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Menachem Rosensaft
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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 Cornell University Law School, Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, and Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Syracuse University College of Law.

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

Holocaust Torah Scrolls Scam: Demanding Accountability

Posted February 9, 2012 | 2/9/12

I cannot for the life of me decide, with apologies to Shakespeare's Lafeu in "All's Well That Ends Well," whether Rick Zitelman is a knave or a fool. Regardless, he has a great deal to answer for and should not be allowed to evade public excoriation.
...

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Exploiting the Memory of Child Holocaust Victims Is Obscene

287 Comments | Posted January 26, 2012 | 1/26/12

It is virtually impossible to imagine anything more reprehensible than the recent spectacle of haredi, that is ultra-Orthodox, Jewish boys wearing yellow stars of David and simulated striped black-and-white concentration camp uniforms at a demonstration in Jerusalem. Offended by the Israeli authorities' efforts to curtail the verbal and physical abuse...

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Ultra-Orthodox Judaism Need Not Be Obscurantist

54 Comments | Posted January 12, 2012 | 1/12/12

The spectacle of haredi -- that is, ultra-Orthodox -- thugs spitting on Naama Margolis, an 8-year-old schoolgirl in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh has exacerbated the already frayed relations between the fundamentalist religious sector of the Jewish community, in Israel and elsewhere, and the rest of us, that is,...

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Those Who Desecrate the Holocaust Have No Place in Society

269 Comments | Posted January 3, 2012 | 1/3/12

An abhorrent rally Saturday night in Jerusalem's Shabbat Square featuring haredim, that is, ultra-Orthodox Jews, wearing yellow stars and simulated concentration camp uniforms brings to mind Walt Kelly's observation in the classic Pogo comic strip, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

"It's like how it started with...

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Remembering Sandra: Eulogy for a Friend

1 Comments | Posted December 29, 2011 | 12/29/11

Sandra Gabrilove Saltzman, who died late on the night of December 24, 2011, at the age of 63, attended the Ethical Culture School in Manhattan, Fieldston High School in Riverdale, NY, Brown University, and New York University School of Law. This eulogy was delivered at her funeral on December 28,...

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Ron Wyden: Forging Common Ground on Medicare Reform

85 Comments | Posted December 19, 2011 | 12/19/11

When Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon partnered with Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, to propose Medicare reform, Wyden was promptly denounced by New York Times columnist and Nobel Economics laureate Paul Krugman as a "useful idiot" who did "a bad, bad thing." Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat...

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Criminalizing Mass Murder: 65 Years After The UN's First Condemnation Of Genocide

55 Comments | Posted December 15, 2011 | 12/15/11

On December 11, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 96 (I), which declared genocide, defined as "a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups," to be "a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals...

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Judge Romney on Policies, Not Faith

Posted October 28, 2011 | 10/28/11

On December 17, 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11 expelling "Jews, as a class" from large parts of Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee "within twenty-four hours." A few weeks later, following protests from Jewish groups, President Lincoln had this order rescinded. When Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of...

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Israel's Jewish Essence Is Non-Negotiable: A Response to Mahmoud Abbas

Posted October 5, 2011 | 10/5/11

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last month, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that he had come "from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him)."

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Ahmadinejad Is the Real Threat

Posted September 22, 2011 | 9/22/11

With the Obama administration and much of the organized Jewish community focused on the schizophrenic Palestinian bid for UN membership, a series of recent remarks by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seem to have largely slipped under the radar.

"Iran believes that whoever is for humanity should also be for eradicating...

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Review: The Long Road Home, The Aftermath of the Second World War

Posted February 28, 2011 | 2/28/11

Most people would not consider a mere five years to be an "era," that term generally being reserved for far longer spans of time. And yet, as is evident from Ben Shephard's masterful The Long Road Home, The Aftermath of the Second World War, published this month, the...

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Our Long National Fascination With Henry Kissinger Is Over

Posted December 17, 2010 | 12/17/10

I cannot remember reading anything as despicable or callous as Henry Kissinger's observation, captured for posterity on secret White House recordings newly released by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, that "The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And...

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The Past: Far More Than Prologue

Posted September 16, 2010 | 9/16/10

Who are we if not the product of our past? And sometimes we realize that the essence of our identity may have its roots a long time ago.

The following incident appears in the pages of the Memorial Book, of the Jewish community of Brzeziny, a town...

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Morocco Is a Friend and Must Be Treated as Such

Posted June 30, 2010 | 6/30/10

I take no position on whether countries should prohibit religious proselytizing. Over the centuries, Jews, especially Jewish children, have far too often been the victims of proselytization. During the years of the Holocaust, desperate Jewish parents in Poland smuggled their children out of the ghetto for safekeeping by Christians only...

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An Appeal to Republicans and Democrats: Stop Nazi Analogies, Now

Posted June 15, 2010 | 6/15/10

I understand why Rush Limbaugh has made a long series of abhorrent comparisons between President Obama and Adolf Hitler. His sole purpose is to shock, to offend.

According to Limbaugh, President Obama's health care logo was "right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook;" "Obama is asking citizens to rat each other...

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Glenn Beck Promotes Vicious Anti-Semite on Radio Show

Posted June 8, 2010 | 6/8/10

Just when we thought that we had heard all the offensive, Nazi-related comments that could possibly be uttered, we are proven wrong with a vengeance.

First we had Newt Gingrich's absurd pronouncement that the Obama administration's policies represent "as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or...

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Tell MSNBC that Pat Buchanan Is a Bigot

Posted June 4, 2010 | 6/4/10

There can be no doubt, reasonable or otherwise, that Patrick Buchanan, the erstwhile ultra-right wing presidential candidate and senior official in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses who is now an extremely well-paid political commentator on MSNBC, is a hard-core anti-Semite. I previously listed highlights of his extensive anti-Semitic record...

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Patrick Buchanan: What Else Is New?

Posted May 25, 2010 | 5/25/10

Like rancid salami, Patrick Buchanan is a gift that keeps on giving.

While he is careful -- or under orders -- to appear mainstream conservative and eminently reasonable in his frequent appearances on MSNBC, the three-time presidential candidate and former White House aide in the Nixon and Reagan administrations does...

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Newt Gingrich and Rand Paul Jump the Shark

Posted May 20, 2010 | 5/20/10

Here we go again. A prominent Republican likens President Obama to Adolf Hitler, and the Republican leadership remains embarrassingly, shockingly silent.

According to former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, the President's "secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet...

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The Holocaust Torah Scrolls Scam, Part II: Why Is Anyone Still Defending This Man?

Posted March 19, 2010 | 3/19/10

What's wrong with these people?

In an attempt to buttress the tarnished credibility of Rabbi Menachem Youlus, the Washington, DC, area Torah scribe who boasts that he has "rescued" over 1,000 Holocaust-era Torah scrolls, Save a Torah, Inc., Youlus's 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt organization, has now issued a report by...

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