Jan. 27, the anniversary of the day Soviet soldiers liberated the Auschwitz death camp in 1945, is the annual International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. The United Nations, which will convene a solemn ceremony at its world headquarters, features online this statement by Holocaust survivor Nechama Tec: "The Holocaust teaches us that no matter how oppressive life is, some people are able to rise above the cruelty of their times by extending helping hands to one another. It is this ability to risk one's life on behalf of others which ought to give us hope."
But if the grandchildren of the victims of Hitler's Final Solution are to have hope for the future, they'll need the international community to go beyond annual moments of silence by beginning to speak out against mainstream global anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial. Here are a few examples U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki- Moon should consider for his speech:
Iran
While international action is belatedly underway to head off Iran's nuclear ambitions, no government or NGO has tried to bring the regime to The Hague for it's state-sponsored Holocaust denial and pre-genocidal anti-Jewish and anti-Judaic rants. The insidiousness of the recent TV show "Saturday Hunter," starring loathsome religious Jews, would have made Hitler weep tears of joy. Also available are a series of animated cartoons mocking the 6 million victims of the Holocaust, which until last week were available on YouTube.
Egypt
Everyone is courting the electorally victorious, supposedly "moderate" Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the group's first move was to block Jewish prayers at the graveside of a saintly scholar and its Arabic language webpages tout Holocaust denial while a spokesmen observes that the Shoah is "a tale" exploited for politics, and that "the entire world, and Germany in particular, has become yearly scapegoats of world Zionism, and has capitulated to the greatest political extortion in history." No western democracy has condemned the Brotherhood's religious intolerance.
Holland
As European Union members prepared for Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Dutch government rejects calls for an apology for Holland's "indifference" to the fate of more than 100,000 Jews -- 75 percent of Dutch Jewish citizens -- murdered in the Holocaust.
Latvia
A Riga court removed the city council's ban on "Legion Day" paving the way for a march down main street honoring 140,000 Latvians who fought in the Waffen SS during WWII.
Lithuania
Authorities pay lip service to the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry during the Holocaust but rewrite the historic narrative of WWII to deny any collaboration by Lithuanians in the mass murder of more than 90 percent of their Jewish neighbors.
England
London School of Economics students chose Nazi-themes for their drinking songs. A Jewish student had his nose broken for daring to protest, leading an activist group to label the LSE "a campus conducive to intolerance and anti-Semitism."
Asia
"Hitler chic" continues to manifest in fashion, music, advertising campaigns, and even school competitions across Asia- from Japan to Thailand to India.
U.S.
The Friends Seminary in New York refuses to withdraw an invitation to musician-turned-polemicist Gilad Atzmon whose book, "The Wandering Who?" argues that the Holocaust "was not at all an historical narrative," that Auschwitz was not a "death camp," that "accusations of Jews making matzo out of young Goyim's blood" may be true, and that "Hitler might have been right after all."
Germany
The society still struggles with the legacy of hate left by Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. A just-released report commissioned for the Parliament laments that anti-Semitism remains deeply embedded among Germans, not only among the far-right and Islamist extremists, but the public at large. From Holocaust denial online to chants of "Jews to the gas chambers" at football matches, to denial of Israel's right to exist by increasingly radicalized Islamists, Wolfgang Thierse, Vice President of the German Parliament warned, "the problem is not a question of a few selective issues but is long-standing and chronic."
What's the common denominator of these diverse examples? Silence and indifference. Too many of today's diplomats, media and ethical voices fall silent when the targets of hate are Jews.
Despite the fact that hatred targeting Jews and Judaism remain disproportionately high, in 2012, today's Jewish victims are not deemed worthy of moral solidarity. Yet, history teaches that unchallenged anti-Semitic libels inevitably ignite anti-Jewish acts.
This International Holocaust Memorial Day we urge those who take the time to stand in silence for 6 million dead Jews, to also speak up in defense of embattled live Jews.
Dr. Harold Brackman, a historian and consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, contributed to this op-ed.
Follow Rabbi Abraham Cooper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/simonwiesenthal
Alan Dershowitz: Friends Seminary Plays Bait and Switch on Anti-Semitism
I am always surprised and saddened when my Jewish students have not even heard of Primo Levi, much less read any of his work. It is an honor to be the one to introduce them to him, but I wish that he were more accessible and appreciated in the United States.
Because that's the biggest problem in the world right now.
A tiny number of racist morons who deny what the world knows is true, whom nobody takes seriously, that's what the UN should focus upon? There are always going to be fringe crazies, like the Russian Nationalist Neo-Nazis, they are a problem for their host countries, but they represent nobody, they have no power. There is much worse suffering and humanitarian problems in the world right now, much worse than the words of bigoted idiots who have no power to do anything with their stupid, useless racism and bigotry.
Again, Jews do not need these International days of commemoration. It is international community need to repeat the the history of Holocaust, stories from the period of shame for the European civilization if it has any interest in preventing it from happening to another group again. And looking at Cambodia, Rwanda I sense that the lesson had not set in yet. Or there's no genuine interest in learning it but merely paying lip service to the symbols. No, this is not for Jews, not for memories of 6 millions if anything it is for you children, so they would not take jobs of death camp guards under any circumstances.
The leader of Iran represents nobody and has no power??
9. Holland 150,000 90,000 60.0
"A Bavarian prosecutor has filed a motion to have a Dutch native who fled to Germany after being convicted in the Netherlands of Nazi war crimes serve his sentence in a German prison — likely the final chapter in decades of efforts to see the 89-year-old jailed.
Klaas Carel Faber — No. 3 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most-wanted Nazis — was convicted in 1947 of involvement in 22 murders and for aiding the Netherlands' Nazi occupiers during World War II. He was handed a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison, according to Dutch prosecutors.
But in 1952 he escaped and fled to Germany, where he has lived in freedom ever since despite several attempts to try or extradite him."
So, was tried, convicted and escaped to Germany where he lived free for 60 years? He should have rot these 60 years in prison. Frankly, wish him 60 more years ... in prison.
WW2 Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine, with total dead amounting to 2.5% of the world population.
The Jews are in the queue along side the Russians, Poles, Sinta, Roma, Dutch, Belgians, Chinese, and all the others who were targeted for murder.
Our dead are as important to us, as your dead are to you. You see yourselves as unique. We don't.
http://www.jewcy.com/arts-and-culture/holocaust_unique
Have a nice day.
People forget, for instance, the Sephardic Jews who not only were expelled from Spain but also territories held by Spain at the time, such as Sicily. It's not as though the Holocaust were the first time that Jews were targets of such hatred and irrational violence.
Sickening.
Those insisting otherwise have not made a factual or legal case for any action.
The Holocaust being used to justify violence is just sad.