The Vatican has made the unprecedented move of beatifying an entire Polish family for their “gesture of hospitality and care” in sheltering Jewish people during the Second World War.

The family-of-nine — a married couple and their small children — were murdered by the Nazis in 1944 after they were apparently betrayed.

Speaking during a Mass in the village of Markowa, in southeastern Poland, papal envoy Cardinal Marcello Semeraro read out the Latin formula of the beatification of the Ulma family signed last month by Pope Francis.

Cardinal Semeraro noted that for their “gesture of hospitality and care, of mercy” the Ulmas “paid the highest price of martyrdom”.

A contemporary painting representing Jozef and a pregnant Wiktoria Ulma with their children was revealed near the altar, and a procession brought relics taken from their grave to the altar.

It is the first time that an entire family has been beatified.

Speaking to the public from a window in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Pope Francis said the Ulmas “represented a ray of light in the darkness” of the war and should be a model for everyone in “doing good and in the service of those in need”.

The pope then invited the crowd below to applaud the family, and he clapped his hands.

Those gathered in Markowa watched Francis’ address on giant screens placed by the altar.

Last year, Francis pronounced the deeply Catholic Ulma family, including the child that Wiktoria Ulma was pregnant with, martyrs for the faith.

The Ulmas were killed at home by German Nazi troops and by Nazi-controlled local police in the early hours of March 24 1944, together with the eight Jews they were hiding at their home, after they were apparently betrayed.

Jozef Ulma, 44, was a farmer, Catholic activist and amateur photographer who documented family and village life. He lived with his 31-year-old wife Wiktoria; their daughters Stanislawa, seven; Barbara, six; Maria, 18 months; and sons Wladyslaw, five; Franciszek, three; and Antoni, two.

With them were killed 70-year-old Saul Goldman with his sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim and Mojzesz, along with Golda Grunfeld and her sister Lea Didner with her young daughter Reszla, according to Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, which has documented the Ulmas’ story.

Polish president Andrzej Duda along with the ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, as well as Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, attended the celebration in Markowa, and thousands of pilgrims came from across Poland to take part.

In Poland, the Ulma family is a symbol of the bravery of thousands of Poles who took the utmost risk while helping Jews.

By the occupying Nazis’ decree, any assistance to Jews was punished with summary execution.

Poland was the first country to be invaded by Nazi Germany, on September 1 1939. Some six million of its citizens were killed during the war, half of them Jews.

Solidarity costs nothing but can mean everything. Against the snarling packs of extremists flanking both sides of a hostile debate, the significance of maintaining a common bond with those from a different group but facing prejudice is precious. In these times, it’s sometimes all we have.

Last night, an exhibition was held at the Jewish Community Centre in Finchley Road to honour Holocaust Memorial Day. There was music and food and stories. There was a sombre but hopeful tone to the evening. The atrocities inflicted upon Jews in Europe are a stain on the continent’s soul and a memory that can and must never be forgotten. Millions were murdered for the world to learn the need for human rights and fair treatment of minorities. Unfortunately, we live in a time of increased polarisation where hate and bigotry are once again being fanned by those too irresponsible with their positions of power and influence. Even the Holocaust is whitewashed as a crime against humanity rather than an atrocity that focused primarily on Jews.

The Jewish community is again being assailed by hate crime. Across any society, find how they treat women, gays and Jews, and you get a rough idea of how they are as a nation. And unfortunately, in Britain, hate and intolerance of Jews has never completely dissolved and is once again climbing. A combination of Islamist rhetoric and far-left populism has made Jews the “Other” for which all the ills and wrongs of society are placed upon.

Which is why last night’s exhibition was fundamental to the construction of interfaith tolerance and community cohesion. It celebrated the solidarity that existed when Muslims saved as many Jews as they could from persecution during the Holocaust. The stories were spread across Europe but articulated different families selflessly and courageously risking their safeties to protect Jews.

