Latest news with #HolocaustEducationalTrust
Spectator
24-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
James O'Brien's apology isn't enough
When the story of how the British media responded to the October 7 atrocities is told, there will be a number of villains. High up on the list will be James O'Brien. The LBC host is smugness personified most of the time, but gets even higher on his horse whenever Israel is the topic, which it is frequently. Obviously. Things reached a new low this week. On Tuesday, O'Brien read out a text from someone called 'Chris'. This person said his Jewish wife had, as a child, attended something called 'Shabbat School'. There she was taught that one Jewish life was worth thousands of Arab lives and other racist, dehumanising concepts. 'There is a danger perhaps,' O'Brien said in his very serious voice, 'that we only ever hear one side of the dehumanisation and propaganda processes.' The problem, of course, is that Shabbat School is not real. No Jew has, to my knowledge, ever even used the phrase 'Shabbat School'. Jews do many things on a Shabbat – the day of rest observed from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday – including going to synagogue and visiting friends and family. They do not go to school. Indeed, Jews are not meant to do anything resembling work on Shabbat, including writing, making teaching or attending classes rather difficult. Consequently, children mostly go for their Jewish education on a Sunday morning. I remember attending these Cheder classes. We were taught by earnest, religious young women how to read Hebrew and about the festivals, but mostly we counted down the minutes until we could go home again. Some more liberal denominations do now offer Jewish education on a Saturday morning, allowing parents to sit in the synagogue service undisturbed. Does it seem likely that those teaching in such communities would be comparing Arabs to cockroaches, as the nonsensical text message claimed was happening? All this should have been an immediate red flag to both O'Brien and his producers. That it wasn't appears to suggest how keen that show is to air things that are anti-Israel and, ultimately, anti-Jewish. To make matters worse, the clip of O'Brien reading this message was pushed out on LBC's official X channel. It was later removed, but by that point the damage was well and truly done. A big-name host on national radio had aired a blood libel against the Jews, seemingly without questioning the information in front of him. That blood libel was spread on social media, where it was probably seen by more people than ever tuned into the original broadcast. It all puts Jews in the UK in danger at a time when simply sitting in a Kosher restaurant can be enough to get you harassed and attacked. Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, told me: 'These comments are absolutely vile and it beggars belief that they were read out on air when they are clearly false and obviously antisemitic.' Reflecting on her personal experience, Pollock explained: 'I attended a Jewish primary school, Hebrew classes as a child and was immersed in Jewish education. Not once did I hear such vile assertions about another group of people – and I have never heard of anyone else hearing it either. I cannot believe James O'Brien and LBC thought it appropriate to promote this hatred.' Meanwhile, Andrew Gilbert, a vice president of leading communal organisation the Board of Deputies, called on O'Brien to be taken off air. He's right. This should not have been a matter of 'deputy heads will roll', with his producers taking the flak. While they certainly have questions to answer, O'Brien is the ultimate arbiter of what gets read out on air and he should not have been allowed back on the radio the following day. This being the UK in 2025, he was. Having avoided sanction, it wasn't until nearly two hours into his show yesterday that O'Brien said sorry. The LBC host said he regretted 'taking those unsubstantiated claims (in the text) at face value'. His apology is too little, too late. Over the last twenty months, Jews have endured torrents of hatred from all manner of media outlets. We couldn't even watch clips from a music festival without being bombarded with hate. This week was the nadir though. A well thought of and seemingly intelligent host read out, and took at face value, a message that would have made Goebbels proud. He then kept his job. It's a disgrace.
