Behind the Aegis
Behind the Aegis's JournalAnti-Semitism at UCSB: A closer look at bashing the Jews on campus
A nationwide survey of self-identified Jewish students found that a majority of them, 54 percent, had suffered or witnessed incidents of anti-Semitism on their campuses in the last school year.
At the University of California Santa Barbara, that problem has manifested itself in a variety of ways this year, offering a case study, a microcosm of sorts, of the larger issue at hand.
Last October, flyers blaming Jews for 9/11 were discovered on the UCSB campus. They alleged “9/11 was an outside job” and that “9/11 was Mossad,” referring to Israel’s intelligence agency.
The incident prompted a student government resolution denouncing anti-Semitism, but the effort had little effect.
Rabbi Evan Goodman, Santa Barbara Hillel’s leader, recalls a student earlier this year who came to him, upset because after walking home from an event with a small Israeli flag in her hand she was harassed multiple times, with students hurling insults at her for being pro-Israel and Jewish.
In the weeks leading up to a recent student government vote on whether to divest from Israel, Students for Justice in Palestine erected a protest wall condemning Israel’s “Apartheid.” It was placed in the Arbor—the free speech zone— and students and professors were forced to walk around it to continue on the pathway.
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Nazi-confiscated painting returned to heir of Jewish art historian
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - A 17th century painting taken by Nazis from a prominent German Jewish art historian has been returned to the owner's daughter, New York state officials said on Tuesday.
The painting, called "Portrait of a Man," was recovered in part by the New York Department of Financial Services’ Holocaust Claims Processing Office, which has helped to return $171 million in assets to relatives of holocaust victims.
"While the terrible damage caused by Nazi persecution can never be repaired, we hope that the recovery of this painting will deliver at least some small measure of justice," department Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky said at a ceremony at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan.
Separately, five paintings missing since World War Two were turned over to a German diplomat at a U.S. State Department ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday for their return to their original owners in Germany.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/05/us-usa-holocaust-art-idUSKBN0NQ1YH20150505
Survivors’ children gather at Bergen-Belsen
HANOVER, Germany — Seventy years after the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British troops, some 100 people personally touched by the history returned to the site to share their memories and warn against forgetting.
Among them were children born at a displaced persons camp for survivors less than two miles from the camp.
Survivors who recovered started new families. In fact, an estimated 2,000 children were born at the DP camp — the largest in postwar Germany — before it closed in September, 1950.
Aviva Tal was one of them. Her parents, who had married before the war but were torn apart and survived several concentration camps, were reunited at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, where they shared a room with 12 other survivors.
The women “became pregnant right away, including my mother,” Tal, who was born in February, 1947, told JTA. “They put me in a basket in the middle of the room, and I was the most pampered child, always being held. My feet never touched the floor.”
Tal was one of several children of survivors to speak over the weekend at a panel on Holocaust memory led by Menachem Rosensaft, who was born in the DP camp on May 1, 1948. He recently edited a volume of essays, G-d, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors.
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University ousts student president, but not for Nazi sympathies
CAPE TOWN — The student government president at a South African university who publicly praised Hitler was removed from office, but over a separate matter, according to a university leader.
Mcebo Dlamini, who made headlines over the weekend after a graphic appeared on his Facebook page comparing the Israeli government to the Nazi regime, was ousted Monday from his post with the Students’ Representative Council at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Dlamini said Habib removed him from office because he had given in to pressure from “Zionists,” South Africa’s Eyewitness News reported.
The student leader told the Wits newspaper Vuvuzela, “What I love about Hitler is his charisma and his capabilities to organize people. We need more leaders of such caliber.”
In defending his Facebook remarks, Dlamini said he was looking at “Hitler’s good side. Hitler managed to uplift the spirit of the German people.”
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Expert: Shoa denial emerges in new guises
Discredited or driven underground, Holocaust denial has reemerged in a new form, said Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Instead of claiming the Shoa never happened, revisionists are now equating Zionism with Nazism, or accusing Jews of manipulating the Holocaust for political or conspiratorial purposes.
“Holocaust denial was a failure in which they were laughed at or discredited,” said Weitzman, speaking April 19 at Temple B’nai Shalom in East Brunswick. “It is not outright Holocaust denial that’s a danger, but rather manipulation of the Shoa.”
Weitzman spoke at the annual community Holocaust remembrance program of the Jewish Federation in the Heart of NJ.
He described the waning influence of deniers like the California-based Institute for Historical Review. Once a leading voice among deniers, the IHR was so beset by legal issues and loss of credibility that it is no longer able to publish its journal or hold once well-attended conferences.
Instead, in the last several years, its executive director, Mark Weber, has resorted to Zionist conspiracy theories that Jews control all aspects of American life.
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This is quite popular now, but I disagree that Holocaust denial and revisionism is "underground." Personally, I feel it is making a comeback!
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