to the website of Dugit, a Messianic Jewish organization based in Tel Aviv whose name means small boat, HaOgen is an outreach coffee shop thats staffed with evangelists ready to share the good news with every guest that comes in.

Thanks to this trendy location the ministry gained access to a whole new group of people in their city who are in great need of a Savior, reads a 2019 blog post on the website of the Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries, a Messianic organization that describes HaOgen as a member of the fellowship.

The coffee shops deep ties to Dugit and Messianic Judaism, a movement that believes in the divinity of Jesus while claiming to practice Judaism, are not immediately detectable to patrons. A bookshelf at the back of the cafe is stocked with Hebrew copies of the New Testament and stacks of pamphlets about the Messiah, and the cafes logo is an anchor, a historical symbol of Christianity.

Yet no signage inside or outside indicates any ties between HaOgen and any organization or religious movement. Nor does the cafes website mention its affiliation with Dugit or any religious mission.

I didnt know it was owned by missionaries, said Jessica Arnovitz, a Jewish American immigrant to Israel who lives near the cafe. Ive been before, and its a nice place.

Messianic Judaism, some of whose followers were known in the past as Jews for Jesus, appears to be growing in Israel. Messianic Jews refer to Jesus as Yeshua and use Christian holy books, such as the New Testament, that have been translated to Hebrew. Messianic Jewish groups often have ties to explicitly Christian organizations, and none of the mainstream Jewish movements consider them Jewish. As with many mainstream Christian denominations, missionary work is part of Messianic practice.

Dugits executive director told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the cafe is not the site of efforts to proselytize to Jews. In fact, he said, Dugit does not directly run HaOgen although he said it does own the space and pay the salary of the cafes manager, a man named Argo who is also the lead pastor of an Ethiopian Messianic congregation. Argo declined an interview request from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

We are not trying to missionize anyone, bribe anyone, or do anything to people, said Avi Mizrachi, who was born in Israel and is himself a pastor at a Messianic congregation in Tel Aviv. We are Jews who love our country, serve our country in the army, and pay taxes. And we celebrate the Jewish holidays and feasts, and we believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And yes, we believe that Yeshua is the messiah.

He added, Now, if [customers] ask us what we believe, we tell them, but we dont go and, as we call this, missionize people or, or convert people.

Only proselytizing to minors without their parents consent and offering religious conversions in exchange for a material gift are barred by Israeli law. But there is a widely held misconception that missionary activity in the country is illegal, and the government has at times seemed open to advancing that reputation. In its 2010 International Religious Freedom Report, the U.S. State Department wrote that Israel has taken a number of steps that encouraged the perception that proselytizing is against government policy, such as detaining missionaries and citing proselytism as a reason to deny student, work, and religious visa extensions.

The idea that missionary work is illegal and the associated idea that believers in Jesus face persecution because of their faith leads many Messianics in Israel to mask their activities, according to Sarah Posner, a journalist and author who writes extensively on evangelical Christianity.

[Messianics] really played up the idea that proselytizing to Jews is illegal in Israel, Posner said. Its not as severe as they make it out to be, but they do play that up as evidence that they arent treated fairly. Elsewhere in the world, and especially in the United States, there arent those constraints at all, so they dont have a reason to have a cafe that seems like it has nothing to do with religion and is just a place you can go get a coffee.

Most Israelis who identify as Messianic have direct Jewish ancestry, while in the United States, youre more likely to encounter people who identify as Messianic Jews but are actually evangelical Christians, Posner said, adding that many American evangelical Christian churches fundraise for Messianic congregations and missionary efforts in Israel.

The number of Messianic Jews in Israel has multiplied in recent decades, according to representatives of the community. Today, Messianics in Israel number some 10,000 to 20,000, according to Yonatan Allon, managing editor of Kehila, an umbrella organization for Messianics in Israel. Representatives of the community attribute the growth partially to missionizing efforts and partially to immigration. There are Messianic congregations that reach out specifically to Russian-speaking as well as Ethiopian Israelis.

In 1999, the number of believers in total was approximately 5,000, Alec Goldberg, Israel Director of the Caspari Center, an evangelical organization in Israel, said in a 2019 Q&A on the centers website. Today, 5,000 is just the number of believers in Russian-speaking congregations in Israel. And of course, as observers of the Messianic scene in Israel are aware, the number of local ministries has also multiplied, with new initiatives constantly underway.

Those initiatives include more than 70 Messianic congregations throughout Israel, according to Kehila, including one, Adonai Roi, run by Dugit and led by Mizrachi thats a a seven-minute walk away from HaOgen.

In addition to the cafe and the Messianic congregation, Dugits website says it runs a prayer room in Tel Aviv, a charity for the poor and an annual conference for women. The website also says Dugit was involved in an evangelical TV station that Israels broadcasting authority shut down last year.

The messaging of these Messianic groups is very evangelical, Posner said. For a lot of Israeli Jews, its an unfamiliar message, unless they have a lot of political connections with evangelical Christians who, as we know, are very interested in supporting Israel and supporting settlements.

Thats unlikely to describe the typical customer of a Tel Aviv coffee shop, so some in Israel are working to alert potential HaOgen visitors to what their patronage supports.

Recently, two years after it opened, HaOgen caught the attention of Beyneynu, an Israeli organization that monitors missionary activity in the country. Founded last year by Shannon Nuszen, an American immigrant to Israel and former evangelical missionary who converted to Orthodox Judaism, the watchdog group made headlines earlier this year after it outed a family that had been actively involved in a haredi Orthodox Jerusalem community for several years but were actually Christian missionaries.

Nuszen declined an interview request, but the nonprofit wrote on Facebook last month that it had received tips regarding HaOgen Cafes Messianic mission. The post said that Beyneynu has no objection to people of different faiths operating businesses in Tel Aviv but wanted to alert potential customers to the cafes ties.

