Les Juifs français les plus inquiets quant à leur sécurité parmi 12 pays européens

This morning the EJA had the pleasure to welcome a delegation led by the Mr. Sam Grundwerg, World Chairman of Keren Hayesod -UIA
We discussed in length about the different ideas and options for growth and divelopment of Jewish lives in Europe, about the chalenges Jews are facing and the rise of antisemitism.
We concluded with our shared hope of working together on all of these challenges in the upcoming year.

On behalf of the hundreds of communities across Europe that we represent, and for European Jewry as a whole, we at the EJA would like to express our deep gratitude to all the Presidents, Prime Ministers, European Commissioners, permanent representatives, MP’s, MEPs and members of the public who took part in our ‘not on my watch’ candle campaign for Holocaust Memorial Day. Together, your important voice showed the world our shared purpose and goal, rooting out and obliterating antisemitism wherever it lies. Thank you.

(to see all pictures click HERE)|

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
Surcharge affairs
This diary, setup by the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Holland, was designed to get an impression of my life during the corona pandemic.
Every now and then I almost forget that there is corona, but around New Year’s Eve I was pressed hard on the fact. Overcrowded hospitals and the threat of doctors having to judge life and death. Who do we treat and who do we leave to their own devices?
In the meantime, I watched a New Year’s Eve show for the first time in my life because I was curious and because I also performed in it: “ Old and New of Christians for Israel. ” And although I had a little intention to look at the New Year’s Eve conference by Joep van het Hek, I didn’t do that after all.
Reason: 1: waste of time. 2: Although I am very good at jokes and can be ridiculed with anything and everything, I find swearing unacceptable. Just a short explanation on point 1: From Jewish thinking it is wrong to waste time. Relaxing is fine. I walk every day because it is good for body and mind. But really doing nothing at all or doing something that is completely meaningless, that is not the case. Why then do I read newspapers and listen to the news obediently, you ask. Because, let’s be honest, whether or not I am aware of the number of daily corona infections is not much use. On the contrary! It makes me quite depressed and so do many others. Even all those crazy conspiracy theories about the vaccine are not among my beloved reading.
On the other hand I need news information to know how to act when or to continue to be able to write my diary and / or give a Jewish view on current affairs.
But following the news every second is totally unnecessary. The meaningful use of time is an important Jewish commandment.
About 2, the swearing. I am on the Committee of Recommendation of the League Against Curses. I was approached for that at the time and said yes. I sit on many Committees of Recommendation (so I recommend a lot!), But I am never in any place to be in it, but only use my name if I endorse the purpose of the Foundation. And I find swearing unacceptable because it hurts. So: freedom of expression with a limit, so I obediently sit on the Committee of Recommendation of the heavily Christian League against Cursing.
Friday evening and Shabbat went like weekly, except I was worried about our Friday evening ‘regular guest’ who was clearly much more tired than usual, did not walk well and indicated that on New Years Eve he had eaten eleven donuts on his own, while he had a lot be careful with sugar.
Immediately after Shabbat I called him to ask how he had fared, but thank G-d he is doing well. My grandson from England, who is still trapped here between England and Israel, where he studies, actually knows very little about his Dutch ancestors. So I shared what I know and came to the conclusion that I myself know nothing at all about the 80% of my family who “did not return”. They were not talked about at home! While explaining the horrors the war has caused here, I decided to let him watch “The Menten Case” with English subtitles. In the meantime, I have also watched (along) for the umpteenth time. Apart from the war criminal and the war crimes that are shown and that should not be forgotten, I continue to be annoyed by the corruption surrounding Menten. Government officials who allow themselves to be bribed, are threatened with lawsuits, Hans Knoop who is fired, his photographer who must have made huge money from him and who eventually can also be bribed. I am thinking of the Supplement affair. How could this have happened in our country! And issues like this still happen, on a daily basis.
Corona is a plague, but so are the Supplement affairs. I deliberately write affairs in the plural. Because the surcharges affair has surfaced (thanks to the media!), But what else is going on in affairs that were and / or are invisible? I know a few more!

We must fight for a better world, against anti-Semitism, against hatred of any kind against anyone, minority or religion, we can do it, you can do it, and your children and grandchildren, declared 87-year-old Gideon Lev, a survivor of the Terezin ghetto, on the occasion of a conference organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA), in Prague and Terezin, before the commemoration, on Friday, of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the president of the EJA, declared, during a meeting with journalists, that “every place has a different message”, and “the main message of Terezin for us is ‘fake news’, the fact that the Nazis tried to claim that they treated the Jews in a very good way”.

This fake news helped them to be praised by many people, instead of being attacked and arrested and Terezin released. Since today we are faced with a lot of ‘fake news’, which is one of the things that allows anti-Semites to incite, it is important for us to address this in particular, added Menachem Margolin.

The director of the British organization Labour Against Anti-Semitism, Alex Hearn, spoke at the EJA conference about how fake news about Jews represents a pattern as old as anti-Semitism itself. Hearn pointed out that anti-Semitism goes beyond political lines and is used by people to gain power or feel powerful. He also spoke about contemporary anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the role of social media in their dissemination.

