Bundestagsabgeordneter Müller-Rosentritt: „Kampf gegen Antisemitismus muss hellwach geführt werden“ – Politiker, Parlamentarier und Vertreter von jüdischen Organisationen aus ganz Europa trafen in diesen Tagen in Prag zusammen, um über den Kampf gegen den Antisemitismus zu diskutieren. An der Veranstaltung nimmt auch der Bundestagsabgeordnete Frank Müller-Rosentritt (FDP) teil. Zu Beginn der Konferenz sprach Martina Schneibergová mit dem Parlamentarier aus Chemnitz. | Radio Prague International

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February 5, 2023
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Herr Müller-Rosentritt, Sie sind zu einer internationalen Konferenz nach Prag gekommen, die kurz vor dem Internationalen Holocaust-Gedenktag stattfindet. Halten Sie einen Vortrag, oder nehmen Sie an der Diskussion teil?
„Die Veranstaltung dauert zwei Tage lang: heute (am Montag, Anm. d. Red.) in Prag mit einer Delegation von Politikern aus ganz Europa, sogar mit dem Vizepräsidenten des Europäischen Parlaments und mit einer Vertreterin der größten jüdischen Gemeinde in Paris. Ich bin als einziger deutscher Parlamentarier dabei. Am Dienstag fahren wir alle gemeinsam nach Theresienstadt, um nach einer ausführlichen Führung den Holocaust-Opfern zu gedenken.“

Additional Articles

Greece: Kosher slaughter 'under direct attack'

Jewish freedom of religion is under direct attack across Europe from the very institutions that have vowed to protect our communities, says European Jewish Association Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, after the Greek Supreme Court ruled that slaughter without stunning violates EU law.
The move comes as a consequence of the European Court of Justice Ruling last December that member countries may ban the practice of ritual slaughter in order to promote animal welfare, without infringing the rights of religious groups.
The December ruling said that the EU’s animal slaughter regulation “does not preclude member states from imposing an obligation to stun animals prior to killing which also applies in the case of slaughter prescribed by religious rites”, but encouraged member states to find a balance.
It is now clear that a number of member states are zealously applying the former whilst ignoring the latter.
In a statement this evening, the Chairman of the Brussels-based European Jewish Association, which represents hundreds of communities across the continent, said: “We warned in December about the downstream consequences that the European Court of Justice ruling carried with it, and now we see the outcome. Jewish Freedom of Religion is under direct attack. It started in Belgium, moved to Poland and Cyprus and now it is Greece’s turn.
“These direct attacks are coming from many of the same governments and institutions who have sworn to protect their Jewish Communities. What we are witnessing is rank hypocrisy. When it comes to antisemitism, governments and institutions rightly stand behind us. But when our faith and practice is assailed left and right by laws, they are nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be found. What use is it to protect Jews while legislating fundamental pillars of our religion out of existence?
“We will be urgently making representations to the highest levels of the Greek government to get direct answers to this simple but fundamental question: How can there be Jews in Europe if you keep bringing in laws against us?”

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/315829

EJA Yom-Haatzmaut-Zoom with Israeli Government Minister TZACHI HANEGBI

It was our pleasure today to host a special Yom-Haatzmaut-Zoom conference with Israeli Government Minister TZACHI HANEGBI. Jewish community leaders from all across Europe took part, shared their thoughts and raised some questions to the minister on the issue of Israel and it’s relations to the diaspora Jews.
we would like to thank:

Alex Luzon, B’nei B’rith Rome

Andrew Hilkowitz, Child Survivors Association, Germany

Barbara Pontecorvo, Osservatorio Solomon, Antidescrimination legal network (Italy’s Lawfare) 

Betty Luzon, Israel Embassy Rome – permanent Civil employee

Daniele Toscano, publicist and journalist, Rome

David Seldner, a leader of Karlsruhe, Germany community

Diana Sandler, head of Barnim, Germany Community

Elio Adler, Werteinitiative eV (Values Initiative Association) leading advocate in Germany fighting for a Jewish future

Irina Katz, head of Freiburg, Germany community 

Johanna Arbit Perugia, executive of Karen Hayesod (worldwide) and its former head

Jonathan Marcus, Limmud Germany, Jewish learning festival

Lala Süskind, former Head Berlin community 

Lea Floh, Head Mönchengladbach community 

Maya Zehden, German-Israel Association executive

Nathan Gelbert, former head Germany Karen Hayesod 

Riccardo Pacifici, former head Rome community 

Sacha Stawski, Pro Israel activist, Israel Congress founder, Honestly Concerned media monitoring

Sigmount Königsberg (might join late) Berlin Jewish community Antisemitism Commissioner

Simone Santoro, head Italian union of jewish students and young professionals

Volker Beck, former MP in Bundestag, leading pro Israel voice of Green Party

Walker Megnaghi, former head Milan Italy community 

Vittorio Mosseri, head of Livorno Jewish Community 

Fernando Rosentberg, chair J community of Barcelona

Esther Bendahan of the J community of Madrid
Hanna Luden of CIDI in The Netherlands
Michel Gurfinkiel of center for European judaism (CEJ)
Andy Ergas, member of the Board of the Jewish community of Madrid
Charlotte Knobloch, President Jewish Community Munich Central Council of Jews member
Former head of Central Council
Richard Volkmann, Speaker Munich Jewish community
Sylvie Bensaid of the French Jewish weekly magazine Tribune Juive
Alexander Driessen – SWU Netherlands
Elad Zigler – Director SWU Netherlands
Aye Kari – Netherlands
Giulia Ora – Italy
Dr. Jacek Nowak
Andy Ergas from Madrid
David Hatchwell,
Régine Suchowolski – Sluszny, President of FJO
Tomas Stern, head of Bratislava Jewish Community
Ruth Dureghello, President, Jewish Community of Rome

