Anti Semitism....

[missy]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/03/france-jewish-school-shootings-anti-semitism-poll.html

I wasn't going to post this but I am curious about PSers thoughts regarding this. I was dismayed to read these percentages.

If this is against PS rules then I ask for Ella to please delete with my apologies.

Poll: 'Anti-Semitic notions' on rise among French, other Europeans


The French have grown more likely to believe that Jews hold too much power in business or world finance, as well as other "classical anti-Semitic notions," according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League that compares attitudes in 2009 and 2012

The French have grown more likely to believe that Jews hold too much power in business or world finance, as well as other "classical anti-Semitic notions," according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League that compares attitudes in 2009 and 2012.

The poll, released Tuesday, found nearly half of the French people surveyed said they think it is "probably true" that Jews there are more loyal to Israel than France, an increase from years past. Asked if Jews "still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust," more than a third of the respondents agreed.

Bias against Jews is in the spotlight in France after a gunman killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday. The French interior minister said the alleged attacker, suspected to have links to a group associated with Al Qaeda, said he shot them in revenge for the killing of Palestinian children.

Attacks on French Jews fell last year, with 389 incidents ranging from violence to vandalism reported, but the aggressiveness of the attacks rose, said the Protection Service for the Jewish Community, which provides security for synagogues and Jewish celebrations, the Associated Press reported.

The new survey covered not only France but nine other countries across Europe. Nearly one third of the Europeans surveyed held "pernicious anti-Semitic beliefs," the Anti-Defamation League said. Five thousand telephone interviews were conducted across Europe for the poll, 500 in each country surveyed.

Though the killings at the Jewish school have focused attention on attitudes against Jews in France, the new poll indicated that such beliefs are markedly more common in Hungary, Poland and Spain than in France.

Anti-Semitism "infects many Europeans at a much higher level than we see here in the United States," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the league, which is based in New York City. "In Hungary, Spain and Poland the numbers for anti-Semitic attitudes are literally off the charts.”

For instance, 14% of French people surveyed said they agreed that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ; 38% of Hungarian respondents and 46% of Polish people surveyed said the same. While 45% of French people surveyed said Jews were more loyal to Israel, 72% of Spainards interviewed said so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/anti-semitism-rise-europe_n_1371313.html

Anti Semitism Europe

By Lauren Markoe
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) Days after a lone gunman murdered a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, a new study reports widespread anti-Semitism in France and across Europe.

The survey, completed in January and released Tuesday by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, finds that 24 percent of the French population holds anti-Semitic views, up from 20 percent in 2009.

When asked if violence against Jews is rooted in anti-Jewish or anti-Israel sentiment, four in 10 Europeans (39 percent) responded that it was the result of anti-Jewish sentiment.

In France, 45 percent of those asked held this view, up from 39 percent in the previous survey.

"Those increases are all the more disturbing in light of the shooting attack at the Jewish school in Toulouse," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director of the Monday (March 19) shootings in France.

About half a million Jews live in France, less than 1 percent of the population and the largest Jewish population in western Europe.

The survey of 5,000 Europeans across 10 countries also asked whether Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, wield too much power in the business world, and talk too much about the Holocaust.

The survey found particularly high levels of anti-Semitism in three nations.

"In Hungary, Spain and Poland, the numbers for anti-Semitic attitudes are literally off the charts and demand a serious response from political, civic and religious leaders," said Foxman.

* In Spain, where Jewish civic groups say Spaniards blame their economic woes on the country's Jews, 72 percent of the population holds anti-Jewish views, compared with 64 percent in 2009.
* In Hungary, 63 percent of the population holds anti-Semitic views, up from 47 percent in 2009.
* In Poland, 48 percent show anti-Semitic attitudes, about the same as 2009.

By comparison, attitudes toward Jews in the United States are far more positive. The most recent ADL study, completed in October, found 15 percent of the population holds anti-Semitic views.

Still, nearly one in five Americans at the time said Jews probably have too much influence on Wall Street, a significant uptick from the previous study. As in other countries, tough economic times in the U.S foment age-old myths about Jewish control of the economy, the authors said.

About 6.5 million Jews live in the United States, about 2 percent of the population. The European survey has a margin of error of between 4.4 and 4.9 percentage points, depending on the country.

