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Press release: Joseph Goebbels villa & hate speech -EJA responds to Berlin government plan to sell or demolish Goebbels villa.

European Jewish Association (EJA) makes urgent appeal to Berlin’s Finance Senator (minister): “Turn Goebbels Villa into a World Center for Combatting Hate Propaganda!”

For immediate release

The European Jewish Association (EJA) makes urgent appeal to Berlin’s Finance Senator (minister) who recently announced that the Berlin government could no longer afford the costs of maintaining an abandoned villa once belonging to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

In an official letter to Berlin’s Finance Senator (minister), Stefan Evers, EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin responded to the city of Berlin’s intention to sell or demolish a villa once belonging Joseph Goebbels, by expressing EJA’s willingness to explore solutions regarding the preservation of the estate.

Addressing Berlin’s finance minister, Rabbi Margolin noted:

“Turning the villa that once belonged to one of the worst engineers of genocidal propaganda in human history into a center for political psychology, communication, and combating hate speech would be an important moral victory.

“EJA is ready to examine the possibility of promoting the idea of such a center and realizing it.

“91 years since the Nazis came to power, the free world is once again facing waves of lethal propaganda deliberately engineered to create a virtual reality that nurtures hate and destructive violence.

“It is precisely these days that Dr. Goebbels’ villa should not be demolished. Rather, it should stand as both an eternal reminder of the perilous dangers posed by hate speech as well as an important center for identifying hate trends that are on the rise at an alarming exponential rate in the entire western world, including Germany.”

“The European Jewish Association is interested in exploring the possibility of turning the estate of one of the worst engineers of genocidal propaganda in human history into a center for the study of political psychology, communication and the fight against hate speech.

“We are interested in implementing the matter together with the Berlin government”.

In his letter to Senator Stefan Evers, Rabbi Margolin concludes:

“Although this week marks exactly 79 years since Goebbels poisoned his six children and committed suicide in the infamous Hitler bunker, a reminder of an equally fascist and murderous leadership currently lurking underground in Gaza, we are again living in chilling times where people are seeking to destroy Jews – but now no longer only through words.

“Let us transform the villa, from where hate speech and genocidal thought was once spread, to place for spreading good. Doing so would be an important moral victory.”

For more details / request to interview Rabbi Margolin,
please contact your EIPA/EJA media advisor – Yossi Lempkowicz, Tovi Borins, Oliver Bradley, David Khalfa, or Juan Caldes

or Tal Rabina of the Israel team:
+972 50-5331027

For two days, September 29 and 30, 1941, 33,771 people were exterminated. More than thirty thousand of them were Jews.

A zoom press conference was dedicated on Tuesday to the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre ahead of an event “Lessons from Babyn Yar: History, Memory and Legacy” which is jointly organised by the House of European History in Brussels and the Kiev-based Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC).

The conference, organized in cooperation with the European Jewish Asociation, discussed lessons 80 years later, as well as unveiling new and unique tools to keep the lessons, history and memory alive, including actually putting faces and names to those murdered for the first time.

Among the speakers, French Father Patrick Desbois, founder of Yahad-In Unum and head of the scholarly council of BYHMC, stressed that Babi Yar was a criminal site where the genocide of the Jewish people took place in the center of a large city in a large country (Kiev, today Ukraine).

‘’The locals willingly aided the young fascists. The gunmen were given sandwiches and tea with little vodka in it as the mass executions lasted many hours,’’ he noted.

Father Patrick asked a practical question: where did the tons of items and valuables taken from the Jews before their execution go? ‘’It would seem that everything should be documented, but it is easier to find detailed evidence and statistics of the shootings than information about the confiscated property of those killed. It was as if the Germans were embarrassed to write about such facts.’’

He added, ‘’For me, this is another terrible evidence of the Babi Yar tragedy: human life is reduced to zero. It is only the result of statistics, nothing more. Even more terrible is that the USSR, on whose territory the tragedy took place, tried to hide the truth about Babyn Yar for a long time. Nevertheless, our generation has a goal: to find the hidden facts and restore the history of this bloody genocide.’’

“I visited Raka in Syria where there was a mass grave. Journalists came, journalists went. Perhaps in 80 years there can be a debate about what is a ‘fitting’ memorial. What is important is keeping the memory and lessons alive,’’ stressed Father Desbois.

One of the panelists, Marek Siwiec, Director of European Affairs at BYHMC, provided information about many ongoing projects, each of which can contribute to the restoration of the truth about Babyn Yar.

Colossal work has been done: out of more than 33,000 dead, 28,428 names have been identified, and essential family and personal facts have been restored. All these invaluable findings became the basis of a vast program titled “Project Names.”