Pembrokeshire Herald
08-05-2025
- General
- Pembrokeshire Herald
Holocaust survivor receives Peace Award on historic VE Day anniversary
IN A POIGNANT and symbolic gesture, the Rt Hon Lord Mayor of Cardiff Cllr Helen Lloyd Jones has awarded a Personal Peace Award to Eva Clarke, a Holocaust survivor whose birth coincided with the final days of World War II. This special recognition, granted on the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day, underscores the remarkable journey of Eva Clarke, who was born in Mauthausen concentration camp, Austria, on April 29, 1945, just days before the war ended on May 8, 1945. Eva Clarke's survival was nothing short of miraculous. The camp's gas chambers were blown up on April 28, 1945, and the Americans liberated Mauthausen just days after Eva's birth. Tragically, most of her family had been murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including three of her grandparents, her father, uncles, aunts, and her 7-year-old cousin, Peter. Eva and her mother were the only survivors of their family. Throughout her life, Eva has worked tirelessly with the Holocaust Educational Trust to raise awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust and to condemn genocides wherever they occur. She participated in this year's Holocaust Memorial Day event in Cardiff and her dedication to sharing her family's experiences has been invaluable to ensure that the atrocities of the past are never forgotten and that future generations learn the importance of tolerance, understanding, and human rights. The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Cllr Helen Lloyd Jones, expressed profound admiration for Eva's courage and resilience, saying: 'Eva Clarke's story is a powerful reminder of the enduring strength of the human spirit. We are honoured to recognise her contributions to our community and beyond. Her willingness to share the heart-breaking experiences her family endured, ensures that the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten and that future generations understand the importance of remembering the past to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. 'Eva's life journey, from the harrowing days of her birth to her contributions to peace, serves as an inspiration to all. The Peace Award bestowed upon her is a symbol of Cardiff's deepest respect and gratitude for her tireless efforts in promoting peace and understanding.' In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Eva's father, Bernd Nathan, left Hamburg and moved to Prague. There, he eventually met Eva's mother, Anka Kauderová. The couple married on May 15, 1940. In December 1941, they were sent to Terezín (Theresienstadt), where they remained for three years. They were young, strong, and able to work. During their time in Terezín, Anka became pregnant with a son, Dan. When the Nazis discovered this, Eva's parents were forced to sign a document stating that when the baby was born, it would have to be handed over to the Gestapo. Tragically, Dan died of pneumonia at two months of age. His death inadvertently saved Eva's life – had Anka arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau with a baby, she would have been sent immediately to the gas chambers. However, because she arrived without a baby and was not visibly pregnant with Eva, she survived. Anka was in Auschwitz-Birkenau from October 1-10, 1944. She had volunteered to follow her husband, who had been sent there. Tragically, she never saw him again, and he never knew she was pregnant. After the war, she discovered that he had been shot on January 18, 1945, less than a week before the Red Army liberated the camp. As Anka's pregnancy was not visible and she was deemed fit for work, she was sent out of Auschwitz to work in an armaments factory in Freiberg, near Dresden. She remained there for the next six months – by now getting weaker while at the same time, becoming more visibly pregnant. By the spring of 1945, the Germans were retreating and evacuating concentration and slave labour camps. Eva's mother and her fellow prisoners were forced onto a train: not cattle trucks this time but coal trucks – open to the skies and, obviously, filthy. They weren't given any food and scarcely any water during what became a three-week nightmare journey around the Czech countryside. The Nazis didn't know what to do with their 'dying cargo'. The train eventually arrived at Mauthausen concentration camp. Anka had such a shock when she saw the name of this notorious camp that her labour began and Eva was born on a cart, in the open, without any assistance, medical or otherwise. By this stage, Anka weighed about five stone (35 kg) – she had the appearance of a scarcely living pregnant skeleton. Eva weighed about 3 lbs (1.5 kg). If the camp's gas chambers hadn't been blown up on April 28, 1945, and the Americans hadn't liberated Mauthausen just days after Eva's birth, neither mother nor child would have survived. In 1948, Eva and her mother returned to Prague, where Anka married Eva's stepfather in February 1948. In the same year, they emigrated to the UK and settled in Cardiff. Eva later met her husband, a Law Student from Abergavenny who went on to be a Professor of Law in Cambridge. She moved to Cambridge to be with him. The Pembrokeshire Herald's Coverage of VE Day C80 commemorations are kindly sponsored by PMR
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Holocaust survivor, 95, has 'life story stolen' by AI fraudsters who rewrote her emotional bestseller and sold it online using 'anti-Semitic' pen names