If you missed our conference you can watch it at the following link:

a note about our next zoom conference will be published on our Facebook page

We Demand: Remove hook-nose sign language gesture

Our story about Universiteit Gent’s repugnant Sign language dictionary for Jew went viral. From El Pais in Spain, the Guardian in UK, From France to Belgium, the US to Israel, the image of a woman signing a hook-nose to denote Jew is as shocking to the media as it was to us and the family who dioscovered. We are still awaiting a formal explanation from the Rector of the University. They have already captioned them as derogatory but this is not enough. No deaf person should be signing Jew in this way. It is offensive. Full stop. We will keep you updated.
The guargian

COVID Diary- Reflections from Our Advisory Board Member Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs

Every Day during the Corona crisis our Advisory Board Member Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs (NL) writes a diary, on request of the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam, which is published on the website of the NIW, the only Jewish Dutch Magazine. Rabbi Jacobs is the head of Inter Governmental Relationships at the Rabbinical Centre of Europe. We will be regularly publishing a selection of his informative, sometimes light hearted, but always wise pieces.
For our Dutch readers you can follow the diary every day at NIW home page: https://niw.nl
“This message comes from Wollongong, Australia where we have a small Jewish community.
I wanted to ask you if Hijman Jacobs (1843-1872) might be in your family line? His great-grandchild who was once a student at our local university (~ 1970) is told that his great-grandfather was a Rabbi in Amsterdam. ” Thus the email I received this morning from Wollongong-Australia.
Never heard of a Rabbi Jacobs from Amsterdam, but what is not may yet come. I do not mean that I have ambitions to become the rabbi of Amsterdam, but it could just be that I have discovered an ancestor whose existence I did not know. Maybe he was not a rabbi and was only called a rabbi because he was a teacher. I am certainly not a descendant in the direct line, but perhaps he was a cousin of my father and therefore a real Jacobs. And if it is even slightly correct, I should definitely share that with Claire as well. Claire, I hear you ask. Who is Claire?
Claire and I share the same great-grandparents Salomon Levie Jacobs and Froukje Jacobs-Leek, who both passed away about a hundred years ago. About ten years ago we stood together in the cemetery of the Jewish Community in Muiderberg. We look alike and according to my wife have the same facial features. I also think that we both have mixed feelings about Aletta Jacobs with whom we both have the same family relationship. Proud of her commitment to equal rights for women and the prevailing discrimination, but we both also have difficulty with certain parts of her struggle / life vision in the field of ethics.
Claire and I are both from the orthodox core of the Jewish community. My dear caring and overprotective father has always told me that there must be one more person alive from the Jacobs family. A great-niece named Claire, granddaughter of his Aunt Bella, his father’s sister. My grandfather Jacobs had a sister and three brothers. All murdered with children, children by marriage and grandchildren. A cousin, Sampe, had survived the war but lost his wife and child in one of the camps. He was the only member of Jacobs’s side at my parents’ wedding in 1948. Sampe, my father told me, was deeply depressed and remarried a woman from Manchester. A girl is born who is named Claire. Sampe dies shortly after birth. Claire’s mother remarries. With whom and where my father did not know. But I have not forgotten the name Claire.
About ten years ago I received a phone call from the Jewish Community of The Hague. A certain Claire is looking for her origins. She lives in Melbourne. I didn’t have to think long, took the phone and talked to Claire, my grand-niece, the only still alive Jacobs. She wanted to know who her grandparents had been and also details about her father. Her mother had been married to him for only a short time and, in fact, knew very little about him. Because my father was on the verge of dementia at the time, I told Claire that if she wanted to hear more details from my father about her grandfather and grandmother, she should come now. And so I met Claire a week later. That feeling was very special. Even now, when I think back, tears come to my eyes. My grandfather and her grandmother were brother and sister. After she met my father, we went to Muiderberg together and stood before the graves of Salomon Levie Jacobs and Froukje Jacobs-Leek, our joint great-grandparents. Claire was raised by her mother and second father. But she was not told that her stepfather was not her real father. That stepfather never distinguished between Claire and the children born later. Mother and stepfather did not want to burden her with the real father who was no longer there.
Whether that was ethically correct or incorrect is no longer relevant. So her mother and stepfather had decided with the best of intentions in the world. Two weeks before her chuppah wedding, they told her husband-to-be that Claire’s real father is no longer alive. He, the husband-to-be, wanted Claire to find out, too, but because of the potential emotional blow, they decided to wait until a week after the wedding. She heard it, absorbed it, processed it emotionally, but did nothing with it. She was just married, building a family, then children … and then, ten years ago, when the children had left home and she and her husband had the wealth to themselves, she wanted to know: “Who were my grandparents and who was my father? ”
I was able to find someone who knew her father very well. We found the graves of her father’s parents and we found each other. Actually, we are just distant relatives, two people who had never met each other before. But we are both descendants of the same great-grandparents, we live in their footsteps, are both known to be the only survivors of that large Jacobs family. We both thanked G-d for being allowed to stand there together in the cemetery of the Jewish Community of Amsterdam, because we realized that most of the graves in the Jewish cemeteries will never be visited by anyone, because there is no one left. And while I was close to closing my diary, I received an email invitation from Claire to the chuppah of one of her grandchildren on January 5th in Monroe New York.
And now that e-mail from Wollongong, Australia. Maybe another Jacobs will turn up after all: Hijman Jacobs. I’m waiting!

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