AntiSemitism - This Day in History > 34,000 Jews Massacred in 48 hours in Kiev

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 Israeli President Herzog denounces years of silence,

denial at infamous Babi Yar massacre site

Some 34,000 Jews were killed by Nazis in two days in 1941

at the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv

All Israel News Staff | 

October 10, 2021

President Isaac Herzog delivers speech at international ceremony marking 80 years since

the Babi Yar Massacre, Oct. 6, 2021 (Photo: Haim Zach/GPO)

Israeli President Isaac Herzog attended a ceremony in Kyiv alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to remember the victims of the infamous Babi Yar massacre committed by the Nazis during the Second World War 80 years ago. 

Almost 34,000 Jews were murdered by SS troops and local pro-Nazi collaborators within 48 hours in September 1941 in Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. 

The massacre is considered one of the biggest Nazi mass killings during the Second World War. The Jewish victims were later buried in mass graves to make the world forget about this ruthless anti-Semitic atrocity. 

Until recently, local authorities tried either covering up the massacre or distorting history by falsely presenting it as an attack on Ukrainians rather than on Jews or connected to Jews. In reality, anti-Semitism was widespread among the Ukrainian population and the Nazi authorities had no problem finding willing collaborators among the local population. 

Herzog, on the first state visit of his presidency, spoke at the memorial ceremony. 

“Three terrible crimes were witnessed by this valley. The first was the massacre – the erasure of human beings. The second and third were the cover-up and the denial – the erasure of evidence, and the erasure of memory,” Herzog said.  

Herzog stressed the importance of remembering the largely forgotten Jewish victims in Babi Yar. 

“From most of the people murdered at Babi Yar, no trace survived – neither a name, nor a memory. The time for memory has come. That is why we are here,” the Israeli president said. 

The presidents of Israel, Germany and Ukraine also inaugurated a memorial center, which is dedicated to the individual Jews who were murdered and buried in mass graves during the Holocaust. During the Second World War, Ukraine was part of the former Soviet Union.

Approximately 1 million Jews were murdered in the former Soviet Union during the Holocaust, only outnumbered by 3 million Polish Jews. 

During his speech, Herzog stressed the importance of fighting present-day anti-Semitism including Holocaust denial. 

“Let us make no mistake: even in the present, Holocaust denial is still alive and kicking. Anti-Semitism still exists. We, world leaders, must all vigorously condemn the slightest hint of this phenomenon and fight it with all our might,” stated Herzog. 

Staff at the Auschwitz museum in Poland recently discovered anti-Semitic graffiti. More than 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, the vast majority were Jews. The Israeli Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem condemned the incident as an “attack not only on the memory of the victims, but also on the survivors and any person with a conscience.”

Addressing the Babi Yar massacre through a video statement, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that “for much of the last eight decades, the world did not remember what happened at Babi Yar. That was by design. 

“The Nazis were not alone in trying to bury what had happened. For decades, Soviet history omitted that the 33,771 victims of those first two days – and tens of thousands more executed later – were Jews,” he continued. “And that they were killed because they were Jews.”

Blinken also shared a personal story of his stepfather who used Babi Yar to counter Soviet Holocaust denial. 

“Thirty years after the massacre, in 1971, my stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was asked to join a small delegation of Americans for a series of off-the-record discussions with leaders from the Soviet Union… with the aim of fostering a candid dialogue on tough issues. The conference was held in Kyiv and, from the outset, the remarks from much of the Soviet delegation were hostile and rife with anti-Semitism,” Blinken said. 

Is it any different today?

Police Probe Auschwitz Far-Right Protest Calling to ‘Free Poland’ From Jews

In the post immediately above, I suggest that left-leaning people tend to be more likely antisemitic than others. Far-right people are the exception. These people sometimes call themselves Christians, sometimes glorify Hitler, but always are rabidly antisemitic, which, if my musings above are accurate, leaves them very far from being Christians.