 

[movie zombie]

some thoughts:

europe has been moving to the right for some time now.
intolerance of minorities and immigrants despite the fact that many of those people come from colonies that had been held by france, belgium, etc. and imo those countries have a responsibility.
i'm not so sure its a rise of anti-semitism as much as it never was really completely addressed and dealt with after WWII.
when things go bad with an economy, a group always gets scapegoated. we see it here in the US as well.

 

[missy]

Thank you for your thoughts MoZo.
I just find it upsetting that anti semitism, which is racism against Jews, is rarely mentioned IMO as compared to other forms of racism.

The thing is, that history has shown that whenever anti semitism becomes "popular" the persecution of other minorities is right there or not far behind. Sometimes I wonder if people are 100% cognizant of that fact. I mean, it seems that anti semitism is present in minority groups even more so than certain majority groups. That is especially concerning to me. I personally have heard upsetting comments (from people who don't realize I am Jewish though I certainly set them straight after their appalling comments) and I can only think it comes from a place of ignorance as does all racism. When these people realize I am Jewish I often get comments like oh, you don't seem Jewish or you're different than most Jewish people. It is quite concerning that such an ignorance exists still. After all we have been through in this world.

In recent years anti semitism has most definitely been on the rise. Especially in the Islamic world and in countries where the Holocaust occurred. The president of Iran repeatedly has declared the Holocaust a “myth” and that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” Denial and minimization of the Holocaust, along with other forms of hatred against Jews, is now widespread on the Internet. I am definitely seeing a rise in this hateful behavior and the latest polls I posted is but one example.

It is not about Jews or Israel. It is about everything we have long fought for as a nation. Tolerance and acceptance, fighting bigotry and extremism, no matter one's religion or political beliefs. Anti semitism threatens all of humanity.

Sorry if this feels like a lecture or anything. I just wanted to get PSer's thoughts on this. It seems that the tragedy of Trayvon Martin's death (I know the facts are not out yet but just thinking out loud) is but all part of this (irrational) hatred against people who are (perceived) different (but not really different if you KWIM) in some way. It can be insidious at times and quite obvious at other times.

 

[movie zombie]

this remains true:

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

-- by Martin Niemöller


as you noted, missy, other groups were also persecuted along with the jews throughout history. during WWII the gypsy peoples were equally hard hit.... and once again in europe they are being hard hit, some would argue that their treatment right now would be a whisper to the future re attitudes towards jews.

did you see the movie Sarah's Key? in some ways i think there are those in france trying to deal with their collaboration with the nazi occupation and contribution to the french jewish round ups and transport to camps for extermination. see this movie if you can.

there is a reason why the jewish community engaged in the struggle for civil rights.....because it was understood that the civil rights denied to one group could be easily denied to another.

 

[missy]

this remains true:

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

-- by Martin Niemöller


as you noted, missy, other groups were also persecuted along with the jews throughout history. during WWII the gypsy peoples were equally hard hit.... and once again in europe they are being hard hit, some would argue that their treatment right now would be a whisper to the future re attitudes towards jews.

did you see the movie Sarah's Key? in some ways i think there are those in france trying to deal with their collaboration with the nazi occupation and contribution to the french jewish round ups and transport to camps for extermination. see this movie if you can.

there is a reason why the jewish community engaged in the struggle for civil rights.....because it was understood that the civil rights denied to one group could be easily denied to another.

Thanks MoZo for that quote-I have heard it before but forgot it. Chilling and true.

I haven't seen Sarah's Key and will definitely put it on my to see movie list. Thanks for the recommendation.
Have you seen Incendies? It's also a chilling movie about discrimination and the havoc it wreaks on its own. A must see movie. It was one of the best I have seen in a long time.
http://bostonianonfilm.blogspot.com/2011/05/incendies-film-as-metaphor.html

 

[justginger]

I must admit that I naively thought anti-Semitism was really a thing of the past. Apparently I was sorely mistaken. There is not a large Jewish population in Perth that I've ever seen (unless it is very insular), so I think you would be hard pressed to find a West Australian with those views. One's religion just never registers with me - a person is a person is a person, you know? I guess I was expecting too much to assume everyone else thought the same way.

I read Sarah's Key and it was devastating. My goodness, what a dark mark in the history of France. It's appalling that not only is that history not being openly discussed, but is being denied with a fresh surge of discrimination, hatred.