A Holocaust survivor has called out fraudsters who 'stole my life story' after her emotional memoir retelling her experience at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen was rewritten by AI fraudsters and sold online. Renee Salt, born in Zdunska Wola, Poland and now living in north London, was aged just 10 when she was forcibly removed from her home and hauled from one ghetto to another before witnessing horrific mass murders at two Nazi death camps. Barely alive by the time she was liberated in 1945, Renee suffered the heart-breaking losses of both her parents and her beloved younger sister, as well as 200 extended family members. It took eight decades before Renee could finally tell her story with the recent publication of A Mother's Promise, co-written with journalist Kate Thompson. But Renee and Thompson were left horrified after learning the bestseller - which involved hours of interviews and copious research over 18 months - had been run through an AI tool and rewritten in a matter of 'mere moments'. To add to their insult, the fake versions have been seemingly written under pen names that are 'blatantly anti-Semitic', according to both Thompson and the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET). The charity additionally warned the incident should sound alarm bells around protecting Holocaust testimony and said AI versions 'put the integrity of the past at risk.' Despairing at the news, Renee emotionally told MailOnline: 'They have stolen my life story. I just don't believe it - it's outrageous.' Thompson, a journalist and author from Surrey, explained she first noticed a book being sold on Amazon and Goodreads under the barely-disguised title, 'Renee Salt memoir: A Mother's Promise: A Holocaust survivor's story of love, loss and unbreakable hope' by author Jude Williams, just days after the authentic version was published in February. After making a complaint to both platforms, the book disappeared shortly afterwards on Amazon, but remained on Goodreads. Thompson was told the platform was looking further into her claim, adding that 'copyright protections do not extend to the title of a given work and only cover your own particular expression of an idea.' Goodreads had felt there was no clear infringement of copyright laws, because the AI version had shuffled the sequence of original text - and therefore it was not 'plagiarised' - while there was also nothing to stop other authors using the same title. After pursuing the matter again, Goodreads removed the book, but it was at this point Thompson realised a second AI version had appeared on both platforms. This time the book had been called, 'From Darkness To Light: The Remarkable Journey of Holocaust Survivor Renee Salt', by author Penny Pincher. Thompson was outraged that Renee's memoir had now been copied twice by AI using author names that she believes have 'an anti-Semitic slant'. 'Jude is German for Jew. Under the Nazi regime, Jewish people were forced to wear identifiers such as Star of David armbands or badges with the word 'Jude' on it. 'The 'Jude' badge was used to stigmatise, humiliate and persecute Jewish people. It also facilitated their deportation to ghettos, concentration and extermination camps across the Reich. 'Why did the author give themselves the pseudonym 'Jude'? Renee, pictured with Prince William at a meeting last year, never spoke about her ordeal - which saw the heartbreaking loss of her parents and sister - until her later years Angered by the situation, Thompson decided to pen an open letter to 'Jude' earlier this week - prior to discovering the existence of the Penny Pincher version - to vent her anger at their actions. In the heartfelt letter, she wrote: 'I spent most of 2024 travelling across Europe, visiting the sites of former concentration camps and ghettoes, standing inside gas chambers and barracks, clambering down rickety steps into old basements, trawling through prisoner records, listening to testimonies and watching footage that I will never be able to unsee. 'When I wasn't travelling and researching, I was sitting with Renee listening as her past burst out, an unfiltered gush of history that at times threatened to overwhelm her. 'I learnt that her trauma was a living thing. On many occasions, she would sit and weep, and I would hold her hand in silence, for what words of comfort could I possibly offer? 'You, 'Jude', were spared all that messy, human emotion. Because it took you the work of mere moments to copy the book title, input it into ChatGPT and reproduce a copy.' She continued: 'I had no way to explain to Renee that all our hard work, the trauma she heroically relived, her very personal story, was fair game for anyone with a reasonable knowledge of AI and what books were selling well on Amazon. 'Creaming profit off the hard work of a 95-year-old who escaped the gas chambers is about as low as it is possible to get.' Speaking to MailOnline, Thompson described the AI copies as 'creative leeching' and said: 'I think it's just diabolical - to take a Holocaust survivor's testimony for your own profit is beyond reprehensible. It's about as low as humanity can go. 'I just feel quite despairing that as we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, there are people out there thinking this is acceptable behaviour. I wonder whether 'Jude' or 'Penny Pincher' have ever been to Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, or Bergen-Belsen? 'Have they educated themselves about the Holocaust? 'Do they even understand what they're doing and how offensive it is to people who perished in the Holocaust and for the last survivors? 'I spent most of 2024 travelling across Europe, visiting the sites of former concentration camps and ghettoes, standing inside gas chambers and barracks, trawling through prisoner records, listening to testimonies and watching footage that I will never be able to unsee. 'It took 18 months of exhaustive research and multiple drafts to write A Mother's Promise and came at a high cost to Renee as she was forced to relive every detail of her trauma and grief. ' ''Jude' reproduced it after a few clicks, at a fraction of the cost, financially, physically, mentally and emotionally.' Following her open letter, Thompson said she was contacted by another author who said her books had also been copied by AI fraudsters and sold on Amazon. She told Thompson this was becoming a more regular occurrence within non-fiction titles, with the onus being placed on the authors themselves to flag any pirated versions. Renee's father Szaja (right), a chief accountant for a prominent textiles firm, disembarked from the train at Auschwitz and was never seen again; her mother Sala (left) was by Renee's side until they were liberated. She died just a few days later 'Apparently this has been going on for a while now. There needs to be stronger policy and practise in place at Amazon, alongside broader legislation, new literacy and critical thinking skills around AI. All of which would help us to become better and more savvy consumers of AI products. 