People should know, however, that this eatery is not just another bohemian caf. Rather, it is part of a well-funded, organized effort by evangelical donors to convert young, vulnerable Jews to Christianity, the Facebook post said. Were simply asking for transparency and respect.

Main Photo: HaOgen Cafe, in central Tel Aviv, is an outpost of a Messianic Jewish organization.(Abby Seitz)

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At this Tel Aviv cafe, baristas serve you espresso with a side of Jesus - Connecticut Jewish Ledger

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

(This article is written by guest writer Aron Gamman.)

Exploring Judaism through the lens of Spiritual Naturalism brings forth many possibilities. On the one side it challenges Jewish traditions by denying a supernatural agency. But in as much as Judaism has been less otherworldly than some of the other major religions, Naturalism and Judaism do have a common ground.

Treating Jewish theism as mythology, rather than taking it literally, challenges the heart of what it means to be Jewish to those who hold to a more static interpretation of the tradition. This same sort of attitude reflects the reaction that the Jewish community in Holland took towards Baruch Spinoza in an earlier time. His idea of God challenged the traditional view as it also challenged the idea of God held by the Christian churches of his day.

Spinoza began his life much like any other Jew of that period. His parents had moved to Holland from Portugal to escape religious persecution. But more radically than other Jews of the time, Baruch questioned tradition and consider other options. Whether or not he saw himself as a radical, its difficult to know, but it led to his being excommunicated. In a sense he became the first secular Jew. In anarticle in the Jewish Virtual Library, it states:

At first Spinoza was reviled as an atheist and certainly, his God is not the conventional Judo-Christian God. The philosophers of the enlightenment ridiculed his methods not without some grounds. The romantics, attracted by his identification of God with Nature, rescued him from oblivion.

It is a bit ironic that while Spinozas family had immigrated from Portugal to gain religious freedom, Baruch sought in his new country a different kind of religious freedom. He remains today one of the heros for those of us who think that the words God and Nature essentially refer to the same thing.

Today, we possess a freedom that many in the past did not have. This allows us to explore our Jewish identity, even those of us who can no longer accept its model of theism. We can acknowledge the well-known literature (or canon) of Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, Siddur; we can appreciate how they established norms as well as humanistic ideas and values in the past, but we do not have to give them undue authority or take them literally. We can still connect to the memory of our ancestors and their stories, but in a different, perhaps more authentic form to us and our communities; one that can be integrated with the world view revealed by modern science. We can accept the possibility of new stories and new interpretations arising in the present and furthering the tradition.

We do not think religious expressions necessarily fit secular interpretations of Jewish history and human experience. Yet we wish to speak for ourselves. We wish to experiment with many of the concepts presented on our own outside of religious guidelines. We do not necessarily need to be validated by traditional religious texts.

We approach a plurality of Jewish roots so we have the power to choose. We deny a single Jewish tradition, but accept many Judaisms. Many counter-establishment traditions have existed in the past and continue to exist. These have included both mystical and secular varieties. The presence of these traditions are written of in the Talmud and elsewhere, even if some were officially ignored once issues were decided. Underground and folk traditions are as rooted in Jewish tradition as much as official ideology.

A Spiritual Naturalists approach to Judaism can be seen as a new counter-establishment tradition. Who has the authority, now? It is us. Spinozas ideas preceed those of modern science, yet to some degree he inspired them. Currently he also serves as an inspiration for those of us who embrace the world view advanced by science, yet continue to value their Jewish identity and the rich, ages-old tradition in which that identity has developed. We can embrace the incredible picture of the creation that modern science is presenting to us, while maintaining our roots in the Jewish tradition.

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Jewish Religious Tradition and Spirituality in a Naturalistic Perspective - Patheos

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

Far-right extremists efforts to cultivate a wide network of content creators reveal how long-standing trends in the movements embrace of audio propaganda are bound up with the current reliance on a growing number of multimedia platforms.

Since the advent of home radio, far-right extremists have used audio broadcasts to communicate with supporters and inspire on-the-ground organizers to carry out rallies or even attacks. While the technologies favored by far-right extremists have changed considerably through the years, these broadcasts continue to play a no less crucial role in the movement, particularly in connection to cultivating real-world activity. While scholars have paid some attention to far-right podcasts and internet-available audio recordings before them, the networks these mediums have inspired extremists to build are critical to an understanding of the movements past, present and future.

This is part four of the Southern Poverty Law Centers report examining 15 years of podcasting data across 18 different shows produced by far-right extremists. While the ideology and style of these shows varied considerably, SPLCs analysis revealed that this network was crucial in terms of bolstering a cadre of prominent far-right activists, many of whom were critical to the explosion of on-the-ground activity the SPLC and others observed during the Trump era.

The use of audio media to transmit hateful ideas is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the use of radio technology to spread hate has roots in extremist movements both in the United States and abroad.

In Nazi Germany, radio was not to be solely an instrument for conveying information, but a force for indoctrination. Joseph Goebbels, just after his 1933 appointment as the Reich Minister of Propaganda, called radio the chief and major mediator between the Movement and the Nation, between Idea and Man. He added, What the press was to the nineteenth century, radio will be to the twentieth. By 1936, Goebbels bragged that his ministry had transformed the radio into the sharpest of propaganda weapons ... a tool for ideological education and top-class political force.

