The Central Council of Jews is deeply shocked by the electoral success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in a local election in Thuringia. “To be clear: not every one of the AfD voters has extreme right-wing views,” said the president of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, according to the Jüdische […]
Continue Reading
German-Israeli satirist Shahak Shapira, who set up a website shaming selfie-takers at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, says he has halted the project for now after a dozen people apologised for their disrespect. His “Yolocaust.de” website had combined selfies, often with the participants grinning or striking poses, taken at the memorial with graphic images from Nazi concentration […]
Continue Reading
Around 300 of Croatia’s Jewish population held a vigil outside the country’s most notorious concentration camp in protest at the government’s alleged failure to challenge rising neo-Nazi sentiment in the country. Part of this failure concerns the downplaying of the crimes of Croatia’s pro-Nazi regime. The ultra-nationalist and antisemitic Ustaša regime took power on August 10, 1941, after Axis forces had invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. Concentration camps were built nationwide to ‘purge’ Croatian society of ‘foreign elements’. This extended to Jews, Serbs, Roma and non-Catholic minorities. Ustaša fascists exterminated over 500,000 Serbs. They forced 250,000 into exile and made 250,000 more Serbs convert to Catholicism under pain of death, according to Yad Vashem. The fascist regime murdered 75 per cent of Croatia’s pre-war Jewish population of 40,000. Jews in Croatia now make up 1 per cent of the general population. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma were also murdered by the Ustaša regime, as were between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims. Croatia’s largest concentration camp was the Jasenovac complex, a string of five camps along the Sava River, east of Zagreb. Close to 100,000 people were murdered in this camp between 1941 and 1945. Prisoners at the [...]
The post Croatian Jews boycott official Holocaust memorial over rising neo-Nazism appeared first on Religious Reader.
Continue Reading
Hundreds of Hungarians held a candle-lit vigil against a planned statue honouring a pro-Nazi minister. The protest in the city of Székesfehérvár this past Sunday included diplomats from the United States, Israel, Canada, and Washington’s special envoy on anti-Semitism Ira Forman. Bálint Hóman remains of Hungary’s most toxic reminders of its complicity in the Holocaust. He supported discriminatory policies that disposed Jews of land and denied them university jobs in the 1930s. He advocated a close alliance with Nazi Germany. And supported policies that resulted in the deportation and murder of more than 500,000 Jews. Székesfehérvár’s mayor, András Cser-Palkovic, a member of the ruling Fidesz party, will ask the Hóman Foundation to reconsider its planned installation. Fidesz has already donated Ft15m ($52,000) to the project. The Hóman Foundation hope to unveil the statue on December 29 – the 130th anniversary of Hóman’s birth. Hungary’s close ties to Nazi Germany began before the onset of war. In 1938, the Nazis annexed Sudeten region of the now Czech Republic. Hungary gained territory from this action. That same year, Hungary passed laws that cut Jewish employment by 80 per cent. A year later, and Hungarian laws racialised Jews. Against this backdrop, the Nazis [...]
The post Statue honouring pro-Nazi politician Bálint Hóman causes outrage in Hungary appeared first on Religious Reader.
Continue Reading
The Bridging Beliefs Forums were a unique series of workshops across England with Holocaust survivors and survivors of the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in 2005. The Bridging Beliefs Forums were a unique series of talks that took place in Manchester, Leeds, London, Birmingham and Leicester. In a unique demonstration of togetherness, survivors of the Holocaust […]
Continue Reading