There are so many things that the Jews are accused of, including the fact that they do not play a role in this horrible war between Russia and Ukraine, said Menachem Margolin.

Truth is no longer based on scientific facts, but on viral news and social media. Things happen faster. We have to fight against fake news that pops up quickly on our phones. Macron himself has been presented as a puppet of the Jews because he is a former banker and he has money. Fake news uses the same stereotypes against Jews, again and again. We have to fight against all fake news. If we don’t fight it, it spreads, and it spreads very quickly, said French parliamentarian Prisca Thevenot, spokeswoman for the Renaissance party of President Emmanuel Macron.

We have to understand that social media works extremely fast. It is not enough to make laws to keep up with the technological challenges, we have to be quick to ban hate speech on social media, said the Austrian parliamentarian David Stogmuller.

As far as he is concerned, the Portuguese parliamentarian Alexandre Poco emphasized the importance of education in combating anti-Semitism.

Although our problems may not be as great as those of other countries, we must continue to invest in education. A proactive attitude continues to be necessary. We have strong ties with Jewish communities. We continue to promote Jewish life, even though we are a Catholic country, he said during the conference.

If we allow the enemies of democracy to shout, then we risk the end of democracy. The anti-Semites must be made to feel that they have no chance and that they will be made to pay the consequences, warned Sigmount Königsberg, commissioner for anti-Semitism for the Jewish community in Berlin.

For his part, Joel Mergui, the president of the Paris Consistory, which has led “the largest Jewish community in Europe for 20 years”, said that he decided to encourage the members of this community to continue living on the Old Continent as long as they had decision-makers with them in the fight against anti-Semitism and radical Islam.

From your words and actions we will have the certainty that we have a future in Europe, he conveyed to the officials present at the conference.

Coming from Israel especially for the events of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Czech Republic, Gideon Lev is, at almost 88 years old, not only a page of living history, but also a very lucid mind.

The man, born in 1935, in Karlovy Vary, told the participants in English, German and Czech about the events he experienced when he was still a child, many of which left an indelible impression on him.

When the Nazis occupied the Czech Republic, it was the end for the Jews in the country. The Jews couldn’t stay out at night, they couldn’t have radios, and pretty soon they were all moved to Terezin, which was called a ‘relocation camp’. But it was far from that. They put us in crowded barracks, there was no space, the children and women could only see their fathers and husbands from the window, walking in silence, Gideon Lev said.

“Arbeit macht frei” is one of the most cynical Nazi atrocities. In reality, you are free when you are dead, he pointed out, referring to the words in large letters placed at the entrance to Nazi concentration camps.

“Vernichtung durch Arbeit”: destruction through work, that’s what the Nazis wanted, he added.

We must fight for a better world, against anti-Semitism, against hatred of any kind against anyone, minority or religion, we can do it, you can do it, and your children and grandchildren. And that’s what we must do, pleaded the survivor of the Terezin ghetto.

Although he is 87 years old and seems far from the age when someone would start a career as an influencer on Tik Tok, Gideon Lev has, for a year, had an account on this very popular network especially among young people, fueled with the help of a Hollywood content creator, Julie Gray. Two years ago, she wrote a book called “The True Adventures of Gideon Lev”, then thought of making him a Tik Tok account to promote sales. The effect was far beyond expectations.

We now have 414,000 followers, of which 62% are under the age of 34 and 67% are women. In the last 60 days, we have 2 million views, 80,000 comments, 200,000 likes and 4,000 reshares. These are really big numbers. He has an impact on the largest social network in the world. (…) In my experience, young people want to learn about the Holocaust. Fighting anti-Semitism on social media is a huge opportunity. But we have to organize, we need better digital security, centralized shared resources. And we need to make better content, said Julie Gray.

Emma Gunsberger, head of the Czech Union of Jewish Students, claims that there are currently over 4,000 Jews in the Czech Republic.

The problem is that the associations are mainly in the big cities and the Jewish heritage in the smaller towns in the country is largely lost. In every small village you can find an old Jewish cemetery, a synagogue, but the community no longer lives there. If there is someone with Jewish ancestry there, they are usually completely detached from their Jewish identity. So Jewish life is mainly in the big cities and mainly here in Prague, she told AGERPRES.

However, where there are Jewish communities, the number of members is increasing.

The community is growing in Prague because we have Jewish schools, where Jewish children can go and do secular studies like in any normal school, but also Jewish and Hebrew studies. Through these schools we bring back Jewish customs and rituals in Jewish families, she explained.

Emma admits that in the Czech Republic anti-Semitism still exists, but usually “it’s just verbal abuse, it’s not violent”.

There is anti-Semitism, but it’s mainly from uneducated people who don’t know who Jews are and have never met one. It’s very different from the rest of Europe, she said.

It is very easy to put other things on the agenda of those who make decisions. We have to make sure that the problem of anti-Semitism will not be left aside because of other political issues, said Rabbi Menachem Margolin.

At the same time, he pleaded, more must be done so that countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, which had large Jewish communities, have a Jewish life.

https://www.stiripesurse.ro/terezin-ghetto-survivor-gideon-levwe-must-fight-for-a-better-worldagaist-hatred-of-any-kind_2763415.html