Meeting with H.E. Denitsa Sacheva, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria

September 18, 2019

Yesterday, on 17 September 2019, a delegation made up from the European Jewish Association (Alex Benjamin, Director of Public Affairs), the Action and Protection Foundation /Hungary/ (Ferenc Olti, Board Member of the Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association and Kálmán Szalai, Secretary) and a member of our Advisory Board (Emil Kalo, Vice-President of the World Jewish Congress, President of the Bulgarian Foundation ORT) has met with Denitsa Sacheva, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria, and members of her office.

The main topic of discussion has been the European Curriculum and Textbook Project against Antisemitism, a meeting on which just last week has already taken place in Valletta, Malta. This time, organized in the ancient city of Sofia, we have had an excellent opportunity to touch upon this subject and its various aspects with Mrs. Sacheva and her colleagues.

Not only has interest in possible cooperation been reciprocated – which in itself is already an excellent result – a preliminary agreement has been reached with Madam Deputy Minister on prospectively designing and implementing a pilot project in Bulgaria, based on the ECTPA.

We are deeply grateful to Deputy Minister Sacheva and the Ministry of Education and Science for the chance to talk about this important initiative and eagerly look forward to further cooperation.

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EJA Welcome Serbia's Move to Adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism

Serbia has adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the latest Balkan country to do so following Romania, Bulgaria and North Macedonia.
European Jewish Association Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin today welcomed the move:
“Serbs, along with Jews, suffered the worst excesses of Nazism, as Hitler blamed both for the first world war. We welcome Serbia to the fold of countries that understand the danger of resurgent antisemitism across the continent and are rigorously committed to stamping it out and clearly stating what it is, without equivocation.
We continue to urge other countries who have not signed up in full, to do so. The coronavirus will, thank goodness, pass and eventually be eradicated. We still have much work to do to eliminate the virus of antisemitism. “

ANTI-ZIONIST GROUP DEMANDS COLLEGES REVEAL STAFF TIES TO ISRAEL

An anti-Zionist group in the Netherlands is using a freedom of information request pressure Dutch universities into revealing whether any of their staff members have ties to Israel.

The freedom of information request was filed by “The Rights Forum” group, and also seeks to identify what ties and staff relations exist with Jewish communities and organizations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

The Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands, Binyomin Jacobs, Chief Rabbi (NL), who also heads up the European Jewish Association’s Committee for Combatting Antisemitism, condemned the The Rights Forum, saying the information request “reeks of antisemitism”.

“The Rights Forum is well known to me. Let us be clear, they want to know any Israeli, any Israeli link and any Jewish people in universities in Holland. The clear inference is that some shadowy Zionist or Jewish cabal is operating in the Dutch university system. This reeks of antisemitism, but it comes as no surprise to me given this group’s reputation.”

“No. What really concerns me is the number of universities that were so compliant with such a transparently antisemitic request. It reminds us that most mayors cooperated during the occupation to pass on the names of their Jewish citizens to the Germans.”

“The difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is now wafer thin. In all my many years in Holland I can seldom remember such a toxic environment for Jews. This is an appalling submission to the base instincts of an openly hostile group towards Israel, the world’s only Jewish State.”

Bulgarian Synagogue and Halle Memorial Targeted in Anti-Semitic Attacks in Europe

Vandals struck a synagogue gate in Bulgaria and a monument to the victims of the shooting attack last Yom Kippur near a synagogue in Halle, Germany, in a spate of unrelated incidents last week in Europe, the JTA reported.
In Bulgaria, the words “Free Palestine Israel=Nazis Antifa Bulgaria” were spray-painted Wednesday on the gate to the synagogue of Plovdiv, a city situated about 100 miles southeast of the capital Sofia.
While in Germany, in Halle, a plexiglas panel on the monument of the shooting was smashed. The vandals also tried to set fire to a flag of Israel under the Plexiglas, the Jewish Community of Halle wrote Tuesday on their social media page.
Also in Germany, in a third incident, a structure inside the Jewish cemetery of the town of Krumbach, in southern Germany, was damaged. Police are treating the vandalism as an anti-Semitic case because earlier this year, a nearby picnic table was dismantled and the wooden polls comprising it rearranged on the floor in the shape of a swastika, the website AllgaeuRechtsaussen reported Monday.
Also Monday, metal thieves removed dozens of fences and railings from around tombstones at the Jewish cemetery of Babruysk in Belarus, the news Bobruisk.ru reported.
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