Poland's Holocaust law triggers tide of abuse against Auschwitz museum

Officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum have described how they were subjected to a wave of “hate, fake news and manipulations” as a result of the controversy surrounding a contentious Holocaust speech law passed by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party earlier this year.

The campaign of disinformation and abuse at the hands of Polish nationalists has raised concerns about pressure being exerted on official guides at the site in southern Poland, after the home of one foreign guide was attacked and supporters of a convicted antisemite filmed themselves repeatedly hectoring their guide during a visit to the camp in March.

Conceived in part as a means to prevent facilities established by Poland’s German occupiers from being described as “Polish death camps”, the legislation, which criminalises the false attribution to the Polish state or nation of complicity in the crimes committed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, prompted a furious reaction in Israel and elsewhere amid concerns it could be used to restrict open discussion of Poland’s wartime history.

This in turn provoked an angry backlash from nationalist and pro-government media in Poland, many of whom accused the museum – which administers the site, conducts historical research, and trains and licenses official guides – of deliberately downplaying the fate of the approximately 74,000 non-Jewish Polish prisoners who perished in the camp, by focusing exclusively on its Jewish victims.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/07/polands-holocaust-law-triggers-tide-abuse-auschwitz-museum

Report: Millions of tweets spread anti-Semitic messages

Millions of anti-Semitic messages on Twitter have spread negative stereotypes and conspiracy theories about Jews across the social media platform, according to a report Monday by the Anti-Defamation League.

ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the data showed many used Twitter as a “megaphone to harass and intimidate Jews.”

An earlier report from the Jewish civil rights group said anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. last year had reached the highest tally it has counted in more than two decades. That increase appeared to be fueled by emboldened far-right extremists as well as the “divisive state of our national discourse,” Greenblatt said in February.

In the new report, the group estimated that about 3 million Twitter users posted or re-posted at least 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in English over a 12-month period ending Jan. 28. The finding is based on a reviewed sample of 55,000 tweets and had a 3 percent margin of error, the report said.

https://apnews.com/9bc19992b5294dc887a37e00a3e652cd/Report:-Millions-of-tweets-spread-anti-Semitic-messages?

Rhode Island chapter of the Women's March splits with the national organization

The Rhode Island chapter of the Women’s March says it separated from the national organization because one of its leaders refuses to denounce anti-Semitic statements made by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Rhode Island organizer Shanna Wells tells the Providence Journal the group split from the Women’s March because the organization continues to work with co-president Tamika Mallory.

Mallory attended a Nation of Islam event in February where Farrakhan called “powerful Jews” his enemy during a speech. Farrakhan also complimented Mallory during the event.

The Women’s March denounced Farrakhan’s comments about Jewish people in a statement earlier this year.

The Rhode Island group says it will continue to advocate for marginalized people.

https://wapo.st/2KAVXXD?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.dd61496605fb

Israeli diplomat in US booted from Uber for speaking Hebrew

An Israeli diplomat in Chicago said he was thrown out of an Uber on Thursday night when the driver heard him speaking Hebrew.

Itay Milner, Israel’s deputy consul general in Chicago, posted on Facebook that it was one of the worst experiences of his life.

“I was just thrown out of an Uber in the middle of the highway only because I answered my phone in my mother tongue,” he posted.

He wrote that the driver also swore at him as he forced him out.

“10 minutes into my ride and with no prior interaction between the driver and myself, it took only two words in Hebrew to get my driver [to] start yelling at me ‘get the $#@* out of my car,'” Milner wrote. “When I asked him if it’s because I’m speaking Hebrew he said yes and kept yelling at me to get out.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-diplomat-in-us-booted-from-uber-for-speaking-hebrew/

Neo-Nazis Burned a Swastika After Their Rally in Georgia

Neo-Nazis held a swastika burning following a white supremacist rally in the city of Newnan, Georgia, on Saturday.

Photographer Spencer Platt captured the scene for Getty Images. His pictures show a massing burning swastika and an othala rune – a pagan symbol that was used by some elements of the Third Reich.

One image shows dozens of people giving Nazi salutes in front of a burning swastika that appears to be 12 to 18 feet tall.

According to Platt and local news reports, the white supremacist group gathered in Draketown, Georgia, about 50 miles from Newnan after the protest.