And it was made all the more special after a mosque in Golders Green had been pressured by extremists into not holding the exhibition. It was a sore point, a blow for those who believe in a pluralistic and mutualist society in which differences are not seen as irreconcilable. But, as I said before, solidarity costs nothing but can mean everything. Another mosque, in Redbridge, stepped forward and hosted the event.

In the grand scheme of things this can seem like a small story washed away by the relentless tide of news stories on Brexit. But it’s a story of solidarity and attachment to each other beyond the exclusionary and narrow labels of identity. In the time of extremism and racism, these are the stories that we cling onto as hope that the pluralistic society is still achievable and that empathy with others is a virtuous feature of human behaviour. There was something saddening in visiting the Jewish Community Centre, a beautiful family-orientated institution, and realising they needed security because they weren’t safe. No people should ever have to apologise for who they were. But I was also heartened by the exhibition, reassured by the possibility that a future of coexistence with different groups is still something people yearn for. The attachment to a community is the transcendent feeling that can bring people together, whatever their faiths. This exhibition was about Muslims who saved Jews from persecution. But it can mean so much about where we want to go forward as a society.

One in 20 UK adults does not believe the Holocaust took place, a survey suggests, while one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated.

Almost two-thirds of respondents (64%) either could not say how many Jews were murdered or “grossly” under-estimated the number, a survey of more than 2,000 people by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) found.

On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people, including survivors, politicians and members of the public, will gather to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and remember its six million Jewish victims.

More than 11,000 activities are expected to take place, while ceremonies will be held in London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A national commemorative ceremony will take place in Westminster to mark the day, which is also acknowledging the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and 40 years since the end of the genocide in Cambodia.

Holocaust survivor Steven Frank, who was one of 93 children who survived the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia along with his two brothers, said the figures were “terribly worrying”.

His father, who helped hide Jews as part of the Dutch Resistance, was arrested in Amsterdam and taken to Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland, where he was gassed on January 21 1943.

Mr Frank, 83, said he was “surprised” that the survey found as many as one in 20 people still did not believe the Holocaust took place.

He said: “In my experience, people don’t have a solid understanding of what happened during the Holocaust and that’s one of the reasons I am so committed to sharing what happened to me.

“At one of my talks, I met someone who said the Holocaust didn’t happen.

The only way to fight this kind of denial and anti-Semitism is with the truth – I tell people what happened, what I saw and what I experienced.

“Education is so important. If we ignore the past, I fear history will repeat itself.”

HMDT chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman said: “The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation and has implications for us all.

Such widespread ignorance and even denial is shocking.

“Without a basic understanding of this recent history, we are in danger of failing to learn where a lack of respect for difference and hostility to others can ultimately lead.

“With a rise in reported hate crime in the UK and ongoing international conflicts with a risk of genocide, our world can feel fragile and vulnerable. We cannot be complacent.”

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said:

“We know that education is vital in the fight against ignorance and hate.

“Whatever the statistics, one person questioning the truth of the Holocaust is one too many and so it is up to us to redouble our efforts to ensure future generations know that it did happen and become witnesses to one of the darkest episodes in our history.”

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire, who will be speaking at Sunday’s event, said: “It remains essential now as ever to remember the Holocaust, to understand why it happened and to learn the stark lessons it gives.

“We must never forget where hatred and bigotry can lead.”

He added: “This Government is clear that anti-Semitism has no place in our society and we all have a role to play in confronting hatred and extremism whenever and wherever it occurs.”

Romanian police were investigating vandalism at the childhood home of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, which was painted with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Wiesel, an activist and writer, was born in the northwestern Romanian town of Sighetu Marmatiei. His family was deported to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters died. Wiesel and his father were later taken to Buchenwald, where his father died.

Wiesel survived to become an academic, a writer and political activist. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

His house in Sighetu Marmatiei, a protected building, was vandalised with anti-Semitic graffiti written in red paint on Friday night.

