‘I want every student to see Auschwitz’ – UK Education Minister

November 29, 2021
Secretary of State for Education of the United Kingdom Nadhim Zahawi said last week that he believes every school pupil in Britain should travel to see the Auschwitz death camp.
Zahawi told the Jewish Chronicle that “we have to make sure young minds actually see this place, experience this place, and understand what took place here, and for them to pledge ‘never again’ for future generations.” He added that a visit will aid future generations “understand how important is our fight against antisemitism.”
Zahawi had recently returned from a tour of the Auschwitz Memorial in Oswiecim, Poland. The tour, organized by the EJA (European Jewish Association), which hosted a two-day conference to commemorate the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Auschwitz was one of the most infamous of the death camps in Nazi-ruled Europe where 1.1 million victims ultimately perished.
Zahawi said he felt that the atrocities committed within the 400-acre compound housing many gas chambers and crematoria, are a good launching point for Holocaust education. “The scale is unimaginable. No film reel, no newsreel can really describe what this place is like, and how systematic and haunting it is that human beings, 7,000 of them, came to work here – to murder innocent souls – day in, day out.”
“It’s the only way,” concluded Zahawi.
Earlier this month, 2,000 British residents were surveyed on their knowledge of the Holocaust. Findings showed that 52% did not know how many Jews perished in the Holocaust (roughly 6 million), while 22% couldn’t name a single concentration camp.
The EJA’s Chairman, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, declared that “Europe is fighting antisemitism, but isn’t winning yet,” calling Holocaust education “a vaccine to the oldest, most virulent virus in Europe”.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/i-want-every-student-to-see-auschwitz-uk-education-minister-685096

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President Klaus Iohannis made the remarks to the media following Romanian Prime Ministerial meetings with the Israeli government. The President it seems was expressing his discomfort over not being previously consulted on the content of the visit as well as on the decision of Jerusalem recognition, according to established protocol, where the controversial remark was made.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, whose Brussels based organisation represents Jews across the continent warned that Heads of State should avoid using such language “heavy at it is with connotation and sinister undertone.”
In a statement from Brussels, Rabbi Margolin said,
“Regardless of established protocols and the President’s evident displeasure that they were not adhered to, I would urge restraint and caution when it comes Heads of State to using language such as this.
“In the media heat of the moment, finding the correct words is not always easy, and we are prepared to give the President the benefit of the doubt on this occasion. But using such language, loaded as it is with connotation and sinister undertone, can be seized upon by unsavoury elements in society and naturally, sets off alarm bells amongst the Jewish community.”

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Protesters mass in France, Israel, UK to demand justice for Sarah Halimi

In France, some 25,000 demonstrate against court decision that Jewish woman’s killer was too stoned to be held criminally responsible
Protesters gathered in Paris, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and London on Sunday to demonstrate against the ruling of France’s highest court that the killer of a Jewish woman in the French capital was not criminally responsible because he had smoked marijuana before the crime.
Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman, was pushed out of the window of her Paris flat to her death in 2017 by neighbor Kobili Traore, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic).
But in a decision earlier this month, the Court of Cassation’s Supreme Court of Appeals upheld rulings by lower tribunals that Traore cannot stand trial because he was too high on marijuana to be criminally responsible for his actions.
Some 25,000 protesters, many of them Jewish, gathered in Paris to demand justice for Halimi.
Under the banner of “Justice for Sarah Halimi,” the rally at Trocadero Square overlooking the Eiffel Tower reflected the widespread indignation of many French Jews at the April 14 ruling by their country’s highest court.
It was held under tight security arrangements in a cordoned-off enclosure where the Jewish umbrella group CRIF played a video on a giant screen in which French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia demanded another “trial of facts,” even if it ends without sentencing of Traore.
The rally Sunday was the first time in decades that a large number of French Jews gathered to protest against organs or actions of the French state.
“The clamor has risen and hope has returned. That hope is all of you here,” Halimi’s brother William Attal told a crowd of several thousand at the Trocadero esplanade in Paris.
The MP who leads Macron’s Republic on the Move party, Christophe Castaner, addressed the protest, which was also attended by opposition leaders and by several well-known actors.
Jacques Essebag, a French-Jewish comedian who is known by the stage name Arthur, in a video message said he has “decided to start using drugs because in France you can do whatever you want, even kill your neighbor if you don’t like her, if you use drugs.” He then added: “What has become of this country?”
Former French first lady Carla Bruni, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, also appeared at the Paris rally, as did Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who said the city would soon name a street in Halimi’s memory.
“It will also be a way of doing her justice,” Hidalgo said.
However, the video message from Hidalgo, a Socialist politician, provoked whistles and booing from many protesters at the event, which did not feature live speeches due to COVID-19 measures.
Organized by the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities, the rally was called “to show our astonishment at a decision that conforms to the law, but not to justice,” CRIF said.
The event featured many French and Israeli flags, and those of the far-right Jewish Defense League.
More than 20,000 people demonstrated in Paris, and up to 2,000 took part in a march in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, police said, while around 600 gathered outside a synagogue in the eastern city of Strasbourg.
Three protests were also held in Israel, all taking place at 3 p.m. in order to coincide with the demonstration by the Jewish community in Paris. The main demonstration was in front of the French Embassy on Herbert Samuel Street in Tel Aviv.
The Jewish community in the United Kingdom also demonstrated in front of the French Embassy in London on Sunday at 1 p.m., in solidarity with the community in France. Attendance was limited because of COVID-19 restrictions.
In addition to the rally in Paris, protest rallies were planned to take place on Sunday in Marseille, Strasbourg and Lyon. Abroad, rallies were scheduled to be held in Washington, DC, Los Angeles and Miami in the United States as well as in Rome, Italy.
Some Jewish organizations have used harsh language about the case, including the conservative Europe-Israel group, which called it “the new Dreyfus Trial.” It’s a reference to the anti-Semitic treason charges leveled at a French-Jewish soldier in 1894, and which many to this day believe showed that French society and European societies, in general, were too anti-Semitic to allow Jews to truly integrate.
Israel blasted the decision of the French court last week.
“Sarah Halimi was murdered for clearly anti-Semitic motivations, for the sole reason that she was a Jew,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Hayat told The Times of Israel. “This was a despicable murder that harmed not only the victim herself and her family, but also the entire Jewish community’s sense of security.”
“The way to confront anti-Semitism is through education, zero tolerance, and heavy punishment,” Hayat continued. “This is not the message that the court’s ruling conveys.”
Sarah Halimi was beaten before she was thrown off her Paris apartment building’s roof in April 2017. (Courtesy of the Halimi family)
Critics of the ruling cited apparent composure by Traore, an immigrant from Mali who was 27 when he killed Halimi, a physician in her 60s. Traore, whom a lower court said targeted Halimi because she was Jewish, called her a demon as he pummeled her in her third-story apartment, which he entered by force.
He then threw her out the window and shouted: “A lady fell down from the window!” to cover up his actions, witnesses said. He left the scene, allegedly to escape it, and was arrested on a nearby street.
Others argue that even if Traore was psychotic, he was criminally liable when he took the drugs that made him psychotic and should therefore stand trial. He has no documented history of psychiatric problems.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he would advance legislation to prevent criminals from avoiding trial by using an insanity defense for actions committed under the influence of drugs.
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