© Reuters/Kacper Pempel

Polish police are examining video evidence after some 100 far-right demonstrators marched through Auschwitz on Holocaust Memorial Day, chanting anti-Semitic slogans at the site where Nazis murdered over a million Jews during WWII.

Videos, recordings and photos of the ultra-nationalist rally at the infamous Nazi death camp were sent to Polish prosecutors on Sunday. Authorities say there were some 70-100  demonstrators who took part in the march, which took place at the same time Polish officials and Holocaust survivors marked the 74th anniversary of the camp’s liberation by the Red Army in 1945. The two groups gathered on separate sides of the memorial site and never came into contact.

Photos from the far-right march show demonstrators carrying Polish flags through the gate which bears the infamous description “Arbeit Macht Frei,” (work sets you free) while they reportedly singing the Polish national anthem.

The demonstration was led by Piotr Rybak, a Polish nationalist who was arrested in 2015 for burning an effigy representing a Jew.

“The Jewish nation and Israel is doing everything to change the history of the Polish nation. Polish patriots cannot allow this,” Reuters quotes Rybak as saying at the demonstration. “It’s time to fight against Jewry and free Poland from them!” Rybak added, according to local media.

Seventy four years after the liberation of #Auschwitz, this society produces  scum who would attend that dreadful place and say, "It's time to fight  against Jewry and free #Poland from them.” John Clark - The Independent

Rybak and his followers were angry with the Polish government, saying it paid tribute to the Jewish victims of the camp while ignoring the 150,000 non-Jewish Poles killed there. Some of their flags had the phrase “Polish holocaust” on them.

The demonstration did not take place on the grounds of the camp, but rather outside its gates, and was therefore legal, tweeted police spokesman Mariusz Ciarka.

Polish Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski defended the actions of local police, saying on Twitter that the gathering represented anti-Semitic “hooliganism” by people “not right in the head,” but did not technically violate the law. After coming under criticism from a number of opposition Civic Platform officials, he said the police response could have been more “adequate.”

A study by the The Holocaust Remembrance Project at Yale University and Grinnell College, published last week, warned about widespread Holocaust denial in Eastern Europe.

Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Lithuania all received a “red” rating, indicating that these countries have a serious incapability of “living up to their tragic histories,” the researchers said.

Mass Holocaust-Denial ‘Infecting’ Eastern Europe – Study

Britain too - What's driving it?

The "House of Fates" Holocaust museum in Budapest, Hungary © Reuters/Bernadett Szabo

A new study suggests that Holocaust denial is at its worst in Eastern Europe, where “revisionist” governments driven by feelings of “victimhood” try to erase their nation’s culpability in the massacre of Jews.

The study, published on January 25 – just days before Holocaust Remembrance Day (yesterday) – indicates rampant levels of historical revisionism regarding the mass-extermination of Jews under Nazi rule in eastern parts of the European Union. The Holocaust Remembrance Project was conducted by researchers from Yale and Grinnell Colleges and endorsed by the European Union of Progressive Judaism (EUPJ), an umbrella organization which links more than 170 progressive Jewish communities in 17 countries.

“Revisionism” here refers to people minimizing their own government’s complicity, downplaying the number of victims, or claiming that the events of the Holocaust never occurred at all. Based on their findings, the study assigned countries a green, yellow, or red rating, indicating “progress, caution or problems,” in their relation to Holocaust history. Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Lithuania all received a “red” rating, indicating that these countries have a serious incapability of “living up to their tragic histories.”

Alfons López Tena #FBPE ✔

@alfonslopeztena

 The governments of Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Lithuania are rehabilitating World War II collaborators and war criminals while minimising their own guilt in the attempted extermination of Jews https://politi.co/2Weyl0N 

Poland is particularly taken to task in the study. The authors describe the country as run by a “right-wing nationalist government” engaged in “competitive victimization, emphasizing the experience of Polish victims over that of Jewish victims.” Aside from rising levels of anti-Semitism and continued reductions in Holocaust education, the country came under fire for a law it passed in January of last year which made it illegal to implicate the Polish state in Nazi crimes.