‘’It brought us closer to the real life of those who were shot at Babi Yar. They say that the death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of tens of thousands is a statistic,’’ said Siwiec, who is a former member of the European Parliament.

‘’Project Names’’ allows us to turn dry statistics into pain for everyone who was left in that terrible place, who did not live, who did not love, who did not leave their continuation on earth,’’ he added.

Another project mentioned by Siwiec, “Red Dot” (Red Dot Remembrance), is unique: more than 3,000 people provided information about the WWII war crimes. This app has so far registered 2,850 sites across of Europe of the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ which enables users to see and learn what took place wherever they are.

‘’These are mass extermination sites, eyewitness accounts, evidence supported by documents, which were kept with German punctuality and pedantry throughout the war,’’ explained Siwiec.

On the Babyn Yar massacre anniversary date of 29th September, 15,000 schools in Ukraine will participate in a “lessons of the Holocaust Day”.

‘’The key word underpinning all of our activities is education. It is only through education that the tragic disasters of the past can never be repeated,” said Siwiec.

Marek Rutka, a member of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, and chairman of the parliamentary group for the commemoration of the crimes at Babyn Yar and for a Europe free from genocide and hatred, explained that members of his political party regularly visit the sites of the Shoah executions. ‘’They see heartfelt tragedies lead to politically literate conclusions about the need to talk about the Shoah on a European scale. There is no genocide without the tolerance of neighboring countries. These words can be taken as a motto for the whole debate.’’

Anton Schneerson, who contributed this article for European Jewish Press, is a Ukrainian Jew living in Germany. The Jewish community of his hometown, Dnipro, managed to build one of the world’s most prominent Holocaust museum that deeply covers the Babyn Yar tragedy.

As ban on kosher slaughter takes hold in most of Belgium, Rabbi Menachem Margolin wants that legislation in some countries on the continent are making Jews feel like second class citizens
The latest ban on kosher slaughter in Europe is just another restriction placed on the continent’s Jews and adds to the sense that the community is not wanted, says the head of the European Jewish Association (EJA).
“This is a true tragedy for the entire Jewish community,” says Rabbi Menachem Margolin, regarding the recent prohibition of kosher slaughter in the Wallonia region of Belgium
The Wallonia ban joins a prohibition on kosher slaughter in the northern Flanders region of Belgium, making the Jewish ritual effectively illegal in two thirds of the country, where more than 40,000 Jews reside.
The rabbi, himself a Belgian citizen, sees growing restrictions and limitations on the rights of the European Jewish communities all over
the continent, and does not accept the humanitarian reasons legislators cling to in explaining the ban on kosher slaughter.
“Hunting for fun and sport is still allowed in Belgium,” Margolin tells Ynet. “More animals are killed by hunting across Belgium than by kosher slaughter, not to mention the problemetic conditions of regular slaughter, which are allowed throughout the country.
“From the way the animals are transported to the food they eat and the conditions they live in, there are endless problems regarding the treatment of animals in Belgium. Jewish people care for the animals, and kosher slaughter is much more humane then any other forms of slaughter.”
Although anti-Semitism in Europe is on the rise, Margolin doesn’t see it as the reason for the new law; instead he blames political lobbyists.
“The real tragedy is the fact that the politicians who were so moved by the animal rights lobbyists ignored the pleas of the Jewish community, and this kind of law makes the entire Jewish population of the country feel unwelcome.”

A kosher restaurant in Antwerp, Belgium (photo: AP)
The rabbi says that the new legislation makes Jews feel unwanted in Europe.
“The main issue is not the meat itself – we can eat fish and pasta if we want – it’s whether we feel safe and wanted, it’s whether we need to find another place to live,” he says.
“Some of the countries in Europe, whether on purpose or not, give their local Jewish communities the feeling they’re not wanted in their own country, like they’re second-class citizens, like they have less rights than other citizens. This is indeed a tragedy.”
But, Margolin says, European Jews cannot surrender in the battle for their religious rights.
“We need to work very hard, and even now, we’re not giving up,” he says. “We successfully prevented the ban on kosher slaughter and circumcision in Holland, Poland and other countries, I’m sure this time we’ll succeed as well.”
Margolin is also doubtful that the changes in law will push members of the Jewish communtiy to move to Israel.
“People don’t usually want to move unless they have a noose around their neck,” he says.
The article was published on Ynet News

The Post obtained a six-page letter dated October 11 that outlines “pervasive antisemitism that appears to have become normalized and systematized at the Karolinska University Hospital.”
The letter noted that “We are particularly concerned with the appalling treatment of one of your Jewish physicians.” The Lawfare Project uses legal action to “vindicate the civil and human rights of Jewish people worldwide.”
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