 

[missy]

Thanks for your honesty justginger. I think education is key when it comes to eradicating all forms of racism from society.
Not realizing there's a problem adds to the insidiousness of it and allows it to flourish. How many groups of people all over the world are murdered in the name of religion or for being perceived different and how aware are we of all of it? When will the madness ever end-will it ever end?

Here's another disturbing article about the Toulouse attack.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/airbrushing-anti-semitism-out-of-the-toulouse-attack-1.421436

Airbrushing anti-Semitism out of the Toulouse attack
Analysts and political pundits attempting to establish a motive for the murder of a rabbi and three children outside a Jewish school in Toulouse somehow omit anti-Semitism as a possible cause.
By Joel Braunold / Jewish World blogger Tags: Jewish World anti-Semitism Toulouse shootings


Like Jews across the world, I was shocked, sickened and frightened by the senseless murder of a rabbi and three small children in France last week. With the end of Mohammed Merah’s life came the start of an operation on the psychosis that drove him to murder with such callousness. Analysts and political pundits attempting to establish cause and motive have come up with a range of options. Yet, absent from such analysis of many was the cause of anti-Semitism.

As a British Jew who has moved to the United States, my media diet has somewhat shifted to this new geographical location. Now that I do not read the European press daily, I was first made aware of the issue of the air-brushing of anti-Semitism from Merah’s causes by an excellent article in the Tablet by Michael Moynihan, where he picked through various accounts of peoples explanations of the killings and saw that hatred against the Jews did not feature.

Perhaps the most shocking piece written on the murders came from Oxford Professor and Islamic thinker Tariq Ramadan, who declared that Merah was a young man, “imbued neither with the values of Islam, or driven by racism and anti-Semitism.” He was merely attacking symbols, “the army and Jews.”

His analysis was joined by a piece on France 24 that his trigger was due to the loss of a job or a political act. The Guardian in their editorial worries about the politicization of the incident and the general threats to society of violent extremisms, but never mentions the term anti-Semitism.

The reduction of the French Jewish community to a mere symbol of a Western European society demonstrates a dehumanization of Merah’s victims. How does the slaughter of a religious leader and three small children of a particular minority community merely become a symbol of attacking society in general? Do the victims’ identities mean nothing to these analysts except to demonstrate this was another disaffected immigrant angry at the West and demonstrating that anger in just any way he knew how?

As someone who was once the convener anti-racist, anti-fascist campaign for the National Student Movement in the U.K., I understand the tinder box of inter community violence all too well. The desire for the far-right to have been the perpetrator, the boogie man that we can all agree to hate, is overwhelmingly strong. The last thing we want to do is exacerbate Jewish-Muslim tensions.

Yet this noble desire cannot mask the fact that this man’s victims were not random. They were Jews. His lip service to the Palestinian cause as justification makes him no more a symbol of their movement, as his victims were symbols of Western Society. Merah got it into his head that one should kill Jews; it was something that was correct in his eyes to do. His brother is proud of what he did. Is that also because he lost his job or is disaffected? When will it be allowed to say that these two people hated Jews?

The post-mortem of this terrible act needs to focus on how this understanding - that it was a good idea to gun down Jews - occurred. Mohammad Merah, and his brother it seems, have both been infected by eleminationist anti-Semitism. What is needed alongside the rest of the psychological analysis is finding the cause of the infection and callousing it from Western society. It must be burnt out.

The inabilities of some to even mention anti-Semitism as a cause terrifies me. Call a spade a spade; the victims deserve labeling this an act of anti-Semitism far more than the analysis of rightist politics in France's political discourse.

Perhaps the only positive thing of note has been the reaction of the French Jewish community. After a rabbi and three small children were murdered in France, and declared by the persecutor as an act in the name of the Middle East conflict, there were no riots, nor firebombs lobbed at mosques. During the 2009 War in Gaza there were riots in London, shops smashed and firebombs thrown at synagogues.

The French Jewish community’s silent and powerful protest in arms with other communities in response to such violent provocation demonstrates that even at the pinnacle of rage rioting in the streets of Europe is not justified. So as we think about what lead a man to target Jewish children, let us also recognize the control of a community, a control that we could only hope to emulate if we found ourselves in such circumstances.