Meanwhile, Charles Edward Coughlin, a Catholic priest known for his staunch antisemitic and anti-socialist views, dominated hate radio in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. His show, Golden Hour of the Shrine of the Little Flower, blended populist diatribes with overt antisemitic rhetoric. In 1938, Coughlin defended Kristallnacht, a series of Nazi-led pogroms against Germanys Jewish population, claiming it was retaliation against Jews for their supposed persecution of Christians. In the biography Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, The Father of Hate Radio, author Donald Warren compares Coughlins level of fame to that of movie stars of the day. At the height of Coughlins popularity in the 1930s, between 40 and 60% of U.S. households owned a radio, with Coughlin at one point commanding nearly 90 million weekly listeners. Coughlins broadcasts inspired the formation of dozens of far-right groups. Among these were the New York City-based Christian Front, whose members participated in rallies organized by the pro-Nazi German American Bund; harassed and attacked New York City Jews; led protests of Jewish-owned businesses; and generally translated Coughlins message of hate into action. In January of 1940, police arrested over a dozen men, including some Front members, on allegations that they had conspired to overthrow the U.S. government.

Some scholars have drawn comparisons between Coughlins dramatic, bombastic, fear-mongering style and the on-air personalities of later right-wing talk radio celebrities such as Rush Limbaugh. Like Coughlin, Limbaugh inculcated his listeners with an ultra-conservative worldview through his use of specialized language (dittoheads, feminazis, Gorbasm) and even a redefinition of common ideas such as racism or diversity to better reflect right-wing grievances.

The 1980s and 1990s were also the heyday of shock jock and hot talk radio formats. These formats encouraged hosts to offend their audiences and push boundaries, though they were not necessarily always political. Popular shock jocks including Howard Stern, Don Imus and the duo Opie and Anthony took calls from fans, hosted in-studio guests, wrote and performed parody bits, engaged returning casts of characters, and staged contests, pranks, and outlandish stunts in order to retain their mostly male audiences.

Inspired by the success of conservative talk radio and hot talk formats, far-right, anti-government extremists, racists and antisemites were eager to try their hand at radio. However, the advertising and funding requirements of traditional radio stations largely blocked them from the commercial airwaves. Instead, these groups turned to alternative media for novel ways of communicating their message. In the early 1980s, Klansman and Aryan Nations affiliate Louis Beam set up an early computer bulletin board system (BBS) a predecessor to modern online forums. Beam also broadcast his Jubilee Radio program on short-wave radio bands.

Extremists who once embraced short-wave radio and other forms of alternative broadcasting easily made the switch to internet technology in the 1990s. In 1997, David Duke, founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and its youngest ever Grand Wizard (later sanitized to National Director), began hosting downloadable recordings of The David Duke International Internet Radio Show on his website, The David Duke Report. Dukes friend and longtime associate Don Black launched Stormfront, a website and discussion forum for white supremacists of all stripes in 1995. Black began posting an array of audio and video files on Stormfront. By mid-2004, the proprietors had begun a series of Stormfront-branded internet radio shows such as Stormfront Town Hall with David Duke and later Stormfront Action Radio.

In the mid-2000s, with the introduction of the iPod personal music player and the RSS (really simple syndication) system, pre-recorded audio programs, known as podcasts, could be regularly downloaded and played by the user at their convenience. Today, 37% of Americans listen to at least one podcast per month, and the average age of listeners is 34, compared to 47 for broadcast radio and 57 for network television viewers.

Modern white supremacist podcasters appeal to this younger audience by modeling their shows after the popular shock jock programs of the 1990s while promoting the age-old hate spewed by Duke. The contemporary hate podcast landscape is quick to evolve and change as new formats, new platforms, and new financial incentives are introduced into the marketplace.

Killstream and White Rabbit Radio exemplify the current trend toward producing live-streamed audiovisual content rather than pre-recorded, audio-only podcasts. Even long-running audio-only shows such as The Daily Shoah began recording video content (albeit only available to paid subscribers) in late fall of 2017.

Video streams can be watched live like a traditional radio or television (if there is a video component) broadcast, or they can be replayed later at the users convenience, like a podcast. In addition to offering a visual component, many video streaming platforms such as YouTube, Twitch and DLive have also added a live chat feature in which audience members can interact with each other and the performer or performers. Some video streaming sites offer the option to attach a monetary tip to a chat comment which provides for an additional level of interaction between the show host and the audience members.

There have been a few studies of these far right-wing celebrity networks. In Rebecca Lewis study of far-right content creators on YouTube, she documents the connections between 65 YouTube streamers. Lewis posits that these creators established an "alternative influence" propaganda network that uses celebrity branding techniques to deliver political propaganda. In a 2020 paper, Manoel Horta Ribiero, et al. also looked at far right YouTube channels in their work on radicalization pathways, focusing on how the network of commenters interacts with the content and how they are impacted by recommendation algorithms.

Modern podcasts and video shows differ in their encouragement of and response to audience participation. Many shows maintain Twitter timelines, Facebook pages and groups for fans, and some also have Telegram channels for discussion. Others engage listeners more directly. The Right Stuff network engages listeners through its forum that is accessible only to paid subscribers, as well as through a comment section below each show on its website. Some hosts, such as those from The Daily Shoah, occasionally read listener comments or emails during the show. Others make a point of announcing when they receive a donation through email or during a livestream.

The hosts of The Political Cesspool take telephone calls and invite users who are in the chat to call and ask questions or even participate as a recurring friend of the show. For example, a regular caller known only as Courtney from Alabama has been featured on The Political Cesspool 12 times between 2013 and 2020.

In order to serve as effective propaganda, extremist podcasts aim to reach the widest possible audience. As a result, they are typically free on a variety of platforms. However, some far-right influencers have also been successful in using podcasts as a source of income. They may do so by generating third-party advertising revenue, by serving as vehicles for hosts to solicit paid donations, or by providing upgraded content to paid subscribers (a paywall). Many podcasters in this space including The Daily Shoah use a hybrid model where they distribute free and subscribers-only content.

