October 19, 2021
Jan Karski (1914 — 2000) was a Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat during World War II. He is known for having acted as a courier in 1940–43 to the Polish Government-in-Exile and to Poland’s Western Allies about the situation in German-occupied Poland. He was reporting about the state of Poland, in which there were many competing factions in the resistance, and also about Germany’s destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and its operation of extermination camps on Polish soil that were murdering Jews, Poles, and others.
After emigration to the United States after the war, Karski completed a doctorate and taught for decades at Georgetown University in international relations and Polish history. He lived in Washington, D.C., to the end of his life. He did not speak publicly about his mission during the war until 1981, when he was invited as a speaker to a conference on the liberation of the camps.
In 1982, Karski was made an honorary citizen of the State of Israel and a tree was planted bearing his name at Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Righteous Among the Nations.
October 19, 2021
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum To Reopen May 17
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has been closed during the Covid-19 pandemic but will reopen on May 17, 2021. Free timed-entry tickets are required to enter the Museum building. More information is available here.
October 19, 2021
New York Times: Antisemitism on the Rise
On May 26, 2019, The New York Times Editorial Board wrote:
far-right and far-left politicians have often learned to project themselves as defenders of Jews while drawing on blatantly anti-Semitic tropes, as Mr. Orban has done in Hungary. Among the Muslims of Europe, and among some leftists, a resentment of Israel often crosses into hostility to all Jews.
Speak up, now, when you glimpse evidence of anti-Semitism, particularly within your own ranks, or risk enabling the spread of this deadly virus.
NYTimes
Europe
USA
Antisemitism
October 19, 2021
Podcast: “Fighting Antisemitism in America”
Tipping Point is a weekly podcast about Israel. Marking Holocaust Remembrance Day and following the deadly shooting at the synagogue in Poway, California, Tipping Point interviewed two Jewish journalists — Amir Tibon (Haaretz) and Ron Kampeas (JTA) to discuss antisemitism in the United States and what can be done to combat it.
Soundcloud
Overcast
Podcast
Antisemitism
USA
October 19, 2021
Yad Vashem Calls for end to ‘divisive anti-Semitic language’
Yad Vashem advertisement in The New York Times and The Washington Post:
We implore all leaders and citizens to refrain from hateful discourse, and to reaffirm the common humanity that binds us together. Divisive anti-Semitic language and distorted Holocaust references voiced by politicians and too many others is deeply troubling.
Yad Vashem is Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust.
Israel
Yad Vashem
USA
October 19, 2021
Michel Bacos, French Hero Pilot of Jet Hijacked to Entebbe and Nazi Fighter, Dies at 94
The New York Times:
Michel Bacos, the valiant French pilot who was forced by terrorists to fly his jetliner to Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976, but refused to abandon Jewish passengers before an audacious rescue by Israeli commandos, died on Tuesday [March 26, 2019] in Nice, France. He was 94.
Bacos was born in Egypt in 1924, where his father worked at the Suez Canal. He joined the Free French Forces as a teenager during World War II and was stationed in Morocco as a naval aviation officer.
Bacos understood the dangers of fascism. He explained that he fought the Nazis and “knew precisely what fascism was all about. The genocide is a horror that none of us had forgotten.”
France
Israel
Uganda
Genocide
Holocaust News