Here's another thought provoking article I just read. I am very curious what others think.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/03/30/peter-beinart-racism-vs-anti-semitism/

Peter Beinart, Racism vs. Anti-Semitism
There are critics of Israel and the Jews I respect and those I do not. Peter Beinart, who has just published The Crisis of Zionism, is an example of one I do not. He is jumping onto a band wagon that is careening down a dangerous slope. I doubt his motives. Not for his criticism of Israel, much of which I share, even though I do believe far more evil has been thrust onto Israel than it itself has been guilty of. But for his support of a qualified boycott of Israel, when I have not seen him quoted in support of a boycott of other far worse and dangerous regimes. There are others I respect because I believe their motives are purer. One was Peter Novick, who died recently, a significant American academic known primarily for his analysis of the objectivity of professional historians. But in the Jewish world he is known for his fierce critique of the way the Holocaust has been used and misused for political purposes in his The Holocaust in American Life and then in The Holocaust and Collective Memory.

For many years after the obliteration of the Nazi evil, neither Jew nor non-Jew wanted to speak about the horrors of what happened. Even Anne Frank’s diary was initially rejected by publishing houses. Some argue that it was the Eichmann Trial in the early sixties that caused the floodgates of memory to gush forth. Some believe it was the warming of the Cold War, which had been the excuse for integrating former Nazis into the fabric of German and American societies, ignoring their past and using them to combat the USSR. For others it was the palpable fear of Israeli extinction we who lived through it all experienced just before the Six Day Way and the sense of its miraculous victory that led to the focus on the fact that a second Holocaust almost happened. Maybe it was all of these that suddenly led to the establishment of Holocaust museums and Holocaust Days and the solemn promises that this would never happen again.

Novick saw much of this as an abuse, a misuse, and an excuse. He argued that the Holocaust was being used to prop up declining communities, as a surrogate for religious values, and an excuse for misbehavior elsewhere. He distanced himself from Norman Finkelstein’s neurotic antagonism towards Zionism and his thesis that Israel’s only reason for emphasizing the Holocaust was as a cover for its imperialist domination of the Palestinians.

I agreed with much of what Novick wrote. I did feel there was “no business like Shoah business” and that it was being milked for all it was worth. What became a generally accepted slogan–never again–was a sham, because the fact was that other genocides have taken place since then, as the world stood by. Part of me recoiled from those who made a living out of the Holocaust, all those prizewinning books and the requirement to bring the Holocaust into almost every piece of literary writing, however banal. Yet another part of me recognized that the lessons have not been learnt and that the very people who ought to be visiting the museums, seeing the films, and reading the books were not. It was the converted preaching once again to the converted.

The worst intellectual pornography, however, came from left-wing Westerners bereft of a political cause to rally round, except against anything associated with the USA, who have tried to equate Israel’s reluctant and accidental occupation of the West Bank and Gaza with Nazi extermination, which is now virtually the default position of Western academe.

It was not until my wife introduced me to Jean Amery that I heard a voice that really moved me. In her course at the New School, Amery’s work was presented alongside Frantz Fanon, the great left-wing black writer who highlighted the immorality of slavery and the oppression of blacks around the world. There is no doubt that this prejudice continues, but nowadays no one would dare champion it in public. The Trayvon Martin scandal, where it seems at this moment that a completely innocent black youngster was shot dead by a racist of a different color, shows how much prejudice against blacks still exists. The equivalence is the problem once again. In order to get the idea of a Holocaust Day accepted by Muslims in the West (much of the East still claims it was a myth) and by others who had a brief against Jews, the idea was extended, as in the UK, to cover other genocides and racisms. I recall a heated debate with a black academic in London who argued that the horrors inflicted on black slaves were the same as the Holocaust. I argued that I was not aware of any gas chambers built for any other people or race. To suggest the situations are identical would have depressed Amery enormously.

Jean Amery was born Hans Chaim Mayer in 1912 in Austria. His mother was not Jewish and he was brought up as a Catholic. Amery studied philosophy and literature in Vienna. He found himself categorized as a Jew by Hitler, married a Jewish woman and joined the resistance against the Nazi occupation of Belgium. He was captured and tortured by the Gestapo and survived internments in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He was liberated at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. His main work was At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. His theme was that humanity itself becomes complicit in the crime by ignoring it, by feeling guiltless and by pretending it did not happen. He felt his task was not to explain the inexplicable, but simply to keep the memory alive as an abstraction. “For nothing is resolved, nothing is settled, no, remembering has become mere memory. I do not understand today, and I hope that I never will. Clarification would amount to disposal, settlement of the case, which can then be placed in the files of history.” He adopted his name Amery both because it was an anagram for his name Mayer and a play on the French for “bitter.” He identified as a Jew, but not in any religious sense. He lived a bitter life with the burden of the evil and hatred he had seen. He committed suicide 1978.