Podcasts and video streams have proved to be fruitful for soliciting donations as well. As Hatewatch reported last year, antisemitic white nationalist Fuentes was one of the top earners on the DLive platform, cashing out over $10,000 per month in user donations in return for providing livestreams five nights a week.

Because of the offensive, racist content in these shows, general access podcast-syndication and streaming platforms occasionally remove an individual host or an entire shows personal or branded account and all its content for violating their terms of service. When this happens, the banned individual or show may switch platforms or may attempt to re-brand themselves to stay on the same platform. Fans or affiliated accounts may also re-post individual show episodes back onto the original platform, sometimes altering the show metadata data that gives information about a shows creator or other details platforms can use to justify removing content to avoid being banned themselves.

The frequent reposting and platform-switching means tracking podcasts and video streams over time becomes more challenging. For example, even if the metadata for a podcast is still available on the original syndication platform (e.g., Podbean, Spreaker, Zencast), the recording itself will most likely be missing. Data is more consistently available for some shows that self-host (e.g., The Political Cesspool and The Daily Shoah), but show owners can still choose to self-censor episodes, remove episodes entirely or place them behind a paywall at any time.

The ease through with extremists will be able to find platforms that incorporate these technologies may change over time, in large part due to these figures limited access to certain mainstream platforms. Just as they faced backlash in the 1980s, the extremist audio and video broadcasters of today are once again facing increasing scrutiny for their role in enabling violence and spreading hate. Hatewatch anticipates that the next wave of decentralized technologies cryptocurrencies, the distributed web will likewise be pressed into service just as shortwave radio and the Internet were in years past.

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Inside the Far-right Podcast Ecosystem, Part 4: Far-Right Podcasting, Past and Present - Southern Poverty Law Center

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

A network of podcasts, including one which featured former President Donald Trumps eldest son as a guest in 2016, fueled the rise of one of the core leaders of the modern white nationalist movement.

Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist figurehead during the Trump era, was one of dozens of up-and-coming extremists who leveraged a network of far-right podcasts to mobilize followers and turn his movement into a household name. This movement, known as the so-called alternative right or alt-right for short, encompassed a loose set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals under the mantle of white supremacy. While early coverage of the alt-right emphasized its members and leaders fluency with internet culture specifically forums and social media the role of podcasts as a vehicle for propaganda and leadership development has not yet been examined.

The Southern Poverty Law Center analyzed Spencers breakthrough into the upper echelons ofthe white power movement through the lens of a web of 18 different podcasts popular with the extreme right between 2005 and 2020. The SPLC found that Spencers earliest efforts to market his movement to the broader extreme right were facilitated in large part by The Political Cesspool (TPC), a podcast and radio show hosted by longtime white nationalist propagandist James Edwards. Though the show has featured a variety of far-right extremists from the United States and abroad, Edwards has brushed shoulders with members of the more mainstream right, including Donald Trump Jr.

This is part two of the SPLCs four-part report examining 15 years of podcasting data across 18 different shows produced by far-right extremists. While Spencer is but one of the 882 cast members who appeared on 4,046 different episodes of these shows, he figures prominently in the web of far-right extremist content makers.

Spencer emerged as one of the most prominent white nationalist figureheads during the flurry of extremist activity around the 2016 election, although his involvement in the white power movement extends well beyond the Trump era.

In 2008, Spencer began promoting the term alternative right while an editor at the paleoconservative online publication Takis Magazine. In December of that year, Takis published a speech from far-right political theorist Paul Gottfried outlining his vision for a new independent intellectual Right. Though the speech itself never used the term, it was key to Spencer's nascent movement.

In 2011, Spencer became president of the National Policy Institute, a think tank founded by William H. Regnery II, a mega-donor to various white nationalist outlets. Under Spencers tutelage, the National Policy Institute, dedicated to ensuring the biological and cultural continuity of white Americans, rebranded age-old racial bigotries for a younger generation of extremists. It did so through a variety of media, including blogs, journal articles and podcasts. NPI also held dozens of conferences with other white nationalist figureheads. In the run-up to and aftermath of the 2016 election, these gatherings drew scores of younger attendees, in part because the institute offered discounted admission for those under 30.

Likewise, Spencer was one of a core cadre of white nationalist organizers behind the flurry of far-right rallies in the first half of the Trump era. This included the August 2017 Unite the Right rally, which brought hundreds of white supremacists and other far-right extremists to Charlottesville, Virginia. The event devolved into violent skirmishes, culminating in the murder of antiracist activist Heather Heyer by James Alex Fields Jr. A few months later, at Spencers Oct. 19 appearance at the University of Florida as part of his brief college tour, three of his supporters were arrested on charges of attempted homicide for allegedly firing at protesters.

Today, he is one of over a dozen defendants named as organizers of Unite the Right in the Sines v. Kessler civil lawsuit. NPI has remained largely dormant in the years following the fracturing of the alt-right in 2018. Spencer made at least two attempts to launch new podcasts, including The McSpencer Group and Radix Live, named after one of NPIs publications, Radix Journal.

On Oct. 24, 2009, less than a year after beginning to promote the term alternative right, Spencer made his first appearance on The Political Cesspool (TPC), a podcast and radio show hosted by James Edwards. Over the course of Spencers next two dozen or so appearances on TPC, Edwards used his prominent platform within the broader far-right movement to promote Spencer as a core member of the white nationalist intelligentsia.

Edwards, a board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens and a principal member of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, started TPC in 2004 as a terrestrial radio show, though it has since branched out to internet broadcasting. TPCs mission statement includes white nationalist rhetoric, claiming that it stands for the Dispossessed Majority and is pro-White.

As part of TPCs five-year anniversary special, Spencer appeared alongside Paul Gottfried to discuss the failure of the conservative movement. Edwards introduced Spencer as the Managing Editor of TakiMag.com and an intellectual heavyweight. Within the first ten minutes of the interview, Spencer began promoting his vision for a new far-right movement.