Gabriel Armas-Cardona

@GArmasCardona

 Nationalism so blinding that they protest #HolocaustMemorialDay at #Auschwitz because they prioritize denying the evidence of Polish involvement over #Holocaust recognition. #genocide #Poland https://www.reuters.com/article/us-holocaust-memorial-poland/far-right-protest-during-auschwitz-camp-liberation-commemoration-idUSKCN1PL0N9 …

On the other hand, Romania and the Czech Republic were both given a green rating, and were held up as exemplars. The Romanian government was praised for requiring mandatory Holocaust training for its military general staff and establishing an independent Holocaust-study commission.

While this part of the report focused on countries in Eastern Europe, the rest of the continent didn’t fare much better in recent related studies. One study published around the same time indicated that despite widely available evidence, 1 in 20 Britons don’t believe the Holocaust took place at all.

1 in 20, or about 5% is roughly the number of Muslims living in Britain. Curious coincidence, I guess.

Holocaust denial in Britain a combination of

‘anti-semitism and ignorance’ – Nazi hunter

© Reuters / Ronen Zvulun

A recent poll revealed that 1 in 20 Britons don’t believe the Holocaust took place. Historian and ‘Nazi hunter’ Efraim Zuroff claims that the results show a combination of “anti-Semitism and abysmal ignorance.”

Sunday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK, marking 74 years to the day since the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz extermination camp. Despite extensive documentary evidence, and testimony from survivors and perpetrators, Holocaust denial is on the rise in Britain.

One in 20 Britons believe the Holocaust never happened, according to a poll published on Sunday. Eight percent believe that the official death count of six million is exaggerated and one in five believe less than two million Jews were murdered. 45 percent simply don’t know how many died.

“It’s quite shocking and surprising,” Efraim Zuroff of the Israeli office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center told RT. The results, Zuroff said, combine “anti-semitism with abysmal ignorance.”

“Holocaust denial is simply a new form of anti-Semitism,” Zuroff added. Aside from the latest British survey, a recent study conducted by the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights, found that 89 percent of Europe’s Jews feel that anti-Semitism has increased since 2012. The study found that social media allowed anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to spread, and the recent influx of millions of Muslim migrants has revived an ancient religious conflict in the streets of modern Europe.

I wonder if there isn't more to it than that. I wonder if there is a spiritual aspect to this, that as Britain, and the rest of the western world turns more and more away from Christianity, that antisemitism increases as a consequence of getting farther from God and Truth. It seems to be the most left-leaning people are the most likely to be anti-Christian and also, the most likely to be antisemitic. IMHO.

Certainly, as the 2nd paragraph above makes clear, increasing Muslim refugees into Europe results in increased antisemitism. This will increase with time as Muslims propagate much more quickly than Europeans, and 2nd generation immigrants tend to be more devout than their parents. The more devout a Muslim, the more likely they are to be antisemitic.

Zuroff recommends continued efforts to teach schoolchildren about the Holocaust, but claimed that the relatively small number of trials and convictions for those involved could have contributed to the multiple genocides that have occurred since. These include the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which is also commemorated on Sunday.

“I think that people who contemplate joining genocidal movements...the first question they ask themselves is ‘will I be caught?’” he explained. “Will I be held accountable?”

Zuroff himself has helped bring dozens of these Nazi war criminals to trial, including notorious Croatian camp commandant Dinko Šakić, and Hungarian war criminal Dr. Sándor Képíró, said to have been responsible for the murder of around 2,000 civilians in Novi Sad, Serbia, in 1942.