Quite prophetically, when he reissued At the Mind’s Limits in 1977, he added an introduction in which he said:

“Germany’s young leftist democrats have now reached the point where they not only regard their own state as an already halfway fascist social structure but in a wholesale way they also view and correspondingly treat all those countries they designate as ‘formal’ democracies–and amongst them, above all, the tiny endangered State of Israel–as Fascist, imperialist, colonial. For this reason the time has come when every contemporary of the Nazi horror must take action. The political as well as Jewish Nazi victim which I was and am, cannot be silent when under the banner of the anti-Zionism, the old wretched anti-Semitism ventures forth.”

Intellectual fashions rise and fall, come and go. Over the past two thousand years only one hatred has remained constant throughout. Equivalence is the issue. No one dares fly the flag openly of racism or male chauvinism in the West. But anti-Semitism will not die.

Amery’s point is that the Holocaust was like no other hatred, an intentional attempt at the destruction of every single Jew regardless of age, sex or creed. To compare, to try to fit it into a category is a dangerous heresy. There has been nothing like it in human history. This does not excuse crimes committed by Jews or Israelis. The obligation to protest, to demonstrate, to try to change must be constant. But the one thing that is unacceptable is to diminish the horror of what humans did by comparing lesser crimes to it. That was why Amery said that he could not bear to live in the same world that the perpetrators or supporters of Nazism, or indeed anti-Semites, continued to inhabit.

When we give intellectual support to those who argue that Israel is a Fascist State, regardless of whether we believe, as I do, that individuals of that state have made gross and sometimes murderous errors of judgment and action, we are helping those who seek our destruction and elimination and we are betraying the memory of men like Amery, who could not bear to live while such intellectual deceit was still being perpetuated. Nothing surprises me about Jews, for better or for worse. It saddens me that even holocaust survivors themselves have become tools of those who really do seek Israel’s destruction. But this must make the rest of us fight all the harder, both for Israel’s survival and its moral health.

 

[movie zombie]

yes, i saw Incendies.

i would also argue politics within The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo speak to neo-nazi existence as well.......

please try and see Sarah's Key soon. i'd love to discuss it with you.

we were in belgium about 10 years ago and as is my tendancy i get into conversations....or i should say people end feeling comfortable with me and talking. there was a young man at the hotel we were staying at who had married an immigrant woman from south american. it was enlightening as to how far the country had moved to the right at that time.

more later.

 

[missy]

yes, i saw Incendies.

i would also argue politics within The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo speak to neo-nazi existence as well.......

please try and see Sarah's Key soon. i'd love to discuss it with you.

we were in belgium about 10 years ago and as is my tendancy i get into conversations....or i should say people end feeling comfortable with me and talking. there was a young man at the hotel we were staying at who had married an immigrant woman from south american. it was enlightening as to how far the country had moved to the right at that time.

more later.

I just did a search and it is available on our netflix streaming (which I joined a few months ago to watch Downton Abbey and that was the last thing I watched on it but kept our membership so YAY!)!

We are going to watch it tonight after we get home from bringing our furbabies to the vet (their aunt Debbie) in Long Island. It's a whole day affair since her office is far from us. Looking forward to watching this movie now MoZo. When it first came out I didn't want to see it because I hate watching more movies about the Holocaust. So upsetting but now I am looking forward to it. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[missy]

My dh and I just watched Sarah's Key. It was good. I cannot say I enjoyed it as I always get upset when I watch Holocaust movies but I like movies that make you think. How much are we a product of our history? Can we really ever escape the past? Can we change who we are and where we come from and make a happy new life?

I was shocked (all over again as I relived that part watching the movie) that the French people didn't even acknowledge their role or apologize in the rounding up and murdering of Jews until 1995. I am not saying I do not understand why they felt they had to do what they did during the Vel' d'Hiv roundup of Parisian Jews in 1942 because I am not so foolish to think that under times such as those pragmatism may not come before ethics for many. Though it is sad and hard to truly understand but I guess unless you are in those circumstances you cannot definitively say how you would behave. But I can only hope that we learn from the past and also why we must never forget it. However, what I remain totally shocked at is that the French did not admit their part until 1995. That is what is unbelievable and terribly disappointing.