Weve got to find a new tactic that isnt just about kicking the neoconservatives out of the [conservative] movement. I dont think thats possible or desirable. Weve got to find a new right wing, he said during the interview. Spencer added that he had begun to refer to this movement as the alternative right, a collection of different groups or individuals who are basically not falling into that lesser-of-two-evils logic that he claimed was used by some far-right extremists to justify voting for Republican candidates such as the late John McCain.

The discussion was notable in two regards. First, Spencers efforts to introduce the alternative right as a concept to TPC listeners came long before the term had begun to take root among far-right extremists. Spencers TPC appearance came less than a year after Gottfried presented his vision for a nationalist, populist right-wing in a speech at the H.L. Mencken Club. Spencer published Gottfrieds speech on Takis Magazines website, under the title The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right, in December 2009. The term stuck, and over the course of the next year, Takis Magazine, under Spencers editorship, would publish several articles laying the groundwork for this alternative right.

Second, Spencers appearance on TPC allowed him to reach a broader constituency within the far right. Edwards, a Tennessee resident, had long tailored the show for a Southern white nationalist and neo-Confederate audience two audiences that would become crucial partners for Spencer and other organizers during the 2017 Unite the Right rally. Throughout the episode, both Edwards and Spencer urged far-right activists to come together, with Edwards emphasizing that their survival depended on it. Likewise, throughout the segment, Spencer and, later, Gottfried sought to draw listeners to their causes. Spencer, Gottfried and Edwards encouraged listeners to attend the H.L. Mencken Clubs second annual meetup.

Between 2009 and 2020, Spencer appeared another 29 times on TPC broadcasts. The bibliographical details of each appearance provide a timeline for his development as a white nationalist leader, as well as for the alt-rights rise.

Most of Spencers 30 appearances on The Political Cesspool pre-date his notoriety in the popular press by several years. Through The Political Cesspool, he was able to use the airtime to establish himself as an intellectual leader within the broader extreme right, while also drawing listeners deeper into the world of far-right activism through attendance at in-person events. Spencer continued to organize, promote and attend white nationalist meetups and conferences, including infamously in 2016 when he catapulted into the public eye after yelling Hail Trump! and Hail victory! an English translation of the Nazi chant Sieg Heil during an event in Washington, D.C.

During this time, too, Spencers appearances on the show coincided with a range of notable guests. Representatives from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist group with roots in the efforts to oppose school desegregation in the 1950s, were frequent guests, joining Edwards show some 58 times between 2005 and 2020. It also featured a variety of racist thinkers who figured into the alt-rights growth during the 2016 election. These included Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, who appeared on the show 52 times during this period; Sam Dickson, a former lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan who appeared 36 times; and Kevin MacDonald, a retired university professor and author of several antisemitic tomes. MacDonald appeared 35 times. Many of these figures had, like Spencer, nurtured a deliberately more mainstream image to hide their extremist views.

But Edwards also hosted politicians, from the United States and abroad. In 2012, Rep. Walter B. Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, went on the show to discuss troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. (He later claimed he was unaware of the shows political leanings.) Rep. Nick Griffin, of the far-right British National Party, made multiple appearances on the show, joining Edwards program five times. Finally, Edwards interviewed Donald Trump Jr. in March 2016 on a sister program, Liberty Roundtable. There, the two disparaged immigrants, particularly undocumented ones. Trump Jr. later claimed Edwards was brought into the interview without my knowledge.

While Spencer continued to appear on The Political Cesspool throughout the 2010s, an array of newer white nationalist podcasts provided him a variety of different platforms from which to promote and grow the alt-right. These shows, many of which were produced by and for a younger generation of white supremacists, tended to appeal to a younger, more digitally savvy, audience.

Spencer became a regular fixture on The Right Stuff podcasting circuit in fall of 2015. On Oct. 13, 2015, Spencer joined The Daily Shoah for the first time. The show was recorded in the runup to NPIs annual conference, held around Halloween of that year. It included a brief promotional segment, dubbed the NPI Conference Haircut Contest, where Spencer judged TRS listeners undercuts a type of hairstyle where the sides of the head are shaved or buzzed, and the top is left at a longer length. NPI awarded the winner a free ticket to its annual conference, held that year in Philadelphia.

After this initial appearance on The Daily Shoah, Spencers involvement with other shows in the podcast network grew. While Spencer appeared on 95 episodes of nine different podcasts from 200920, his appearances on five of these nine shows coincided with an upswing in street mobilization between 2016 and 2018 by far-right extremists throughout the country. Spencer used many of these appearances to either promote future events or shape the narrative after a high-profile event, such as Unite the Right or press conferences.

Richard Spencers podcast appearances, over time. Each blue dot in the timeline represents one episode in which he appeared.

Some of these discussions brought together other prominent organizers as well. The diagram below shows Spencer's diverse set of co-appearances with dozens of cast members from multiple podcasts over an 11-year period, from 2009 to 2020.

Richard Spencer (green circle at center) co-appeared with dozens of guests on nine different podcast series between 2009-20

In 2016, Spencer appeared with Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer on an episode of Between Two Lampshades a spin-off of The Daily Shoah, named after the Zach Galifianakis talk show Between Two Ferns to promote a speaking engagement at Texas A&M University. Following the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017, Spencer joined two TRS podcasts to break down what happened in Charlottesville. In an episode posted Aug. 13, 2017, Spencer joined Matthew Gebert, then a State Department official and TRS organizer known in white supremacist circles as Coach Finstock; fellow Unite the Right organizer Elliott Kline, who used pseudonym Eli Mosley; and the rest of usual cast of The Daily Shoah to unpack what happened at Unite the Right. A few weeks later, on Aug. 21, 2017, Spencer joined the Fash the Nation podcast, along with Third Rail host Norman Asa Garrison III. In the first 10 minutes of the two-hour episode, Spencer and Garrison sought to shift the blame for the violence at Unite the Right from the far right to antiracist protesters.

