Menachem Z. Rosensaft, a lawyer in New York City, is the Founding Chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, a joint publishing endeavor with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and a former National President of the Labor Zionist Alliance. He is Adjunct Professor of Law at the Cornell University Law School, where he teaches a seminar on World War II war crimes trials.

The son of two survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, he was born in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen in 1948. In addition to a law degree from the Columbia University School of Law, he received M.A. degrees in, respectively, creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and Modern European History from Columbia University. On May 5, 1985, he organized and led a demonstration at Bergen-Belsen in protest against visits that day by President Ronald Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the mass-graves of Bergen-Belsen and the German military cemetery at Bitburg. In April 1987, he played a key role in convincing the government of Panama not to give sanctuary to Nazi war criminal Karl Linnas, and in ensuring Linnas’ deportation from the United States to the Soviet Union. In December 1988, he was one of five American Jews who met in Stockholm, Sweden, with senior leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, resulting in the PLO’s first public recognition of Israel.

He was appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bill Clinton in 1994, reappointed to a second five-year term in 1999, and served on the Council’s Executive Committee from 1996 until 2003. He has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Jerusalem Post, and other publications, and is the editor of Life Reborn, Jewish Displaced Persons 1945-1951, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Blog Entries by Menachem Rosensaft

Finding Common Ground

1 Comments | Posted November 25, 2009 | 06:08 AM (EST)


At a time when Judaeophobia -- a more accurate term than anti-Semitism in the context of Israeli-Arab or Jewish-Muslim relations -- is on a stark upswing in the Arab street, it is important for us to pay tribute to the efforts of the handful of Jewish and Muslim leaders who...

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Rewarding Hope: Why Barack Obama Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

1 Comments | Posted October 14, 2009 | 06:41 AM (EST)


On April 12, 2007, at a Washington, D.C. breakfast briefing, Senator Barack Obama discussed the "genocide that did take place against the Armenian people," and the fact that "the constant denial on the part of the Turkish government and others that this occurred has become a sore spot diplomatically." The...

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Confronting Ahmadinejad and Other Liars

162 Comments | Posted October 2, 2009 | 04:00 AM (EST)


As we sat in our synagogues during the recent Jewish High Holy Days, we were repeatedly confronted with the importance our rabbis, our prophets and our sages have always placed on the concept of truth as a paramount precept. During the morning Shaharit service, we were reminded, as we are...

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GOP Must Repudiate Limbaugh or Be Defined by Him

94 Comments | Posted August 18, 2009 | 06:14 AM (EST)


One stark difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats appear to be far more willing to confront and publicly denounce bigots and extremists in their own fold. This has been highlighted by the GOP leadership's failure to condemn Rush Limbaugh's divisive, race-baiting diatribes.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack...

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President Clinton's Mission to North Korea Ennobles Us All

9 Comments | Posted August 6, 2009 | 08:38 AM (EST)


On April 19, 1945, literally days before the end of World War II, Norbert Masur, a German-born representative of the Swedish section of the World Jewish Congress, flew from Stockholm to Berlin for a secret meeting with Heinrich Himmler, the head of Nazi Germany's notorious SS. The trip had been...

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Stop Personal Attacks on Claims Conference Leaders

12 Comments | Posted July 23, 2009 | 07:52 AM (EST)


The recent international Conference on Holocaust Era Assets in Prague highlighted the plight of needy Holocaust survivors throughout the world. For the first time, 46 states endorsed the conclusion that "It is unacceptable that those who suffered so greatly during the earlier part of their lives should live under impoverished...

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Pat Buchanan's Bile Goes Unchallenged

84 Comments | Posted July 6, 2009 | 06:22 AM (EST)


The fatal shooting at Washington's U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum four weeks ago is a grim reminder that white supremacists and Holocaust deniers are dangerous fanatics -- domestic terrorists, if you will.

The assailant James von Brunn's hatred for Jews and African-Americans was fueled by the vitriol he spewed out...

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MSNBC's Deafening Silence on Patrick Buchanan's Association with Holocaust Deniers

68 Comments | Posted May 19, 2009 | 09:11 AM (EST)


One week ago, I outed Patrick Buchanan, the former senior White House official in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, erstwhile reactionary candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and now a highly paid political commentator on MSNBC, for sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on his website. Within hours, the forum in...