In fact, I found out from my sister (who read the book) that the author who grew up in France was never taught at school about the French complicity in rounding up Jews for the Nazis. When Tatiana de Rosnay found out about it she wrote this book as her tribute to all the french children that were murdered as a result of that roundup. Heartbreaking but wonderful that she wanted to do that.

I was sad about what happened to Sarah. She obviously could not come to terms with the horror she experienced and the death of her whole family. I was sad all over again about the role France played in the Holocaust. Seeing what men were capable of doing to their fellow man. But I find hope in the fact that there were people who helped during that dark time and ultimately there was a message of hope and potential that lived on in her son (though that part was a bit weak IMO).

I shudder at man's inhumanity to man and can only hope if ever faced with such circumstances I would be with those people that did the right and brave thing even with great risk to themselves.

Thanks MoZo for being the impetus I needed to finally watch this movie.

 

[movie zombie]

glad you finally saw it. it was very well done....and educational.
there has been a lot of film out of europe during the last years re complicity with the nazi.
see this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0920458/
i saw it in toronto before release. the director was present. he made the film because the danes pretend they were all against the nazi....but they weren't. the story is based on actual history. he found a reference while doing other research to a payment made to a woman and became curious. he followed that one piece of paper to find out more and it led to the movie. citron was the son of an auto manufacturer and rather than let the nazis use it for their own, he burned it to the ground.
i will admit that i have not yet seen Schindler's List.......

 

[missy]

Thanks for another recommendation. I will put it on my TIVO list.

I highly recommend Schindler's List. I was only planning on seeing that movie once and saw it with my parents and my sister in 1993. When my dh and I became a couple he had never seen it so I ended up seeing it again. Not a movie I really wanted to see twice but it is an excellent movie. Worth seeing for sure.

My favorite Holocaust movie is Sophie's Choice. I'm not sure if it is because of Meryl Streep (love her!) or the fact that is was so deeply moving and profound. I really love this movie and have seen it a few times which is unlike me.

 

[T L]

Thanks for another recommendation. I will put it on my TIVO list.

I highly recommend Schindler's List. I was only planning on seeing that movie once and saw it with my parents and my sister in 1993. When my dh and I became a couple he had never seen it so I ended up seeing it again. Not a movie I really wanted to see twice but it is an excellent movie. Worth seeing for sure.

My favorite Holocaust movie is Sophie's Choice. I'm not sure if it is because of Meryl Streep (love her!) or the fact that is was so deeply moving and profound. I really love this movie and have seen it a few times which is unlike me.

'Schindler's List' is probably the best and most realistic Holocaust film ever made (according to many survivors, not just me). 'Sophie's Choice' was good, but very very disturbing because it put many people in the same circumstance as Sophie (especially as a parent). It really tugged at the deepest of human emotions. It delved not just into antisemitism, but how the Nazi's affected other populations as well (Sophie was Polish Catholic).

Cudos to Steven Spielberg for continuing awareness of antisemitism and educating the world about injustice. I highly recommend the 'USC Shoah Foundation Institute' he started after making Schindler's List. Nothing is as compelling as a survivor's testimony.

 

[missy]

I agree TL, Sophie's Choice is a heart-wrenching movie and deeply upsetting. I think it is a masterpiece though, as is Schindler's List. Both very important movies in their own right.
Thanks for the info about the 'USC Shoah Foundation Institute'. I will check it out.

 

[innerkitten]

I'm ethnically Jewish on my mothers side. We never celebrated any Jewish holidays or anything because my mother is a spiritual mother earth loving hippie type of woman. We always had Christmas. But my mother was raised Jewish. She's from New York and her parents were from Belarus. Anyway I was really surprised at my mother in laws feelings towards Jewish people when I met her. " all jews are republicans" etc... and my MIL is from England. And she only knows two jewish people ( me and my mother). BTW my mother and my MIL have actually become pretty good friends.

 

[missy]

I'm ethnically Jewish on my mothers side. We never celebrated any Jewish holidays or anything because my mother is a spiritual mother earth loving hippie type of woman. We always had Christmas. But my mother was raised Jewish. She's from New York and her parents were from Belarus. Anyway I was really surprised at my mother in laws feelings towards Jewish people when I met her. " all jews are republicans" etc... and my MIL is from England. And she only knows two jewish people ( me and my mother). BTW my mother and my MIL have actually become pretty good friends.

