Latest news with #YadVashem
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
As scholars of genocide, we demand an end to Israel's atrocities
The world has stood by as Israel has murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, wounded more than double that number, buried countless more under the rubble and devastated civilian infrastructure. The territory's survivors, displaced repeatedly by the Israeli military, are in a state of enforced starvation and utter precarity. Despite Israel's ban on international journalists, witnesses and victims are livestreaming unbearable images and videos of emaciated children and adults shot while desperately seeking aid. Israeli officials have proposed the construction of what would be concentration camps and the deportation of surviving Palestinians. Motivated by our deep scholarly and ethical engagement with political violence and mass atrocity, including the Nazi genocide of Jewish people, we helped found the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network in April. More than 400 scholars of genocide and Holocaust studies from two dozen countries joined within weeks of its launch. The rapid growth of the group testifies to the urgency of this moment. Today, along with hundreds of humanitarian organizations, dozens of governments, and millions of protesting students and citizens across the globe, we call for immediate concrete measures to prevent further atrocity crimes and to protect civilians. Since the 7 October massacre, Israeli officials and their accomplices have justified genocidal violence against Palestinians by equating Hamas with Nazism, instrumentalizing the memory of the Holocaust to advance, rather than prevent, mass violence. Meanwhile, too many governments materially support the genocide in Gaza while silencing protest. Even as the tone of some official statements has become more critical of Israel in recent weeks, many states continue to supply Israel with lethal weapons, shield Israeli leaders from international arrest warrants and fuel investment in the Israeli war economy. International pressure can work, but we need much more of it. The emergency is in front of us. And yet, some prominent scholars of the Holocaust continue to engage in open denialism or outright approval of mass atrocities perpetrated by Israel. Scholarly associations, universities and institutions dedicated to Holocaust research, education and commemoration not only remain silent in the face of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza but provide ideological cover for Israel's blatant violations of international law. Institutions such as Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum adhere to a 'Palestine exception' when opposing genocide and mass atrocity. At the same time, organizations dedicated to combating prejudice, such as the Anti-Defamation League, use spurious accusations of antisemitism to silence or discredit those who dare to speak out. We are determined to challenge this moral and political capitulation. We created the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network to do just that. We pledge to support Palestinians as they exercise their rights to education and cultural heritage in the face of massive destruction of their schools, archives and memory sites. We commit to pressuring our institutions to confront the contradictions between their stated commitment to 'never again' and their silence or complicity in the face of Gaza. In light of ongoing genocidal violence and the return of authoritarian regimes, we will provide new resources and syllabuses in order to teach rigorously about the past in the context of our ever more vulnerable present. We will offer solidarity and support to our students and colleagues who run grave personal and professional risks for speaking out. We contest the widespread 'conspiracy of helplessness' and the normalization of mass violence and starvation in Gaza. We have learned from history that there are many ways in which states can take action in response to crimes against humanity. We urge all states who signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to fulfill their responsibilities under international law: demand and enforce a permanent ceasefire, an arms embargo, the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, unimpeded distribution of humanitarian aid, and equality and self-determination for all Palestinians. As members of the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, we say: it is not too late to save lives. End the genocide now. Taner Akçam, Marianne Hirsch and Michael Rothberg are founding members of the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
A horrifying photograph and an invitation declined
I recoiled in horror at the image of a mother in Gaza with her skeletally starved child published alongside the report on the front page of your print edition ('We have faced hunger before, but never like this', 24 July). Over a year ago I received a letter from the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem notifying me of their honour awarded to my Polish grandparents for saving Roza, a Jewish schoolgirl friend of my father's sister in 1942, and providing her with false papers, by which she was able to survive the war with great courage and heroism. I was invited to contact the Israeli embassy in London for an award ceremony for my grandparents. I hoped in vain that the Gaza conflict would end soon. Eventually I replied that while so many thousands of civilians are dying in Gaza, I cannot do this. I am a humanitarian, as were my grandparents. They risked their lives for one girl; I honour them beyond words. So how can it be that a country that has an institution specifically to research the past to honour those who saved those such as Roza 80 years ago can now treat other innocent civilians as so utterly worthless as to be condemned to slow death? And at such a short distance from where food aid is stockpiled, and beyond that a few more miles, where their own population is as well fed as any western country? The distance from where I live to the Israeli embassy is about 50 miles. About the same distance as Jerusalem is from the starving people of Gaza. Mark Lewinski-GrendeSwaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Wall Street Journal
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Antisemitism and the Teachers Union
Anti-Israel and anti-American radicals have set college campuses afire in the past two years. In too many places, they turned quads into combat zones, harassed Jewish students in dorms, and shut down debate in classrooms. Now we have a new, even more terrifying problem: The radicals are turning their sights on K-12 classrooms. Last week the National Education Association used its annual conference to adopt a measure that effectively prevents the union's members from 'using, endorsing or publicizing' any educational materials created by the Anti-Defamation League, one of the oldest and leading Jewish organizations in America. For decades ADL curricula has been the gold standard for helping students understand and navigate the complex issues of bigotry and prejudice. Our peer-reviewed programs have helped educators instruct pupils about how bias can grow and mutate over time if left unchecked. We developed our Holocaust education offering, 'Echoes and Reflections,' in collaboration with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the USC Shoah Foundation. It offers lessons on the Holocaust and its eternal resonance for all people. One of our main educational offerings, 'No Place for Hate,' is a student-led program used in more than 2,000 schools across the U.S. every year. Through classroom content and extracurricular activities, the program offers a message of inclusion that is entirely apolitical. It's designed solely to bring students together to better understand the differences that too often divide us. Against this backdrop, the NEA's move is both insidious and vindictive. This wasn't about the ADL. It was a clear and unambiguous statement to Jewish educators, parents and children: You don't count. And it perversely takes this stance at a time when anti-Jewish hate is skyrocketing.
