The original "Never Again", today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance.

[Behind the Aegis]

Yom Hashoah is the day of remembrance for the six million Jews who were massacred in Hitler's Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Not all Jews met their deaths in the camps, many died along the way, some died in their homes, and others were murdered before the camps were even functioning.

Most of the Jews of Europe were eradicated. The world population was greatly reduced as well.

Never Forget.

Number of Jews in the world still lower than before Holocaust

The number of Jews in the world is still lower than it was in 1939, prior to the Holocaust, according to figures released Tuesday by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.

This number is similar to that in 1922, 96 years ago, when 14 million Jews lived worldwide.

Today, most Jews live in Israel and the United States.


The data of the Central Bureau of Statistics are based on information gathered by the Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics and the A. Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which relate to 2016.


The data indicate that there are currently 6,446,000 Jews in Israel, 5,700,000 in the US, 456,000 in France, 390,000 in Canada, 290,000 in Britain, 181,000 in Argentina, 176,000 in Russia, 117,000 in Germany, and 113,000 in Australia.

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Confronting Holocaust Denial

Holocaust denial is a position consciously held not because there is no evidence but despite it. Like antisemitism, to which it is closely related, Holocaust denial is not based on evidence but is a position held because its adherents want it to be true, writes Professor Dan Stone.

There are few “flat earthers” these days and the majority of people no longer believe that the moon is made of green cheese. By contrast, denying the Holocaust, that is, claiming that the genocide of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II ever took place, seems to be flourishing.

It is an extreme example of an increasingly common phenomenon: rejecting facts when they happen to be inconvenient. At least when, in the middle ages, people thought that the sun orbited the earth, they had no proof to the contrary. Holocaust denial is a position consciously held not because there is no evidence but despite it. Like antisemitism, to which it is closely related, Holocaust denial is not based on evidence but is a position held because its adherents want it to be true. Unfortunately, it is not.

Just as antisemitism is a claim about Jews that rests ultimately on mythical thinking – Jews as puppet-masters behind world events, for example – so Holocaust denial rests on similar conspiracy theories – that the Jews concocted the whole story to extract money from Germany and to promote Zionism, for example.

People with strongly-held antisemitic beliefs are rarely amenable to having their views changed by the presentation of evidence, and the same is true of Holocaust denial. What follows is not aimed at those who are unshakeable in their belief that the Holocaust never happened, although it would be nice to think that their minds could be changed (they probably do not read the JC, in any case). Rather, I want to show that, when people – often youngsters – are confused by the easily-accessible lies that proliferate on the internet, it is not hard to put them straight.

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Traditional antisemitism is back, global study finds

Feelings of insecurity are widespread among European Jews as a result of the resurgence of the extreme right, a heated anti-Zionist discourse on the left and radical Islam, according to a global study of antisemitism.

Last year the number of recorded violent antisemitic incidents fell by about 9% compared to 2016 – and by almost 50% compared with the 2006-14 average – but there was a notable increase in harassment and abuse, according to a survey published by the Kantor Center.

The report highlights a strengthening of the extreme right in some European counties, “accompanied by slogans and symbols reminiscent of the 1930s” and “the intensity of the anti-Jewish sentiments expressed in a variety of ways [...] especially on street demonstrations”. It says this may explain a discrepancy between the levels of fear among European Jews and the actual number of incidents.

“Expressions of classic traditional antisemitism are back and, for example, the term ‘Jew’ has become a swear word,” it says.

The 105-page report examines the prevalence of antisemitism in Europe, the post-Soviet region, the US, Canada, Australia, South America and South Africa. It records 327 major incidents of violence, vandalism and desecration in 2017, compared with a peak of 1,118 in 2009 and a low of 78 in 1989, the year the study began. It found 30% of attacks were directed at individuals, 20% at cemeteries and memorial sites, and 17% at synagogues.

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[Skittles]

1. oh my

"The number of Jews in the world is still lower than it was in 1939, prior to the Holocaust, according to figures released Tuesday by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics."

I had never thought about that but........

[Behind the Aegis]

11. It is even more sobbering when one realizes almost 80 years have passed.

The Nazi war machine and their accomplices almost succeeded in wiping out all the Jews of Europe. Had they not been stopped, the next largest population, the Middle East, would have likely been the site for complete eradication of Jews.

[irisblue]

2. Kick

[leftynyc]

3. Never forget

[paleotn]

4. Never, ever again...

That is one thing my father made sure I fully understood. As a southern boy, gone to far off Europe on Ike's great crusade, the things he saw made a life long impression and in his own words he grew up quick. He had to. Though some of his memories he could never tell us, he made sure his children knew the horrible evil perpetrated against the Jews. The man saw Buchenwald and Dachau first hand.

[dlk]

5. This Day of Remembrance is More Important than Ever -

Given we have Nazis boldly running for public office and marching in our streets. For those who naively think, "it can't happen here," often it already has. Evil never takes a holiday!

[Behind the Aegis]

9. I think that is what floors me the most.

There are rabidly anti-Semitic, Holocaust deniers/questioners running for office! But what makes it worse is people's indifference to it. I know of at least one who is in a "safe" district, meaning it will overwhelmingly likely go to a democrat, so people are "meh" about his running. The very idea that such a person is even emboldened to come out of his house and spew his hate rhetoric is bad enough, but to run for office...just how bad is it? Or rather, how bad will it get?!

[marble falls]

6. Never forgotten, never again....

When my closest friend passed last year, his entire family on the planet was his mother's uncle in Montreal, one in Ecuador, his sister and nephew and niece, his aunt, cousin and cousin's two children.

Irvin's father died just a few years after his mother and father and sister and aunt and uncle came to the US as DPs and after five or six years in refugee camp. Part of the reason it took so long for them to get here was that there were no relatives or friends alive to have been here first to sponsor them.

I have copies of photos from Poland just before the war of some of his family and they fascinate me. Such a rich life and in a few hellish years all gone. How those photos got here is an amazing story that required his parents walking from their concentration camp in Germany back to their home in Poland and digging up what few possessions they had buried under the floor of their home (Irv's dad was a tailor) and walking back to Germany to get to a refugee camp before the Russians closed the Polish border.

Mrs Finer (Fichtenbaum before immigration simplified their name for them) showed me her tattoo and told me a lot of the detail in the camp - a satellite camp of Belsen over the five years or so I knew her before she passed.

I mourn for her, and I mourn for Irvin and I try to keep this story alive, because - never again. I, a gentile, am a direct link to a small part of the story and it carries a responsibility to keep the truth alive.

[sarisataka]

7. It is difficult to comprehend the numbers

So here is just one million...



Each dot was a living breathing person executed for their religion. And it still was only the beginning

[smirkymonkey]

10. It's almost incomprehensible.

Never forget. Never again!

[Wednesdays]

13. One and a half of those charts

would represent the number of children who died in the Holocaust.

[moriah]

8. ...

[Nonhlanhla]

12. Never forget.