I think that was when it really hit home for me in a way it never had before. When I met my future MIL (who is a strict and religious catholic) and found out some of her views on Jews. It wasn't good. Well, at least not good enough for her Catholic school/choir boy darling son.

And then, one Easter we were at a friend's house and their parents and my (future) MIL were also invited. Well, it was a weird conversation while my dh and his friend were in the kitchen cooking and we were at the dining room table. It was just me, my MIL and our friend's father. They started talking about how much they respect the Jews and how much they value education etc. I mean, to the casual observer that might seem like a compliment but I was thinking to myself, really? I mean LOL.

We have since worked things out and as with most things this kind of reaction is from ignorance and just not being educated about different races/religions etc. Once people really get to know each other I find that a lot of misconceptions are put to rest and we realize that we are really not all that different.

I am glad it all worked out for your family innerkitten. It is great that everyone was open to getting to know the other without letting their "differences" get in the way. Thank you for sharing your story.

It's going to be only in this way that the world can ever find peace and harmony. There is too much fear of the "unknown" and thinking the differences are so huge when truly they aren't (in most cases that is). Tolerance would go a long way in everyone getting along but knowledge is also important and trying to understand where the other person is coming from can only help.

 

[innerkitten]

So true!

 

[movie zombie]

glad they're getting along well, kitten!

odd, though, that she thought all jews are/were republicans. the civil rights movement here was strongly support by the jewish community and had been for years. most i've known were democrats...some conservative democrats but democrats.

 

[Haven]

Oh, goodness--anti-semitism is certainly alive and well where I live. I've experienced anti-semitism in all of the secular jobs I've held, from colleagues and students alike. In fact, I can no longer count the anti-semitic things I've heard my students say.

 

[slg47]

Oh, goodness--anti-semitism is certainly alive and well where I live. I've experienced anti-semitism in all of the secular jobs I've held, from colleagues and students alike. In fact, I can no longer count the anti-semitic things I've heard my students say.

wow, I am really sorry to hear this. I am happy to say that I have never seen anti-semitism.

 

[missy]

Oh, goodness--anti-semitism is certainly alive and well where I live. I've experienced anti-semitism in all of the secular jobs I've held, from colleagues and students alike. In fact, I can no longer count the anti-semitic things I've heard my students say.

wow, I am really sorry to hear this. I am happy to say that I have never seen anti-semitism.

I have to say that if you are not tuned to it you may not notice it. It can be subtle and insidious. I was pretty sheltered regarding this until I became more aware. In the news we are made more aware of racism of other kinds whereas anti semitism is rarely brought up. But it still exists very strongly in many areas and countries.

 

[Haven]

Oh, goodness--anti-semitism is certainly alive and well where I live. I've experienced anti-semitism in all of the secular jobs I've held, from colleagues and students alike. In fact, I can no longer count the anti-semitic things I've heard my students say.

wow, I am really sorry to hear this. I am happy to say that I have never seen anti-semitism.

I have to say that if you are not tuned to it you may not notice it. It can be subtle and insidious. I was pretty sheltered regarding this until I became more aware. In the news we are made more aware of racism of other kinds whereas anti semitism is rarely brought up. But it still exists very strongly in many areas and countries.

I agree with you, Missy. It's also difficult to spot such things when you aren't a member of the targeted group.

 

[missy]

Oh, goodness--anti-semitism is certainly alive and well where I live. I've experienced anti-semitism in all of the secular jobs I've held, from colleagues and students alike. In fact, I can no longer count the anti-semitic things I've heard my students say.

wow, I am really sorry to hear this. I am happy to say that I have never seen anti-semitism.

I have to say that if you are not tuned to it you may not notice it. It can be subtle and insidious. I was pretty sheltered regarding this until I became more aware. In the news we are made more aware of racism of other kinds whereas anti semitism is rarely brought up. But it still exists very strongly in many areas and countries.

I agree with you, Missy. It's also difficult to spot such things when you aren't a member of the targeted group.

I completely agree. When you are one of the people prejudiced against you know it whereas someone not directly affected may be unaware. Though I try to be sensitive to all parties you cannot help but be most acutely aware when it is you who are targeted. However subtle it may be.

 

[Meezermom]

Anti-Semitism in France is nothing new.