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Why is Pat Buchanan's Website Playing Host to Holocaust Deniers?

32 Comments | Posted May 12, 2009 | 07:34 AM (EST)


Yesterday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel, Pope Benedict said victims of the Final Solution "lost their lives, but they will never lose their names." Earlier this year, the Pope told a group of American Jewish leaders that "any denial or minimization any denial or minimization" of the...

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The Nazi War Criminal and Jesus: Patrick Buchanan's Obscene Comparison

106 Comments | Posted April 29, 2009 | 06:44 AM (EST)


Let us assume for a moment that an American public figure were to call Jesus Christ a Nazi war criminal. Can't you just hear the outcry, the denunciations from Church leaders and conservative Republicans? Let us assume further that the miscreant in question was a prominent television personality who regularly...

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A Transfer of Memory

Posted April 21, 2009 | 06:40 AM (EST)


On April 24, 1945, my mother, Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft, gave one of the first eyewitness accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust on a Movietone News newsreel that was filmed at the recently liberated Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen.

When British troops had entered Bergen-Belsen...

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Give Bibi a Chance

Posted April 13, 2009 | 07:15 AM (EST)



As a longtime supporter of the Israeli peace movement, I believe that it would behoove everyone to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu some breathing space.

Even before Netanyahu's new government was sworn in, skeptics and pundits warned that he would both isolate Israel internationally and refuse to...

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The Vatican's Response to Holocaust Denial Must Be Holocaust Education

Posted February 12, 2009 | 06:02 AM (EST)


Richard Williamson, one of the four excommunicated bishops whom Pope Benedict XVI wants to bring back into the Roman Catholic fold, is not the only Holocaust denier in the Society of St. Pius X, an ultra-right wing splinter group of the Roman Catholic Church. The Italian branch of the Society...

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Pope Benedict XVI's Noxious Rehabilitation of a Holocaust Denier

Posted February 4, 2009 | 09:20 AM (EST)


Like flat earthers, Holocaust deniers simply refuse to acknowledge reality. On being shown pictures taken from a satellite that showed the earth as a sphere, Samuel Shenton, the head of the Flat Earth Society, reportedly said, "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye."...

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Even Same-Sex Marriage Is a Basic Civil Right

Posted January 15, 2009 | 06:15 AM (EST)


In contrast to some prominent Christian Evangelists, Pastor Rick Warren, who has been invited to deliver the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration, does not wish gays and lesbians ill. He takes justifiable pride in his church's record of caring for AIDS victims. At the same time, he actively opposes...

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A Chip By Any Other Name . . .

Posted December 28, 2008 | 10:15 AM (EST)


What kind of a chip is a Chip Saltsman? A cow chip? Perhaps a sheep chip? You get my drift.

In any event, as a progressive Democrat, I'm rooting for Horse Chip Saltsman, who used to be Mike Huckabee's campaign manager, to be the next head of the Republican National...

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Senator Caroline Kennedy: An Inspired and Inspiring Choice

Posted December 16, 2008 | 09:33 AM (EST)


Let's see now, Caroline Kennedy is a graduate of Columbia Law School, she has been deeply involved with and committed to public education in New York City, raising millions of dollars for the city's public schools, she has co-authored two outstanding and readable books on the Bill of Rights and...

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Why American Jews Voted for Barack Obama

Posted November 14, 2008 | 04:27 PM (EST)



We know that while defeat is an orphan, victory's illegitimate fathers come out of the woodworks like cockroaches to claim paternity, but the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) claiming credit for Barack Obama's election? That's almost as credible as John McCain saying that he does not regret picking Sarah...

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The Night Robert Kennedy Finally Won

Posted November 5, 2008 | 09:09 AM (EST)


On November 4, 2008, at 11:00 pm, Robert Kennedy finally won.

Forty years after his assassination shattered dreams and brought his quest to change America to a sudden, brutal halt, Robert Kennedy reached the goal that had been denied him in life.

He was not yet 43 years old during...

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The Supreme Court Is at Stake on November 4th

Posted October 31, 2008 | 12:00 PM (EST)


We've got to give the Republicans credit: they have successfully diverted everyone's attention away from their plans for the United States Supreme Court. Almost forgotten in the wake of the GOP's seemingly endless smear attacks and fear mongering is the simple fact that if elected, John McCain and Sarah Palin...

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