'I suspect this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.' As a case in point, while the Penny Pincher version of Renee's memoir has now been taken down, other titles by the 'author' remain, which are also apparently copies of bestselling history books. MailOnline has found Pincher's title, Beneath the Floorboards: The Untold Truth Behind the 10 Rillington Place Murders, to be an AI version of Kate Summerscale's book, The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place. Summerscale's book came out in hardback on 3 October 2024. Pincher's version was published just days later on 19 October 2024. Reviews on the Pincher version describe it as 'a very shoddy piece of work written in haste' and 'a poorly written book with incorrect information'. Aside from being poorly composed however, Holocaust advocates have warned that the rewriting of memoirs like Renee's amounts to 'revisionism' and 'a distortion of the past'. Karen Pollock, chief executive of HET said: 'To see Renee's painful experience of the Holocaust rewritten by AI under blatantly anti-Semitic pen-names is disgusting. Reviews on the Pincher version of Kate Summerscale's bestselling book describe it as 'a very shoddy piece of work written in haste' and 'a poorly written book with incorrect information' 'These fake versions and abuse of her testimony put the integrity of the past at risk. 'This is an insidious form of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, causes distress to Holocaust survivors and sets alarm bells ringing for all of us whose greatest fear is the distortion of the past. 'Renee Salt was just a child when she endured unimaginable horrors in the Nazi ghettos and death camps. She and her family, and the 6 million murdered by the Nazis, were targeted simply because they were Jewish. 'At the age of 95, having spent years sharing her testimony in schools, Renee decided to share her powerful story with the world in A Mother's Promise. 'We owe it to Renee and to all who survived the heinous crimes of the Nazis to uphold the truth of the past.' After being contacted by MailOnline, Amazon confirmed the fake Renee memoirs were no longer for sale on its platform and said all publishers are required to follow content guidelines and the terms and conditions of its service. A spokesperson said: 'We have content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale, and we have proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI-generated or not. Renee with Charles Salt, her second cousin and by coincidence, a British military policeman sent to Bergen Belsen after the camp's liberation. The couple later went on to marry 'We invest significant time and resources to ensure our guidelines are followed, and remove books that do not adhere to those guidelines. 'We aim to provide the best possible shopping, reading, and publishing experience, and we are constantly evaluating developments that impact that experience, which includes the rapid evolution and expansion of generative AI tools. 'We continue to enhance our protections against non-compliant content, and our process and guidelines will keep evolving as we see changes in publishing.'
Middle East Eye
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
How the Holocaust is weaponised to repress anti-genocide voices: Op-ed
Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wednesday and Thursday this week, will likely see Israeli and US politicians use the opportunity to suggest that their destruction of Gaza is somehow about protecting Jews from another Holocaust - and that anyone who protests against this destruction is really motivated by antisemitism. That's certainly what happened last year, when both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US President Joe Biden made such claims. In response, 10 Holocaust survivors issued a letter, stating: 'To use the memory of the Holocaust like this to justify either genocide in Gaza or repression on college campuses is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.' It's not just Netanyahu and Biden who have misused the Holocaust in this way. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was clearly referring to the pro-Palestine movement when he talked about antisemitism on university campuses and 'hatred marching on our streets' in a speech at the Holocaust Educational Trust last September.
Middle East Eye
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
How the Holocaust is weaponised to repress anti-genocide voices
Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wednesday and Thursday this week, will likely see Israeli and US politicians use the opportunity to suggest that their destruction of Gaza is somehow about protecting Jews from another Holocaust - and that anyone who protests against this destruction is really motivated by antisemitism. That's certainly what happened last year, when both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US President Joe Biden made such claims. In response, 10 Holocaust survivors issued a letter, stating: 'To use the memory of the Holocaust like this to justify either genocide in Gaza or repression on college campuses is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.' It's not just Netanyahu and Biden who have misused the Holocaust in this way. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was clearly referring to the pro-Palestine movement when he talked about antisemitism on university campuses and 'hatred marching on our streets' in a speech at the Holocaust Educational Trust last September. This misuse of the Holocaust and antisemitism to discredit opponents of the Gaza genocide has now paved the way for the UK government to announce a new law banning protests near places of worship, including synagogues. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's justification for this was that several London synagogues had been 'disrupted' by pro-Palestine protests on 'too many occasions'. What she didn't mention was that there hasn't been a single reported incident of any threat to a synagogue linked to any pro-Palestine demonstration. This is consistent with my own experience as someone who has, along with many others, carried signs highlighting my Jewish heritage at numerous pro-Palestine demonstrations. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters My sign reads: 'This son of a Holocaust survivor says stop the genocide in Gaza.' Along with other survivor descendants, I am not just warmly welcomed, but often cheered by thousands of our fellow demonstrators. Of course, synagogues deserve to be safe from any real threats. But the fact that some synagogue attendees have strong political disagreements with opponents of the Gaza genocide does not mean that anyone's right to protest should be repressed. Victory for pro-Israel campaigners Unfortunately, as in the US and Germany, the UK government's priority is not to defend the rights of its citizens, but to defend its support for seemingly endless wars in the Middle East. The fact that police recently questioned Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos over his participation in a pro-Palestine protest on 18 January is just one indicator of this very worrying trend towards more war and repression Organisers of the 18 January protest had originally intended to march from the BBC headquarters to Whitehall. But the march was banned on the pretext that it was a threat to a local synagogue - a building that wasn't even on the march route. Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war The Jewish Chronicle did claim that the rabbi of this synagogue said that he'd heard chants of 'genocide of Jews' at a previous protest. But Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, says he discussed the issue with police, and the slogan the rabbi was referring to was merely: 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' In other words, it seems police took the unprecedented step of banning a major demonstration based on a misinterpretation of a single slogan. This marked a clear victory for pro-Israel campaigners, who had been trying to stop our protests for some time. A year ago, their strategy included the following shocking assertion from the head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, Gideon Falter: "Instead of addressing [the] threat of antisemitic violence, the Met's policy instead seems to be that law-abiding Jewish Londoners should not be in the parts of London where these marches are taking place. In other words, that they are no-go zones for Jews.' This was a crowd that had come together to oppose genocide, not to attack a genocide memorial Falter made these widely publicised comments after being prevented from walking towards a pro-Palestine march by the Metropolitan police in April 2024, with one officer saying his 'openly Jewish' appearance could antagonise the marchers. The story, however, proved to be rather more complicated as the officer also said, he'd seen Falter "deliberately leave the pavement and walk against the march". Not only that, our group of 'openly Jewish' Holocaust survivor descendants were actually standing just a few metres away from Falter throughout his interactions with the police. This all seemed to contradict his claims that he was just trying to "cross the road" and that the area was a no-go zone for Jews. The Falter story eventually faded, only for the media to push an even more absurd story, asserting that during another pro-Palestine march in April, the Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial was covered with a tarpauline amid concerns that it could be vandalised by an 'antisemitic mob'. Naturally, these reports failed to mention that Stephen Kapos was on the march's front line, or that, once in Hyde Park, participants listened in awed silence to his descriptions of his Holocaust experiences. This was a crowd that had come together to oppose a genocide, not to attack a genocide memorial. Manufactured stories In his speech last September, Starmer said: 'Just as I fought to bring my party back from the abyss of antisemitism, I promise you I will do the same in leading the country. So yes, we will build that national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre. And build it next to Parliament.' This new memorial would make sense if we had equally prominent memorials for the tens of millions of victims of wars, famines and massacres perpetrated by the British Empire. But of course, there are no plans to build huge monuments next to Parliament for these equally worthy victims. The British establishment's fixation on one genocide over all others led Starmer to announce in January that every student should listen to Holocaust survivor testimony. This respect for Holocaust survivors, however, does not seem to extend to those who criticise Israel. How the West hides its Gaza genocide guilt behind Holocaust Day remembrance Read More » When in 2018, it was reported that people were removed for "shouting", journalists and politicians weren't at all concerned about this disruption - even though the main speaker at the event was an Auschwitz survivor. Instead, they fixated on how the meeting's chair, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, had allowed this particular survivor to compare Israel's policies to those of the Nazis. This was just one among many largely manufactured stories about the Labour Party's supposed antisemitism problem - a 'problem' that was hugely exaggerated by Corbyn's enemies in the Parliamentary Labour Party simply to discredit his leadership. It's therefore not surprising that when Kapos disagreed with Starmer at a meeting of Labour delegates, saying he'd never experienced any antisemitism in the party, Starmer accused him of dividing the party - and they never spoke again. In 2023, Labour threatened to discipline Kapos if he spoke at a Holocaust Memorial Day event organised by the proscribed Socialist Labour Network. Unwilling to have his voice suppressed in this fashion, Kapos then resigned from the party. This misuse of antisemitism and the Holocaust, as well as the mistreatment of Holocaust survivors, is shocking. But perhaps we shouldn't be so shocked. After all we're not shocked when Vladimir Putin uses the memory of Nazi atrocities to justify his war in Ukraine. Misusing history is just what politicians do. The only really shocking thing is that so many supposedly intelligent journalists and political commentators are still so uncritical and credulous. One day this may change. Until then we just have to keep protesting both against genocide and its misuse. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