Prominent Saudi Cleric: ‘Holocaust Denial is a Crime that Distorts History’

The New Moderate Face of Islam in Saudi Arabia

“We consider any denial of the Holocaust or minimizing of its effect a crime [that] distort[s] history and an insult to the dignity of those innocent souls who have perished,” a prominent Saudi cleric stated. 

By: The Tower and United with Israel Staff

In a historic move, the leader of the Muslim World League, a group based in Saudi Arabia, has condemned Holocaust denial as a “crime [that] distort[s] history and an insult to the dignity of those innocent souls who have perished.”

In a letter sent to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum last week, Dr. Muhammad bin abdel-Kareem Al-Issa, the secretary general of the Muslim World League, wrote that “history is indeed impartial no matter how hard forgers tried to tamper with or manipulate it.”

Al-Issa wrote the message, sent to museum director Sara Bloomfield, five days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked on January 27.

Al-Issa also referred Holocaust denial as “an affront to us all since we share the same human soul and spiritual bonds.”

The cleric did not specify Jews as the principal victims of the Holocaust in his letter, but instead spoke of “this human tragedy perpetrated by evil Nazism” and “our great sympathy with the victims of the Holocaust, an incident that shook humanity to the core, and created an event whose horrors could not be denied or underrated by any fair-minded or peace-loving person.”

Al-Issa also expressed a willingness to visit the Holocaust museum the next time he visits Washington, D.C.

The Arab world is notorious for its Holocaust denial.

Al-Issa, a former justice minister, had taken over the Saudi-funded Muslim World League in 2016. The league has previously been known for propagating “a radical, hate-filled, anti-West, anti-Semitic version of Islam.”

Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,  speculated that Al-Issa’s appointment is a reflection of the reform movement led by the new crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, who has vowed to eradicate extremism in the kingdom.

Speaking in November, Al-Issa stated that “any act of violence or terrorism that tries to hide behind religion has no justification whatsoever, not even in Israel.”

Al-Issa has been vocally supportive of the reforms pushed by Bin Salman in his move to “fight extremist Islam.”

Facebook Must Stop AntiSemitic Posts - Germany

Facebook will have to abide by German laws banning racist sentiment even if it might be allowed in the United States under freedom of speech, Berlin's justice minister told Reuters.

(photo credit:REUTERS)

Maas, who has accused Facebook of doing too little to thwart racist and hate posts on its social media platform, said that Germany has zero tolerance for such expression and expects the US-based company to be more vigilant.

"One thing is clear: if Facebook wants to do business in Germany, then it must abide by German laws," Maas told Reuters. "It doesn't matter that we, because of historical reasons, have a stricter interpretation of freedom of speech than the United States does."

"Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred are crimes in Germany and it doesn't matter if they're posted on Facebook or uttered out in the public on the market square," he added.

Maas sent a letter to Facebook public policy director Richard Allan in Dublin saying he received many complaints from users that their protests on racist posts have been ignored. He suggested meeting in Berlin on Sept. 14.

This is a problem in North America too, but our hate-crimes boards are run by leftists who are most likely anti-Semitic themselves. 

Maas is a leader of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). The party faced a flood of racist emails, phone calls and bomb threat after its chairman Sigmar Gabriel denounced an anti-refugee "mob" behind anti-refugee violence in the eastern town of Heidenau.

The town near Dresden was the scene of violent clashes last weekend as far-right militants, protesting against the arrival of around 250 refugees at a local shelter, pelted police with bottles and rocks, some shouting "Heil Hitler."

"The internet isn't a place where laws are ignored, where indictable comments can be spread with impunity," Maas said, adding he found it appalling that some were using Facebook to spread hatred against refugees and the Germans helping them.

"There's no scope for misplaced tolerance towards internet users who spread racist propaganda. That's especially the case in light of our German history."

A spokeswoman for Facebook said the company took his concerns seriously and it was interested in meeting the justice minister. Maas said he was looking forward to the meeting.

"It's in Facebook's own inherent interest that it is not used as a platform for racist content," he said.