Holocaust
“Our delegation was deeply moved by our visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. We came to commemorate 75 years since its liberation and to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust will never be repeated,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Events over the past year and beyond have left us with a sense of insecurity and vulnerability. I’m upset and outraged by it—that we are targeted like that—but at the same time I’m not entirely surprised,” said Temple Sinai chair Matthew Smith.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to meet with P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah ahead of the 2020 World Holocaust Forum has ruffled some feathers at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
The revealing images came from the estate of Johann Niemann, a deputy commandant at the camp who was one of 10 SS-men killed by inmates during the October 1943 uprising.
In a TV interview ahead of the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the lesson of Auschwitz is to “stop bad things when they’re small—and Iran is a very bad thing.”
Israel has reportedly told the Gaza-based terrorist group it will respond forcefully to any attempt to disrupt the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem this week • Thousands of police, security forces deploy in Jerusalem ahead of the arrival of more than 40 heads of state.
Seven decades later, nearly all of them—the skeletal prisoners on one side of the barbed wire and their liberators on the other—are gone. The world remembers the date thanks to the United Nations, which designated it as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005.
Gathering of heads of state in Jerusalem to mark 75 years since liberation of Auschwitz to be “largest diplomatic event in Israel’s history,” according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry • Yad Vashem chair: Resurgence of worldwide anti-Semitism makes event more important than ever.
“The choice by many victims of the Nazis to document their experiences through art was a form of resistance, and it was one that left a critically important set of records for future generations,” says Jack Kliger, president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City.
While noting that anti-Semitic acts perpetrated in Ukraine is in decline, Israeli Ambassador Joel Leon stressed that the same cannot be said about overall anti-Semitic sentiment and rhetoric in the country.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will also be there, according to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin’s office.
Efraim Zuroff, Eastern Europe director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, slammed the proposed legislation as the “final stage of a long attempt to whitewash massive complicity by Lithuanians” in the Holocaust.