“At present, a police investigation is ongoing to identify the authors and press criminal charges,” the county council said in a statement. “There are surveillance cameras in the area and the images will be analysed by the police, who already have a ring of suspects.”

The Israeli embassy thanked local authorities for promptly removing the messages and said it hoped those responsible would be punished as soon as possible.

According to a 2004 report by a commission headed by Wiesel, between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews and thousands of Roma were killed by civilian and military authorities in Romania and areas they controlled during the war.

Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany until August 1944, when it changed sides. Much of the Jewish property seized during the war was later nationalised by the communist dictatorship that followed.

Romania has only in recent years begun to come to terms with its role in the extermination of Jews, admitting for the first time in 2003 that it took part. Sensitivity towards the Holocaust and knowledge of it remain patchy.

We have previously written about Janusz Korwin-Mikke, someone who has previously stated that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust. His comments have previously targeted Jews, Muslims and Black communities.

Faith Matters highlighted his impending arrival in late May 2018, about a week before he arrived. Having informed the Home Office about his visit to speak in the UK, no action was taken and Korwin-Mikke was allowed in the country. According to this flyer, he is supposed to be speaking in London on Sunday the 8th of July.

Sharing a Platform

Korwin-Mikke spoke at the far-right ‘free speech’ rally in London on May 27th alongside Anne-Marie Waters,(ex-UKIP), and now with the ‘For Britain’ party. The speech was also highlighted by Independent anti-Islam councillor, Ryan MacPherson and was streamed through the ”Pro Great Britain’ Facebook page. Macpherson is a councillor in Ashford, Kent, and has previously called Islam ‘Earth’s most lethal killing machine’.

A day later after the event, MacPherson wrote:

“With Janusz Korwin-Mikke in London yesterday talking about democracy and why the United Kingdom desperately needs electoral reform in order to break the two-party state.”

Visible at the time of Mikke’s speech in May is a person flying a ‘Kekistan’ flag. The ‘Kekistan’ flag is modelled on the Nazi’s Reichskriegsflagge.

The question we therefore pose to the Home Office and the UK Border Agency is, will Korwin-Mikke be allowed in again?

Today is a landmark judgment that has been brought against Alison Chabloz who was convicted of two counts of causing obscene material to be sent and one of sending obscene material. These incidents occurred in 2016. It is another line that is drawn on those who think that freedom of expression entitles them to make grossly offensive and menacing statements: in Chabloz’s case, denying the Holocaust and accusing Jewish people, including Holocaust survivors, of fabricating claims of genocide.

Holocaust denial is far more than a false presentation of history. So-called Holocaust ‘revisionists’ are motivated by their own Jew-hatred.  Their aim is to expose the Jewish people to further hatred by making the indefensible claim that Jews are lying about a historical reality which destroyed the lives of more than a third of the world’s Jewish population.

I have seen the impacts of the Holocaust first-hand having visited the death camps in Poland and the Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust’s victims.  I saw the personal items of those who walked to their deaths in the vain hope that they were having a shower. They were killed because they were Jews.  Seeing the shoes, the wedding rings, the photographs and confiscated property left an indelible mark on me. It is our duty to never forget the victims and to educate the generations that come after us about the vicious consequences of antisemitism.

The sad reality is that people like Chabloz are adept at exploiting people and playing off communities against each other to further their malicious aims. Chabloz even attempted to use the national project opposing hatred against Muslims, Tell MAMA, to pursue her vendetta against Jewish people.  In 2013 and 2014, she sent written reports to Tell MAMA in the hope that this would lead to the investigation and humiliation of Jewish people for pushing anti-Muslim hatred.  In reality, she didn’t care about the Muslim community or the Tell MAMA project.  This was a disguised attempt to target Jews, because they were Jewish. In September 2014, when we learned of Chabloz’s disturbing antisemitic views, we cut off all communication. I am glad to see that today justice has been served.   