Spencers extensive cooperation with other prominent alt-right podcasts declined in the aftermath of Unite the Right. In 2019, he launched The McSpencer Group, a podcast and talk show. While the show has managed to attract a small number of rotating cast members, Spencer himself has appeared on just two other podcasts in the SPLCs data set between 2019 and 2020, signifying a retrenchment back into his own work and away from other figures in the movement.

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Inside the Far-right Podcast Ecosystem, Part 2: Richard Spencer's Origins in the Podcast Network - Southern Poverty Law Center

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

A picture being widely used in media outlets as purportedly showing Irmgard Furchner, a former Nazi concentration camp secretary on trial in Germany, is actually that of a 99-year-old survivor of the camp whose testimony is part of the case against Furchner.

Yehudit (Dita) Sperling is one of several survivors of the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland who have provided testimony in the case against Furchner, who face charges of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people.

But in a cruel twist, numerous news outlets around the world have been using a picture of Sperling erroneously captioned as being Furchner. On Friday, the UKs widely read Daily Mail used the picture of Sperling with the headline: Pictured: 96-year-old Nazi secretary of evil caught on the run.

Relatives of Sperling said they were trying to contact media outlets that used the picture incorrectly to get the error corrected. (The Times of Israel had also embedded a tweet showing the incorrect picture. The erroneous tweet was removed, and a correction appended, when Dita Sperlings relatives brought the error to our attention.)

Sperling, originally from Kovno, now Kaunas in Lithuania, was deported to Stutthof with her mother on July 19, 1944, after her first husband Yehuda Zupovich, a Jewish policeman in the Kovno ghetto, was executed for collaborating with partisans.

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Sperling, who now lives in Tel Aviv, was later awarded the Life Saviors Cross by Lithuania for saving the life of a Jewish child during the Holocaust, at a ceremony held at the Lithuanian Embassy in Israel in 2013.

Sperlings lawyer Onur zata, who also represents another Stutthof survivor, told the German paper Bild that giving evidence against Furchner, now 96, was an important historical mission.

Deputy Police Chief Yehuda Zupovich poses with his wife, Dita, in their apartment in the Kovno ghetto two weeks before his arrest. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Yehudit Katz Sperling)

These proceedings are of particular importance to my clients. Its not about revenge for them. Rather, they want the criminal responsibility of the many helpers and accomplices in the Shoah (Holocaust) to be established, zata said.

Furchner was remanded in custody on Thursday after spending several hours on the run in a bid to flee her trial, where she is to face charges of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people.

The court in the town of Itzehoe ordered that she be held in custody pending the resumption of the trial on October 19.

One of the first women to be prosecuted for Nazi-era crimes in decades, Furchner is charged for her role at the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland where she was secretary to the camp commandant while still a teenager.

She failed to show up on Thursday at the opening session of her trial, but was apprehended hours later.

Furchner had left her retirement home near Hamburg and taken a taxi to a subway station, said Frederike Milhoffer, a spokeswoman for the court.

Lawyer Christoph Rueckel, acting on behalf of Holocaust survivors, said Furchner had written to the court around three weeks ago to say she planned to boycott the proceedings because they would be degrading for her.

Judicial officers stand in the empty court room of the Langericht Itzehoe court prior to the trial of a 96-year-old former secretary of the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp in Itzehoe, Germany, September 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, Pool). Inset shows Irmgard Furchner.

If someone remains silent in such a trial, or does not show up, it is rather shocking for these survivors, because after so many years they actually think that one could be more reasonable about it, he said.

Prosecutors accuse Furchner of having assisted in the systematic murder of detainees at Stutthof, where she worked in the office of the camp commander, Paul Werner Hoppe, between June 1943 and April 1945.

The trial is taking place in a youth court as she was aged between 18 and 19 at the time.

Around 65,000 people died at the camp, not far from the city of Gdansk, among them Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet Russian prisoners of war, according to the indictment.

The main gate leading into the former Nazi German Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Poland, July 18, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

According to Rueckel, Furchner handled all the correspondence for camp commander Hoppe.

She typed out the deportation and execution commands at his dictation and initialed each message herself, Rueckel told public broadcaster NDR.

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Survivors photo wrongly used as pic of the Nazi suspect she testified against - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

On September 29 and 30, 1941, more than 33,000 people, mostly Jews, were executed in the Babi Yar ravine near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv one of the largest mass murders in the Holocaust. FRANCE 24 looks back at this unspeakable event 80 years on, as plans are finally underway for an official museum honouring the victims memory.

A policeman told me to undress and pushed me to the edge of the pit, where a group of people were awaiting their fate. Before the shooting started, I was so scared that I fell into the pit. I fell onto dead bodies. At first I didnt understand a thing: where was I? How did I end up there? I thought I was going inside. The shooting went on; people were still falling. I came to my senses and suddenly I understood everything. I could feel my arms, my legs, my stomach, my head. I wasnt even injured. I was pretending to be dead. I was on top of dead people and injured people. I could hear some people breathing; others were moaning in pain. Suddenly I heard a child screaming: Mum! It sounded like my little daughter. I burst into tears.Dina Pronicheva, one of the few survivors of the Babi Yar massacre,captured its horror when shegave testimony in the trial of fifteen German soldiers in Kyiv in 1946.

At the Babi Yar ravine just outside Kyiv, 33,771 civilians were massacred on September 29 and 30, 1941, according to figures the Einzatsgruppen C (a Waffen SS travelling death squad) sent back to Berlin.

