Holocaust remembrance statue not desired

In Anti-Semitism ‘on the rise’ in Europe we can see that about two-thirds of the respondents for the survey considered anti-Semitism in Europe a problem and three-quarters said it was worsening.

Time Magazine (September 13, 2010) …item 2.. The New Anti-Semitism – What it is and how to deal with it (July 12, 2011) … (Photo credit: marsmet541)

Elite opinion in Europe would surely disdain such anti-Semitism, but in its own way demonstrates considerable discomfort with Jews. Unlike Americans, whose Bill of Rights and historical experience commit them to the protection of religious freedom, most educated Europeans are deeply secular. They have little respect for religious traditions – especially those held by minorities – and do not take seriously the right to practice religion when it comes in conflict with currently defined “rights.”

Anti-Semitism may perhaps not overtly raised in the parliamentary debates but countries like Poland outlawed kosher slaughter. Last month the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called for countries to protect children from violations of their physical integrity, specifically including infant circumcision for religious reasons. The claim was that this age-old Jewish practice deprived children of their human rights. If the absence of kosher slaughter would only make life difficult for Jews – the meat could, after all, be imported – the criminalization of ritual circumcision would make the survival of Jewish communities in Europe virtually impossible.

In a drastic move designed to bring attention to anti-Semitism in Sweden, Swedish Jewish activist Annika Hernroth-Rothstein has filed for asylum in her own country Monday. The 31-year-old political adviser and mother of two took the unprecedented step to protest a series of measures in Sweden banning kosher slaughter, ritual circumcision, and possibly even the importation of kosher meat.

Rothstein, who has also been active in helping to organize Jewish solidarity and pro-Israel rallies in Sweden, said she hoped her actions would help move the issue from being a discussion on Twitter, around dinner tables and in synagogues to something that political decision-makers are talking about as a problem that needs to be addressed.

“One thing that we are good at is having conversations among ourselves, but I don’t see this as a Jewish problem because I don’t think there are a lot of Jewish anti-Semites out there,”

she told The Times of Israel in a phone interview on Tuesday.

“It’s not our responsibility to solve this on our own. It is a political problem that needs to have political consequences and solutions.”

Rothstein said many people she’s talked to have told her to forget about it and that the only solution for Jews in Europe is to move to Israel, but she’s unwilling to accept that.

Israel’s foreign ministry condemned the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe last month after it adopted a resolution calling for regulation of religious circumcision, which is also carried out on Muslim boys shortly after birth.He demanded that the resolution be annulled, saying it

“casts a moral stain on the Council of Europe and fosters hate and racist trends in Europe”.

Jews in the Minsk Ghetto, 1941 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The commemoration of the Holocaust seems also to become a problem in certain countries.
Last week, the Foundation for the Jewish Monument Utrecht applied for a permit to build a monument for commemorating the city’s Holocaust victims, which will cost $237,000, according to the Dutch daily Telegraaf. The Dutch Railway Museum in Utrecht its director Paul Vlijmen opposes the erection of a statue near his museum in memory of 1,224 Jews who were deported to death camps from Utrecht during the Holocaust. He believes that his museum, built on an old train station from which the Jews were deported, devotes enough attention to the subject with a plaque and an exhibition titled “Loaded Trains,” according to the local news site DeStadUtrecht.nl.

Maarten van Ditmarsch, a spokesperson for the Jewish foundation, said the Railway Museum has thwarted earlier attempts to honor the victims.

“People said that the city already has a monument for those who fell during the war. I think, however, that this time we will succeed,”

he was quoted as saying on DeStadUtrecht.nl.

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Please do find to read:

1. Anti-Semitism ‘on the rise’ in Europe
2. The double-pronged threat to European Jewry
3. Dutch museum opposes Holocaust memorial
4. Rothstein published article on the Mosaic Magazine website on Monday to announce her petition to be recognized as a refugee in Sweden.

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Swastikas and slogans were daubed near a synagogue in Salzwedel, Germany

Related articles

• Dutch museum opposes Holocaust memorial (whitenewsnow.com)
  Maarten van Ditmarsch, a spokesperson for the Jewish foundation, said the Railway Museum has thwarted earlier attempts to honor the victims.
• French Jews too afraid to put kids in public school (timesofisrael.com)Anti-Semitism “affects Jewish families very seriously and is the main reason there are so few Jewish children in public schools,” Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, said Tuesday during a symposium on anti-Semitism at the European Parliament. “Most of them go to Jewish or Christian private schools.”

  Cukierman spoke at a symposium organized by the European Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith International with European lawmakers on the findings of a recent survey undertaken last year by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency among 5,847 self-identified Jews from nine European countries.

• Anti-Semitism lives on 75 years after Germany’s Kristallnacht (dralfoldman.com)
  If you have the time, read the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights report entitled “Discrimination and Hate Crime against Jews in EU Member States: experiences and perceptions of antisemitism” which is highly recommended reading.For another more passionate perspective, I would strongly recommend the following article by  Jonathan Sacerdoti who is a political analyst, broadcaster and writer based in the UK.

  מידה — Groundbreaking Survey Reveals Scale of Europe’s Antisemitism Crisis

  Sacerdoti takes a historical look at anti-Semitism arguing strongly and passionately that seventy-five years after Germany’s  Kristallnacht that anti-Semitism is still thriving in Europe.

• Anti-Semitism ‘on rise in Europe’ (bbc.co.uk)
  Respondents in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom were asked to give “their opinions and perceptions on anti-Semitic trends and anti-Semitism as a problem in everyday”.
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  The President of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, welcomed the survey, but said “the fact that a quarter of Jews are not able to express their Jewishness because of fear should be a watershed moment for the continent of Europe and the European Union.””The Jewish reality in Europe is of great concern and the authorities need to deal with incidents of hate and intolerance in a holistic manner, to really combat these manifestations before it is too late.

  “We would like to see concrete steps being taken, including creating legislation to specifically deal with anti-Semitism and racism, bolstering law enforcement agencies and ensure a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism, even, and perhaps specifically, when opinion-shapers and decision-makers engage in these forms of hate,” he said.

• Jewish Issues Watchdog: preading European Anti-Semitism (jiw.blogspot.com)
  European Jews fear that they, their friends or their families might become victims of an anti-Semitic attack, if all this is a regular part of European discourse…
• CHANGE: Exodus: Migration of Jews Out of France Begins. “They wonder whether classic anti-Semitism… (pjmedia.com)
  “They wonder whether classic anti-Semitism is not back with a vengeance all over Europe, after several decades of post-Holocaust toleration. The fact that campaigns to make kosher slaughter and even circumcision illegal are gaining ground in several countries, and were even endorsed at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, is seen as particularly ominous.”
• Israeli court orders mother to circumcise her son (telegraph.co.uk)

  An Israeli mother has been ordered by a religious court to circumcise her son against her will or face fines of £90 for every day the procedure remains undone.

  The unprecedented ruling has been handed down by one of Israel’s rabbinical courts, which have legal jurisdiction over religious questions – including marriage and divorce – concerning the country’s Jewish majority.