There’s a lesson for all of us here.  In the fight against hatred and discrimination, not everyone who offers help and assistance is a friend. Their smiles may hide other motives, reinforcing the need for enhanced due diligence and vetting of sources.  Alison Chabloz’s antisemitism and Holocaust denial show her true colours, which run totally contrary to the values of Tell MAMA, which works closely with groups like the Community Security Trust.

That’s why Tell MAMA and Faith Matters have added layers of compulsory internal due diligence checks on all those who communicate or engage with us. Whilst this has increased our admin load, rigorous vetting is essential in today’s world. Chabloz’s attempt to divide the Muslim and Jewish communities has also resulted in us seeking to work ever more closely with Jewish communities in the fight against antisemitism. We are partnering with the Jewish community to ensure that the younger generation understand what antisemitism is and that it is an affront not only to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, but also the dignity of Jewish communities today.

We must send out the strongest possible message that no-one can take sides in the battle against hate. There is no ‘picking and choosing’. In the end, antisemites have no problem abusing both Jews and Muslims – something we must never forget.

To effectively fight anti-Muslim hate we must all of us learn about the unique hatred that is antisemitism. I, for one, have sought to further my understanding of Jewish history, culture and heritage. I think it’s important that everyone travels to the sites in Europe where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed and pays homage to the memories of those Jewish brothers and sisters that were murdered only because they were Jewish. Seeing what the Jewish people endured only 70 years ago has helped me see why we should never allow the flags and symbols of terrorist groups that have a history of kidnapping and murdering Jews to be displayed on the streets of London.

We must protect the memory of the Holocaust, highlight it, shout about it.  It’s everyone’s responsibility to tackle anti-Semitism wherever it is found.   Hatred against Jews is an attack on our society as a whole and an attack on our common values. It’s our responsibility to show our Jewish brothers and sisters that they are not alone.

Fiyaz Mughal was the Director of Tell MAMA from 2012-2017 and is the Director of Faith Matters

A second Austrian student fraternity has a songbook containing anti-Semitic lyrics making fun of the Holocaust and insulting Jews, a newspaper said on Tuesday, three weeks after it exposed a similar case that forced a far-right politician to quit.

The earlier case reported by Falter prompted the resignation of a prominent member of the anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO), which became the junior partner in conservative Chancellor Christian Kurz’s government in December following elections.

Austria is the only western European country to have a far-right party in government.

Last month, left-wing weekly Falter reported on anti-Semitic lyrics in a songbook published by a student fraternity in Lower Austria, the province surrounding Vienna. That fraternity’s deputy leader was the FPO’s top candidate in an election for the regional parliament there, Udo Landbauer.

Landbauer eventually stepped down over the affair. After initially refusing to sack him, the party later said it was setting up a committee of historians that would examine its past and that of right-wing fraternities like Landbauer’s, which are often close to the FPO but not formally part of it.

On Tuesday, Falter reported that another fraternity, Bruna Sudetia based in Vienna, had a similar songbook, and that the head of that group is on the staff of FPO Infrastructure Minister Norbert Hofer.

The staffer, Herwig Goetschober, who works on social media, was not immediately available for comment. A spokesman for Hofer said Goetschober was sick but denied knowing of the lyrics published by Falter, adding that his songbook had a different content and layout.

“He has no knowledge of this other songbook. He also does not know who produced it,” the spokesman said.

The FPO says it has abandoned its neo-Nazi past and rejects anti-Semitism. It now focuses its criticism on Islam and even openly courts Jewish voters.

But the main group representing Austria’s tiny Jewish community, the IKG, says the FPO has done too little to address the long-standing anti-Semitism within its ranks. It sees fraternities as a breeding ground for the problem.

The IKG has also questioned whether the FPO’s historical commission will get to the bottom of anti-Semitism within fraternities. Many senior political party figures belong to a fraternity but the FPO has said it cannot force those organisations to cooperate with the commission.

