#YouAreNotAlone – Supportive Messages for Israelis Under Fire

The Jewish Small Communities Network was founded as a project in 2003 and registered as a charity in 2016, the Jewish Small Communities Network (JSCN) exists to support, connect, and advocate for the 100 small Jewish communities spread across 72 towns and rural areas in the UK. These are the communities outside the well-known Jewish centres of London, Manchester, and Leeds—but together, they represent around 25% of the UK’s Jewish population, or 65,000 people.

The Jewish Small Communities Network is a bridge—between individuals and their nearest synagogue, between isolated families and the wider Jewish world, and between communities and the organisations that serve them.

Handwritten notes for speeches given by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler have been sold at auction in Munich. Jewish groups had expressed concerns that they might serve as encouragement to neo-Nazis.
An auction house in Munich on Friday sold notes handwritten by Adolf Hitler for speeches he gave before World War II, despite criticism from representatives of the Jewish community.
The manuscripts were purchased by anonymous bidders, with all of them going for far more than their starting prices. The top price of €34,000 ($40,300) was reached by a nine-page document with notes for a speech to new military officers in Berlin in 1939, just eight months before World War II began.
The Hermann Historica auction house has defended the sale in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, saying that the notes were of historical significance and should be kept in a museum or given to researchers.
Vehement criticism
Ahead of the auction, representatives of the Jewish community criticized the sale of the documents, saying they could serve as welcome fodder to neo-Nazis at a time when anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic crimes are on the rise in Germany and Europe.
“I cannot get my head around the sheer irresponsibility and insensitivity, in such a febrile climate, of selling items such as the ramblings of the world’s biggest killer of Jews to the highest bidder,” Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the head of the Brussels-based European Jewish Association, said in a statement. “What auctions like this do is help legitimize Hitler enthusiasts who thrive on this sort of stuff.”
The article was published on DW.com

“Ignoring history of 6 million murdered Jews and linking Holocaust to Gaza is exactly why the schools must take part…the Holocaust must transcend political opinion especially from educators… This is pandering to the basest of lies. The lie that seeks to draw a similarity with the Holocaust and the War in Gaza. The Minister of Education of Belgium should be intervening,” says Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin

(Brussels 9 January 2025) Two schools in Anderlecht, Brussels are refusing to take part in a ceremony marking the laying of Stolpersteine (memory stones) for Belgian Jews murdered during the Holocaust, stating that “the schools do not wish to impose the children any discussion on the Holocaust  given the current conditions in the Middle-East.”

One of the schools involved removed an Israeli flag that was part of a ‘flags of the world’ event recently according to reports that sought to explain the decision, at the behest of a parent who had complained about the flag in the school playground.

The Brussels based European Jewish Association, that represent hundreds of Jewish Communities across Europe, fights antisemitism and regularly takes delegations of Senior Politicians and influential figures such as Elon Musk, to Auschwitz to witness, to remember and to find solutions to fight against antisemitism.

The Chairman today expressed his shock and anger at the decision stating that such an ignorant approach to what happened is precisely why the two schools must attend.

In a statement today Rabbi Menachem Margolin said,

“At a time of record rises in antisemitism, it is precisely to the next generation that we should be transmitting the warning from history of the greatest crime against humanity committed.

“The Holocaust is beyond politics. Conflating the mass murder of 6 millions Jews with the current conflict with Gaza is shocking and an appaling dereliction of duty on the part of two schools who have a moral, civic and human duty to transmit the reality of the Holocaust to the next generation.

“I believe that this decision has been taken to not offend the parents of a particular group of children from a particular religious background. This is pandering to the basest of lies: the lie that seeks to draw a similarity with the Holocaust and the War in Gaza. The Minister of Education of Belgium should be intervening. We cannot eradicate the truth to please a minority who may think otherwise.”