Express Tribune
14-07-2025
- Express Tribune
Holocaust AI fakes spark alarm
The Facebook post shows a photo of a pretty curly-haired girl on a tricycle and says she is Hannelore Kaufmann, 13-year-old from Berlin who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. But there is no such Holocaust victim and the photo is not real, but generated by AI. Content creators, often based in South Asia, are churning out such posts for money, targeting Westerners' emotional reactions to the Holocaust, in which six million Jewish people died, researchers told AFP. Critics say that such AI-generated images, text and videos are offensive and contribute to Holocaust distortion by conjuring up a "fantasy-land Auschwitz". The Auschwitz museum sounded the alarm over the trend. "We're dealing with the creation of a false reality -- because it is falsifying images... falsifying history," museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told AFP. The museum at the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where one million Jews were murdered in Nazi-occupied Poland, first noticed the posts in May, Sawicki said. Some reproduced the museum's posts about victims but changed the images using AI, without flagging this. "You can see the photo is based on the original but it's completely changed", Sawicki said. A recent post about a Polish man was recreated with an "outrageous" AI image of an Asian man, he added. In others, "both the photo and the story are fabricated"" Sawicki said, portraying "people who never existed". A girl with a flower in her hair is named as Yvette Kahn who died in Auschwitz. No such victim appears in databases of the victims. In other cases, details do not match. A girl called Hanni Lore or Hannelore Kaufmann lived in western Germany -- not Berlin -- and died in Sobibor camp -- not Auschwitz, according to Israel's Yad Vashem remembrance centre. Posts add emotive elements such as Kaufmann loving her tricycle. But the Auschwitz museum spokesman stressed: "We generally don't have information about these people's lives." Complaints to Facebook owner Meta have not resulted in action, Sawicki said. AFP
Int'l Business Times
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Int'l Business Times
Before the Silence Falls: How 'The Last Ones' Is Preserving Holocaust Memory for a New Generation
Time is running out. Fewer than 245,000 Holocaust survivors are alive today. With each passing day, that number shrinks—and with it, the living connection to the past. Soon, the world will lose its last witnesses to a horror that defies comprehension. But one organization is working urgently to make sure that when the voices go quiet, the stories won't. The Last Ones is not a museum. It's not a textbook. It's a movement—one that meets history where it lives: in the hearts and words of the survivors who are still here, and in the eyes of the next generation who must carry their memory forward. At its core, The Last Ones is a global storytelling initiative co-founded by French-American journalist Leslie Benitah, herself the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors. What began as a personal journey to understand her family's silence has become a sweeping, multimedia project spanning continents, languages, and generations. Benitah doesn't record these testimonies in studios. She sits with survivors in their living rooms. Over coffee tables. In small kitchens. No scripts. No agenda. Just deep listening and earned trust. "These aren't interviews," she explains. "These are conversations survivors were never sure they'd live long enough to have." Each film captures more than history—it captures humanity. The smell of the bread their mothers baked. The knock on the door. The walk to the train. Life is rebuilt, brick by emotional brick. It's intimate. It's raw. And it's unforgettable. But what truly sets The Last Ones apart is how it speaks to today's youth. Its team has embraced the platforms young people live on—TikTok, Instagram, YouTube—creating short, emotionally charged videos that reach millions. Their most-watched clip? A 90-year-old survivor showing his striped concentration camp uniform. Over 7 million views. One minute. One man. A lifetime remembered. The organization has also developed a first-of-its-kind geo-located mobile app. Walk through Warsaw, Paris, or Berlin, and one's phone will light up with the testimony of a survivor who lived on that very street. It's memory, mapped. And students are paying attention. In Florida alone, thousands of public school classrooms now use The Last Ones ' short films and guided lesson plans. Teachers report that the emotional entry point helps students connect deeply, even those with little prior knowledge of the Holocaust. "We don't need kids to memorize dates," says Benitah. "We need them to understand what happens when we forget what hate looks like." The work hasn't gone unnoticed. Yad Vashem has offered its endorsement. The Claims Conference awarded a major grant for international expansion. And most recently, The Last Ones launched a new educational platform, offering free access to all their content—films, podcasts, teaching tools—to educators worldwide. Benitah describes it this way: " The Last Ones isn't just preserving history. It's keeping humanity awake." Indeed, what makes this project stand out isn't just its digital innovation—it's its moral clarity. In a time when disinformation, antisemitism, and extremism are once again rising, The Last Ones is not simply teaching the past. It's building a firewall for the future. Benitah puts it plainly: "If we don't give young people the tools to feel, to understand, to empathize—then we risk raising a generation that sees history as irrelevant. We can't let that happen. Not on our watch." As the last survivors grow fewer, the responsibility grows greater. The Last Ones is doing more than honoring memory—it's making sure memory has a voice that echoes forward. And that may be the most urgent story of all.