 

[smitcompton]

hi,

This conversation hits the mark for me today. The back story: I dabble a bit in the stock market. Its somethig I enjoy. There is a section on the internet called yahoo finance where each stock has a forum to discuss the pros & cons of that stock. As I checked out some of these forums I found all sorts of derogatory comments about Jews and Blacks. I quickly formed an opinion I was dealing with a bunch of crazies, and I do mean crazies. I stayed close to one forum as it seemed pretty normal and I got good information. As time went on , lo and behold, more anti-semitic remarks and racist comments on blacks. I posted about it and the other posters told me to report it. Which I did! Again, and Again & Again. You get the point. The Admin does nothing about it. So I decided to get tougher.
I reported it to the Jewish Anti Defamation League and looked for somewhere I could report to the NAACP. Then I told Admin what I had done, and the comments began to disappear. But guess what, there is no reporting mechanism for black racism.

So today I go on and want to see the New Facebook page and offer my comments and found many comments on the bad Jews who were manipulating Wall Street and how the Jew Mark Zucherberg was cheating everyone. So i did my thing and complained to Admin and for the second time recently, I was blocked from making my complaint. It does no real good anyway, but I don't know what else to do.

Is this Free Speech?. Is this a free speech issue? I'm pretty old and have never come across this before. This internet stuff shows a lot of our failures and that there is a stupid population out there. Really bad.

My parents came from Holland and had very few prejudices. My Uncle was also killed in a concentration camp, and when I was 16 they showed pictues of the concentration camps and that memory has stayed with me thru my whole life. I am not jewish, but I am very worried about what I have read. Such awfulness.

Annette

 

[missy]

Wow, Annette, how awful. I am shocked but sadly not too surprised. There are so many ignorant and hateful people in the world that want to blame their problems on someone else/some other group and Jews and Blacks make great scapegoats. Thank you for reporting those posts to the anti defamation league and the NAACP because that was at least something positive you could do and thank you for sharing your experience here with us. I strongly believe if people are made more aware of all the racism/hate/prejudices that still exist things will eventually change. Too many people deny there is any problem sadly and that is a big part of the problem. Knowledge is power.

 

[movie zombie]

unfortunately, free speech goes both ways......people are free to spew hate because it is protected speech. sometime we have to take the bad with the good.

i applaud Annette for speaking up and doing the right thing. more need to and should. because on the internet the idea that anything and everything can be said is crazy. all websites and forums are privately owned. they are public use because the owner has made it public. the owner also has the right to limit the type of speech and topic just as we see done here at pricescope. the only conclusion one can make when reading hate speech is that either the owner of the site agrees or the owner of the site is more interested in not ruffling feathers meaning more interested in making $.

scapegoating is not new. it will never go away. but i absolutely believe that when racism rears its ugly head, we need to speak up. whether it be jews, blacks, hispanics, gays, or whoever.

 

[SB621]

Thank you for posting these articles. When I was 17 I went to Poland and visited several of the concentration camps. I remember their were houses right across the road with these pretty white laces curtains in the windows. They were at every single concentration camp we visited. I asked our tour guide about them as to me it seemed awkward they would build houses there. He informed me that they were built well before the Holocaust- they were family homes. For some reason that always stuck with me. That people lived right there with their pretty lace curtains not far from the camps turning a blind eye.

Our tour also had sevearl European teenagers and I will just say in the politeness term possible that they cared little for learning about the Holocaust and what happened. They felt the need to make fun of the situation and telling everyone they were sick of hearing about all of it. It was disgusting behavior. So I guess I'm truly not surprized about some of the things brought up in the article. I will say that I'm sad and ashamed that this generation hasnt' learned more about the mistakes made previously, but then again before the Holocast with progroms (sp?) and the Spanish Inquisition.

My heart really goes out to the families of the victims. My children are so very young and now when I hear about things like this it just causes me to tear up.

 

[Haven]

Sarahbear--Did you happen to go on a Shorashim trip to Poland? I went to Poland and Israel with Shorashim back in 1996, and our experience in Poland was very similar. (We spent one week in Poland and seven weeks in Israel.)

 

[SB621]

Sarahbear--Did you happen to go on a Shorashim trip to Poland? I went to Poland and Israel with Shorashim back in 1996, and our experience in Poland was very similar. (We spent one week in Poland and seven weeks in Israel.)

Hi Haven,

Sorry I'm just seeing this now. No it was not with Shorashim. It was a private tour through that was organized by my school at the time. It was free for those who had never been to Poland, which is why I signed up. I'm very glad I did as that trip really changed my life and will always stick with me.