The rally at Greenville Street Park in Newnan was organized by the white supremacist National Socialist Movement. The New York Times reported that it was made up of roughly two-dozen people, making it much smaller than the deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last August. One woman died after a car ran through a crowd of counter-protesters at that rally.

http://time.com/5249811/neo-nazis-burn-swastika-georgia/

D.C. lawmaker who said Jews control the weather visits Holocaust Museum but leaves early

The photo, taken in 1935, depicts a woman in a dark dress shuffling down a street in Norden, Germany. A large sign hangs from her neck: “I am a German girl and allowed myself to be defiled by a Jew.” She is surrounded by Nazi stormtroopers.

D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) studied the image. “Are they protecting her?”

Lynn Williams, an expert on educational programs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and White’s tour guide for the day, stared at the photo.

“No,” she said. “They’re marching her through.”

“Marching through is protecting,” White said.

“I think they’re humiliating her,” Williams replied.

White, who drew widespread criticism last month when he asserted that wealthy Jews control the weather, on Wednesday made a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. With him was Rabbi Batya Glazer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, a group that has been heavily involved in the first-term Democratic lawmaker’s public rehabilitation.

https://wapo.st/2HcnBvX?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.20c923b5cefe

German theater under investigation for offering free tickets to people wearing swastikas

German prosecutors have launched a probe into a theater's plans to offer free tickets to a play named after Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf to people willing to don a swastika.

A spokesman from the prosecutor's office in the southern city of Constance said it had received a number of complaints about the theater's offer. Under German law, publicly displaying the National Socialist symbol is illegal, with very few exceptions.

The theater is offering free admission to those spectators willing to wear an armband with a Nazi swastika, given to them ahead of the performance on April 20, Hitler's birthday.

Those who pay for a ticket will be asked to wear a Star of David "as a sign of solidarity with the victims of barbarism," the theater's operators wrote on their website.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/04/18/german-theater-under-investigation-offering-free-tickets-swastikas/527323002/

Never again is starting to look like sometime soon.

Antisemitism Debate in House of Commons. Please make time to watch.

Exposed: Jeremy Corbyns hate factory

Jeremy Corbyn faces a damaging new anti-semitism scandal as a bombshell dossier reveals the full extent of anti-Jewish, violent and abusive comments on Facebook groups mobilising his most fervent supporters.

Twelve senior staff working for the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, are members of groups containing anti-semitic and violent comments, including praise for Adolf Hitler and threats to kill Theresa May, the prime minister.

The most comprehensive investigation conducted into 20 of the biggest pro-Corbyn Facebook groups — numbering 400,000 members — found routine attacks on Jewish people, including Holocaust denial.

The dossier was compiled over two months by whistleblowers working with The Sunday Times in the groups, who gained access to restricted membership groups. They uncovered more than 2,000 racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic, violent and abusive messages.

■ Posts including support for Adolf Hitler, with one saying the Nazi leader “should have finished off the job” and another claiming the deaths of 6m Jews in the Holocaust “was a big lie!”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/994a4ce0-352f-11e8-8e3a-d639f3c4b43e

The local Union of Jewish students of France at the Sorbonne ransacked

Blocked by students, the school was closed at the time. A few hours before the white march in memory of Mireille Knoll, the Minister of Higher Education asks that "all light is made" on these degradations.

"To death Israel", "Long live Palestine", "Palestine will win" ... These are the messages that were discovered this Wednesday in the premises of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) at the University Paris-I The Sorbonne. Beyond these inscriptions, the local center Pierre-Mendès-France was "completely sacked," says Sacha Ghozlan, president of the UEJF. The university's president, Georges Haddad, who went there to see the damage, announced to the UEJF that he intended to lodge a complaint.

The Tolbiac site at the Sorbonne, which was supposed to reopen on Thursday morning, is currently blocked by a group of far left activist students. These students are asking for "the withdrawal of the laws ORE (Orientation and success of students) and Asylum-immigration". "These claims are not the responsibility" of Paris-I, said this morning its president George Haddad on the account of Pantheon-Sorbonne. The university must "remain a place of public debate, broad and serene" but "these debates can not be done at the expense of the good course of the academic year, without taking into account the rules of safety and security", added it it, before the discovery of the degradations in the local of the UEJF.

In a press release, the Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, asked that all the light be shed on these degradations. It refers to "anti-Semitic tags and degradations". The minister explained condemning "with the greatest firmness these shameful degradations" and recalls that this rampage took place only a few hours of the white march in tribute to Mireille Knoll , Jewish woman murdered Friday. "It is more than ever necessary to place the core values ​​of respect, solidarity and fraternity at the heart of our society," added the minister.

http://etudiant.lefigaro.fr/article/le-local-de-l-union-des-etudiants-juifs-de-france-a-la-sorbonne-saccage_6f6cc714-328b-11e8-bd82-b32254ebbab3/