Joël Mergui: ”Malgré les efforts de l’UE pour lutter contre l’antisémitisme, la situation ne s’améliore pas en Europe.Pire, elle se détériore”

“They are tracking flights from Israel and knocking on doors to identify Jewish homes”, “I must wear a bullet proof vest to take my children to school”, “Jew hate that I haven’t witnessed since the Holocaust”, just some of the comments relayed to Commission Vice-President Schinas and the EU Co-ordinator for combatting for antisemitism Katharina Von Schnurbein today.

(Brussels, 8 November) A delegation of Senior Jewish Leaders affiliated to the European Jewish Association (EJA) that represents hundreds of Jewish Communities across the continent held an emergency meeting with the European Commission Vice-President responsible for the portfolio of Combatting antisemitism, Mr Margaritis Schinas in his offices in Brussels today along with the EU’s Co-ordinator for Combatting antisemitism and fostering Jewish life Katharina Von Schnurbein.

At the meeting with Vice-President Schinas and Co-ordinator Von Schnurbein, Mr Schinas gave a commitment to expedite the process of providing emergency security to Jewish Communities left reeling by an unprecedented surge in antisemitism across the continent.

Ms Ellen Van Praagh, Vice-Chaiir of the EJA and Chair of Holland’s interprovincial Rabbinate (IPOR) told the Commission Vice-President,

“We are facing an unbelievable tide of hatred and there is genuine fear for our lives. We have in Holland a situation where some Palestinian supporters are actively tracking flights coming into Schiphol to identify Jews, we have the same people knocking on doors of houses to identify Jewish Households. Our buildings are being vandalised and defaced. This is pure intimidation, and we fear the worst is coming.”

Baroness Regina Suchowolski-Sluszny, Vice-Chair of the EJA and Chair of Forum of Jewish organisations of Antwerp (FJO), who survived the Holocaust as a ‘hidden child’, said

 “Vice-President, the levels on antisemitism, in the media, on social media and in the public domain are levels I haven’t seen since I was a child. We are in a very dangerous place right now, and it feels like a tipping point. Jews are once again in the crosshairs of those who hate us, and this time they think they can get away with it using the conflict as cover.”

 Mr Gabriel Senderowicz, Member of the Jewish Leader’s board of the EJA, and President of the Jewish Community of Porto gave his personal assessment,

 “I am here today only because I received permission from the security services to travel. I have been warned that my life is in danger, and today, in the Europe of the 21^st Century, I must wear a bullet proof vest to take my child to school and go about my daily life. My crime? I’m a Jew.”

 The delegation was led by Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the chairman of the European Jewish Association who said in a statement after the meeting,

 “In the meeting I made it clear to the Vice-President that communities did not have the luxury of time for form-filing and EU bureaucracy to better secure themselves when their very lives are under threat.

 “Our communities need support, they need security, and they need it yesterday. We welcome the commitment given by Vice-President Schinas to expedite the process of emergency provisions to secure Jewish communities across the continent.”

 EJA Managing Director Georgios Papadakis added,

 “We understand that the European Commission must help provide urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza, but surely it is incumbent upon them to provide protection and security for their own citizens who are facing a veritable tidal wave of the oldest hatred – that of antisemitism.” Ends  

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
“Schoenmaker, houd je bij je leest”, is a Dutch expression, which means “cobbler stick to your trade” And so, as I’m not a medic, I don’t get involved with medical technology. But if someone is dead, then I could and should get involved. And if something takes place between life and death, the dying process, then it seems to me that both the doctor and the rabbi may operate together (in the figurative sense of the word of course). What am I referring to? Organ donations. Not organ donations from a healthy person who donates a kidney to a fellow human being and thereby saves a life. Nor am I talking about donating organs after death, whether that should or should not be done. No, I’m referring to the case of a donor who would normally have been dead, kept alive artificially and now being used as an organ supplier. He is declared brain dead. In the past, a person was dead, alive or dying. We expect respect for life, for death, but also respect for that intermediate phase. I remember nurses in the gerontopsychiatric ward of the Sinai Center. “Mrs Cohen, how are you today? Your children have arrived to visit you.” They spoke fondly to Mrs. Cohen, who was on a ventilator, although perhaps she would have been legal declared brain dead if she had been a donor. But was Mrs. Cohen already dead? Her body still had temperature, her heart was beating, all organ functions were still intact and she was given medication. The donor is considered brain dead, which is a legal terminology. Without this legal assistance the donor would be considered alive! And ‘the operation’ would have bee an illegal and punishable act. Is the public aware that the donor will receive medication during the organ donation procedure? Medication for a dead body? He is given sleeping pills to control blood pressure. To counteract resistance, the donor was initially tied up to the bed, but nowadays muscle relaxants are administered by the anaesthetist. The impression that the donor is actively resisting is dismissed as reflexes! Enough written about organ donations. Another (less morbid?) topic: There is quite a bit of
opposition to kosher slaughter. I will spare you the details. But the cow would still be alive after the kosher slaughter, because there are visible reflexes. I just don't get it: cattle reflexes are signs of life; human donor reflexes are signs of death!? And therefore is my conclusion: when in doubt do without!

MEP Manu Pineda, chair for relations with Palestine, shares Instagram post of Hitler poster with never again written on it being torn to reveal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving Nazi salute under the headline ‘again’, a clear breach of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, of which the EU Institutions are a signatory.

(Brussels 3 January 2024) The Chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin today wrote to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola calling for, at a minimum, the suspension from the European Parliament of the Chair for relations with Palestine, Spanish MEP Manu Pineda.

Mr Pineda shared an Instagram story video showing a poster of Adolf Hitler giving a Nazi salute under a banner that reads ‘never again’. A hooded man then rips off part the poster to reveal Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu whose face and Israeli flag replace Hitler’s and the swastika, and leaving the word ‘again’ visible.

In his letter to President Metsola calling for the suspension from the House, Rabbi Margolin wrote,

“Regretfully, only 3 days into this new year, I must write to you concerning a blatant act of antisemitism committed by a Member of your house. I understand that in a war, feelings can run high. But this can never be an excuse to allow carte blanche to any hate speech, antisemitism included.

“In November 2022, I had the privilege of handing over our King David Award to you in Krakow, the next day we toured Auschwitz together. You are a leader who understands what is at stake, and the dark path that antisemitism can lead us to. I remember your inspiring words well. You said we should honour the legacy of the victims of the Shoah “by never forgetting, by never being indifferent, and by always, always speaking up”.

“Madame President, it is time to speak up. People look up to their public representatives, Mr Pineda included. The public often follow their lead.

“There is no doubt, none, that this video that he chose to share is antisemitic and breaches the IHRA definition of which the EU is a signatory. No words can be parsed here. The question is what will be done?

“In such a febrile time, with rates of antisemitism in Europe at levels unseen since WW2, doing nothing is not an option and only emboldens others to do the same.

“Mr Pineda has shown, in public, his antisemitism. You must show him that antisemitism is not welcome in the European Parliament. A suspension from the house would be the minimum we would expect.” Ends.

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.