This followed the Nazis capture of Kyiv on September 19, as they stormed through Soviet territory after launching Operation Barbarossa in June. Nearly 100,000 Jews fled the Ukrainian capital before the Nazis took it. But for those who remained, it was the beginning of a nightmare.

As explosions planted by the Soviet secret police the NKVD rocked Kiev, the Nazis decided to eliminate the citys Jews driven by the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracist canard at the heart of Nazi ideology, which falsely alleged that the Jewish people were responsible forBolshevism.

The German occupiers demanded that Kyivs Jews gather near a train station on the citys outskirts for resettlement elsewhere; those who refused to go there were threatened with death.

A premeditated killing spree

It was a trap and many knew it. Ukrainian engineer Fedir Phido recounted the sorrow of the Jews on their way to Babi Yar, as quoted by Dutch historian Karel Berkhoff in his bookHarvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule:Many thousands of people, mainly old ones but middle-aged people were also not lacking were moving towards Babi Yar. And the children my God, there were so many children! All this was moving, burdened with luggage and children. Here and there old and sick people who lacked the strength to move by themselves were being carried, probably by sons or daughters, on carts without any assistance. Some cry, others console. Most were moving in a self-absorbed way, in silence and with a doomed look. It was a terrible sight.

They were all taken to Babi Yar, which means grandmothers ravine or old womans ravine in Ukrainian. The Soviet NKVD had already used this site to carry out massacres it provided an out-of-the-way firing range near the big population centre of Kyiv.

There was a whole process starting from the place where the people were forced to gather, Boris Czerny, a professor of Russian literature and culture at the University of Caen and a specialist in the history of Jews in Eastern Europe, told FRANCE 24. People were asked to take their most treasured possessions with them, then at a particular spot they had to give away their proof of identity, then at another point they had to give away the possessions they brought, and finally there was a place at which they had to undress.

The victims were led to the ravine in small groups. Members of Einsatzgruppen C opened fire, alongside two groups from the German Order Police and troops from the collaborationist Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. The shooting carried on throughout the day and into the next.

This was not the first episode in what historians call the Holocaust by bullets: A month earlier, 23,600 Jews suffered the same fate in Kamenets-Podolski, a Ukrainian town near the Hungarian border.

However, the scale of the slaughter at Babi Yar and its systematic nature made it a turning point in the Holocaust.

It was the first time in history that a premeditated killing spree wiped out practically the entire Jewish population of a big European city, Berkhoff put it, speaking to FRANCE 24.

This was the first major massacre in the Holocaust by bullets, although smaller massacres had preceded it, Czerny added. Babi Yar inaugurated a Nazi policy of massacring Jews with guns in ditches it was a kind of experiment that prompted the Nazis to do the same thing, carrying out similarly systematic massacres in the rest of Ukraine.

Nearly 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered between 1941 and 1944. Almost 80 percent of them were shot dead. Executions continued at Babi Yar long after September 1941. The Nazis killed nearly 100,000 people there until Soviet forces liberated Kyiv in November 1943 not only Jews but also Ukrainian opponents of the occupation, Poles, Roma people, the mentally ill and prisoners of war.

Before the USSR recaptured Kyiv in late 1943, the Nazis tried to hide the evidence of what had happened at Babi Yar: Soviet prisoners of war were forced to exhume and cremate the corpses there. The Nazis then killed them, trying to remove all of the last witnesses.

Commemorations rare under USSR

There was no public recognition of the massacres at Babi Yar in the years after the Second World War. The ravine was used as an open-air rubbish dump. The victims possessions would sometimes rise to the surface and people would take them for themselves, Czerny said.

Soviet ideology refused to acknowledge the Nazis mass killings of Jews, because such massacres disproved the politically expedient notion that the USSRs different nationalities and ethnic groups had suffered equally in the war against Germany.

In the early 1960s, the authorities even decided to fill the ravine with a mixture of water and mud, causing a disaster when a collapsed dike set off a landslide, killing dozens.

A monument was finally created at Babi Yar in 1976 but it made no reference to the Holocaust, instead blandly paying homage to the citizens of Kyiv and prisoners of war murdered there between 1941 and 1943. Throughout the Soviet era, public commemorations at Babi Yar were rare and vague about the identity of most victims, Berkhoff noted.

But in September 1991, amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, the local Jewish community placed a sculpture of a menorah at Babi Yar to honour the memory of the Jews massacred there.

Other monuments emerged in the years that followed, paying homage to massacred children, Roma, priests and Ukrainian partisans. Many voices have called for a monument dedicated to Babi Yars Jewish victims over recent years but several proposals were eventually dismissed as too controversial, notably Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovskys idea to use video technology to allow visitors to engage in roleplay as victims or perpetrators.

Raising public awareness

Now the Ukrainian government has launched a plan to build a museum by 2026, with a model showing what the massacre site looked like and archives remembering the victims. The group of academics guiding the project is led by Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest and co-founder of Yahad-In Unum, an organisation dedicated to finding mass graves of Jewish Holocaust victims. This is the first time that we are going to have a museum showing what the site of a mass shooting looked like, alongside efforts to create a list of all of the victims names there in honour of their memory, Father Desbois told FRANCE 24.

We should also create a list of the killers names, because without that its almost as if it was Babi Yar that massacred Jews, Father Desbois said. Weve got to restore the sense that this is the site of a horrific crime.

Hopefully such a Babi Yar museum will raise public consciousness of the Holocaust by bullets, Father Desbois continued: At Auschwitz, there is a camp with barbed wire and people go there and remember what took place. But people dont do the same atmass graves from mass shootings.