“If it is true that the FPO cannot control the fraternities, then that probably confirms that fraternity members control the FPO,” IKG chief Oskar Deutsch told ORF radio at the weekend.

Pedestrians and traffic in downtown Jerusalem, and across Israel, stood still Monday morning (April 24) as a two minute siren wailed to commemorate victims of the Holocaust.

A day earlier, survivor Zwi Nigal shared his experiences during World War Two with a few dozen people who gathered in an apartment in central Israel on Sunday (April 23), the eve of the country’s annual Remembrance Day for the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.

Sitting on bean bags and a sofa, they listened to Nigal’s account as part of a nationwide project called “Memories in the Living Room”.

Similar remembrance gatherings were held in 13,000 other homes in Israel, where survivors shared their stories. Ayelet Goldin Vaknin, who hosted the gathering with Nigal in her living room, said such events could be the last chance “to meet in person with people who have been there and who have experienced personally the Holocaust”.

Poland has put on display over 3,000 artifacts recovered from the site of a former Nazi concentration camp.

The items are mostly personal effects that belonged to prisoners in the Sobibor prison.

Which killed at least 250,000 Jews during World War Two, although exact numbers are unknown.

Eyeglasses, jewellery, and children’s belongings taken from them before being sent to their death in gas chambers.

The exhibit is at the Majdanek state museum in the Polish city of Lublin – each item a testimony to human existence.

The museum says that in most cases it’s impossible to determine who specifically owned the items.

But coins uncovered in the excavation suggest prisoners came from Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Poland itself.

Croatian Jews said on Monday they would boycott the country’s main Holocaust remembrance event this week, accusing the authorities of playing down crimes perpetrated under the Nazi-backed Ustasa regime during World War Two.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held on Jan. 27 each year, the date in 1945 when the biggest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz in occupied Poland, was liberated by Soviet troops.

Three months ago, rightist veterans of Croatia’s 1991-95 independence war raised a commemorative plaque in the town of Jasenovac to comrades killed there at the beginning of the conflict Zagreb fought to secede from Serbian-led Yugoslavia.

Included in the veterans’ plaque are words from a salute used by the Ustasha regime that killed tens of thousands of prisoners including Jews, Serbs, Roma gypsies and anti-fascist Croats, in the 1941-1945 Jasenovac concentration camp.

That prompted the association representing Croatia’s remnant population of Jews, numbering somewhat over 1,500, to pull out of its primary Holocaust remembrance event, which is normally conducted in the Zagreb parliament.

“We took the decision on the basis of reactions by the government, parliament and the president. The problem is not (just) a plaque in Jasenovac including the Ustasha salute, but the relativisation of everything (to do with the Holocaust),” community leader Ognjen Kraus told the state news agency Hina.

The centre-right government of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic – now on an unrelated visit to Israel – proposed last month forming a commission that would legally regulate reappearances of symbols from any past totalitarian regime.

Kraus dismissed the gesture. “If swastika or Ustasha symbols are equated with the (communist) red star, what are we talking about? Are we going to revise history? Establish a commission to tell us what World War Two was about?” he said.

Croatian society has been divided since independence over how to treat both the Nazi collaborationist and communist past of the ex-Yugoslav republic, now a European Union member state.

Some Croats believe authorities have been indifferent to sporadic resurfacings of Ustasha extremism, including the chanting of Ustasha slogans by ultra-nationalist soccer fans.

Others say post-independence governments, particularly those led by the left, have failed to appropriately condemn crimes committed during 45 years of post-war communist rule.

In April 2016, members of the Jewish community, the Serb

minority and an anti-fascist group boycotted the Holocaust commemoration event at the Jasenovac camp site in protest

at what they deemed the authorities’ feeble reaction to incidents “revitalising” Ustasha ideology.

Croatian Jews and Serbs have called for more thorough teaching in schools about the abuses of Ustasha rule.