That indignation at forgotten suffering also animated the renowned Soviet writer Vasily Grossman, most famous in the Anglophone world for his novelLife and Fate. A Jew from Ukraine, Grossman was reporting on the war for the Soviet defence ministrys newspaperKrasnaya Zvezda(Red Star) when he learned of the massacres in his native region in the autumn of 1943.

In despair because he had no news from his mother, Grossman wrote in an article: There are no Jews in Ukraine. [] In the big cities, in the hundreds of small towns, in the thousands of villages, you wont see young girls black eyes filled with tears, you wont hear an old womans voice racked with suffering, you wont see a hungry babys dirty face. Everything is silent. Everything is peaceful. A whole people have been massacred.

These human beings must be remembered.

This article has been adaptedfrom the original in French.

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The first major massacre in the Holocaust by bullets: Babi Yar, 80 years on - FRANCE 24 English

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

Surviving a Nazi concentration camp, only to end up in an American neighborhood full of gangsters, might be enough to make anyone fearful or bitter. But with a bit of help, Helen Pinczewski and her family not only survived, they thrived.

The family story that of Helen; her husband, David; and their young children has been told by their son, Dr. Solomon Pinczewski of Poway and Linda Rosenberg in From Bergen-Belsen to Brooklyn.

This is Pinczewskis first book and second for Rosenberg, who teaches English in San Diego.

I actually started the book more than 20 years ago by taping conversations with my mom and dad, Pinczewski said. I felt that most of the people who survived concentration camps never had a story that involved the Mafia.

Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp in Germany. It is the same camp where Anne Frank died. Pinczewski says his parents met in the camp.

After five years in the camp from 1940 to 1945 his mother weighed only 80 pounds when she was freed.

She had typhus and all kinds of health issues, he said. And she had been hit over the head; a British surgeon operated on her head and saved her life.

His father was in the camp for four years and freed at the same time. However, it took a while for each to discover the other was still alive.

Once she recovered, she went to find my father, he said. Since she was bald from the surgery, her friends put together a wig for her. She was riding on the back of a motorcycle, and having to hang onto her luggage and her wig with both hands. Of course, they finally met and were married in December 1945.

Pinczewski was born in 1948 and the family remained in Germany until 1949. After being sponsored by a relative that same year, the family arrived in Brooklyn.

Needing income, his father decided to open a candy store, as it required relatively little money. Neither parent spoke English in the beginning. The family lived in a small room behind the store in a predominantly Italian neighborhood.

I slept on crates from the store and a mattress on top, Pinczewski said. The room was only about 500 square feet.

What the young family didnt realize was that the 19th Hole the bar and club next door was the hangout for all five families of the mafia.

We were in a totally mafia controlled neighborhood, Pinczewski said. The gangsters were vicious people.

But as described in his book, Pinczewski says his mother quickly charmed the local Mafia boss, who admired her spirit and sense of humor and decided that the numbers tattooed on her arm were proof that she had suffered enough.

He helped my parents in many incidences, such as when gangsters tried to get my father to sell stolen goods, he said. My mother dealt with all the gangsters. My father was very hot tempered and they would have killed him if not for her.

Pinczewski describes his mother as the Jewish version of Sophia, the fictional mother of Dorothy in The Golden Girls television show. Thats the kind of person she was, he said.

My parents were able to make a living from the candy store, and I was able to make friends of all different kinds and faiths, Pinczewski said. It gave me and my younger brother born 12 years after me the opportunity to be Americans, which is what they really wanted.

I look at it as a sweet time, as difficult as it was, he said. Its incredible that life turned out the way it did for us. I became a dentist and my brother is a prominent attorney in New York.

Now 73, Pinczewski and his wife, Ellen, have lived in Poway for 31 years. They knew of the area, and moved here to retire. Their daughters, Jessica and Jacqueline, attended Poway schools.

Jessica, 43, and her husband have two young sons. The family moved from New York to Rancho Bernardo during the pandemic. Jacqueline, 36, is also married and teaches special education in New York.

Im so happy that I can leave this legacy for my grandchildren, Pinczewski said. It will be wonderful for them to know their heritage. He added, My mom knew I was writing it. I wish it had been completed before she passed.

From Bergen-Belsen to Brooklyn can be ordered through Amazon, priced at $14.99 for paperback and $7.99 for Kindle version.

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Holocaust survivors, a candy store and the mafia make for unusual family memoir - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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Posted By admin on October 4, 2021

The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiativeat Penn Statewill present a free three-hour seminar about trauma-informed teaching at 1 p.m. Oct. 11 at Penn State Berks Perkins Student Centers Lions Den.

The Using Media to Propel Inquiry-Based, Trauma-Informed Learning seminar, which is open to all educators and requiresregistration, is part of Greater ReadingsViolins of Hopefall program.

Hosted by the Reading Symphony Orchestra, Jewish Federation of Reading/Berks, and the Berks County Intermediate Unit, the fall program will showcase restored violins played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust.

We look forward to taking part in this inspirational program and helping Pennsylvania teachers identify and cope with trauma in their classrooms and communities, said Holocaust Education Initiative director Boaz Dvir, an award-winning filmmaker and assistant professor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications.

The seminar will feature the Initiatives trauma-informed practice expert, Penn State doctoral candidate Brooklyn Leonhardt; educational program specialist Lori McGarry; and content developer Kate van Haren, Wisconsins 2020 Social Studies Teacher of the Year.

They will share lesson plans created by the Initiative for Cojot, Dvirs forthcoming feature documentary about a Holocaust survivor who set out to kill his fathers Nazi executioner.

Well introduce middle- and high-school instructional material that teachers can explore as examples or use with their students, McGarry said. Well also work with teachers to develop lessons for other media using a trauma-informed lens.

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Holocaust Education Initiative Offers Free, Trauma-Informed Teaching Seminar - bctv.org

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