Hilde Meisel – Hilda Olday – Hilda Monte: The Unity of Europe

European Diary, 17.4.2021: Today, 76 years ago, Hilda Monte was shot, close to the checkpoint Tisis, at the border between Feldkirch and Liechtenstein.

Hilda Monte was born Hilde Meisel in Vienna on July 31, 1914. In 1915, she and her family — her parents, Rosa and Ernst Meisel and her older sister Margot — moved to Berlin, where her father ran an import-export business. While still a teenager, she joined the International Socialist Fighting League (Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund, or ISK in German), a group founded by German philosopher Leonard Nelson in 1926.

Hilda Monte

In 1929, Hilde traveled to England for the first time to visit her uncle, the composer Edmund Meisel. In 1932 she moved to Paris. She regularly published analyses of the political and economic situation in England, France and Germany, Spain and the colonies. She spent 1933 and 1934 in the German Reich before emigrating again to Paris in 1934 and to London in 1936. She continued to travel illegally to the German Reich several times after that, helping organize workers’ resistance actions. In 1938, in order to prevent her expulsion from England, she entered into a marriage of convenience with the German-British cartoonist John Olday, becoming a British citizen.

During the war, she remained involved in a wide variety of resistance activities, whether as a courier for the International Transport Workers’ Federation or on behalf of Allied intelligence services. In 1940, her book How to conquer Hitler, co-authored with Fritz Eberhard, was published. In the same year, she was involved in the creation of the radio station ” European Revolution” and worked regularly for the German workers’ broadcasts of the BBC. In 1942, she gave a shocking report on the radio about the mass extermination of Jews that had begun in occupied Poland. And she wrote Poems and worked on her novel Where Freedom Perished, that was published only in 1947.

In 1943, her book The Unity of Europe was published in London, in which she developed the vision of a socialist Europe and its common institutions as an independent union between the USA and the Soviet Union. In 1944, together with her friend and ISK comrade Anna Beyer, she was parachuted over occupied France to make resistance contacts on behalf of the American intelligence service OSS and Austrian socialists. Soon after, she was taken to Switzerland by René and Hanna Bertholet, were they discussed political theories with socialist émigrés for the period after liberation. When she had time for it, Hilda Monte contemplated the idea to go to China to engage in the development of socialist cooperatives – and produced little sculptures from clay.

In April 1945, Hilda Monte again crossed the border illegally to establish contact with socialists in Vorarlberg and to gather information about resistance groups there and their relationship to each other. A questionnaire she had prepared for this purpose is now in the archives of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn.

On her way back, she was stopped by the border guard in Feldkirch on April 17, 1945, a few days before the end of the war. She tried to escape but was shot and died of her injury on the spot. Austrian socialists placed a tombstone on her grave with the inscription: “Here rests our unforgettable comrade Hilde Monte-Olday. Born 31.7. 1914 in Vienna. Died 17.4.1945 in Feldkirch. She lived and died in the service of the socialist idea.”

After the war, many of her comrades became prominent members of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, pioneers of the emerging European Union and founders of intellectual periodicals, educational institutions and publishing houses, such as the Europäische Verlagsanstalt.

Hilda Monte, born at the beginning of World War I and shot to death a few days before the second one ended, did not live to that.

Today, representatives of the Protestant congregation of Feldkirch, the Jewish Museum Hohenems and the Social Democratic Party of Austria inaugurated a memorial plaque next to her recently restored grave.

Hilda Monte’s grave in Feldkirch

On a Tower of Skulls: Gerald Reitlinger

European Diary, 2.3.2021: Gerald Reitlinger was born 121 years ago today. The youngest son of Albert Reitlinger and Emma Brunner – who came from the Hohenems family of the same name – he studied cultural studies at Oxford and art at two academies in London. From 1930 to 1931 he took part in excavations in Iraq, subsequently made several research trips to Iran, Turkey and China, and wrote books about his excursions – in 1932 A Tower of Skulls. A Journey Through Persia and Turkish Armenia. In addition, Reitlinger was an avid collector of both Syrian and Persian ceramics.
During World War II, he served in the British Army in air defense and as an instructor.

Portrait of Gerald Reitlinger by Christopher Wood, 1926 (Source: Wikipedia)

But after 1945 he devoted his life to researching the Holocaust. In 1953, he published his book The Final Solution in London, the first comprehensive account of the Shoah. Affected and skeptical, he questioned the national loss of memory that soon swept the former perpetrator countries. The Munich Institute of Contemporary History refused to publish Reitlinger’s book. It did not want to be disturbed by the “outside” in the process of coming to terms with National Socialism. Nevertheless, the book was published in German under the title Endlösung, as was Reitlinger’s 1956 study The SS. Alibi of a Nation 1922-1945, which was given a less sarcastic title by the publisher in order to make it more palatable to the German audience: The SS – Tragedy of a German Era. A third book on Nazi crimes followed: The House Built on Sand. The Conflicts of German Policy in Russia 1939-1945 was published in London in 1960, and under the title Ein Haus auf Sand gebaut. Hitler’s Violent Policy in Russia 1941-1944 in German.
Reitlinger then returned to art and cultural history. His three-volume work The Economics of Taste (1961-1970) is devoted to the history of the art market from 1760 to the present.
He bequeathed his collection, which was damaged by fire shortly before his death in 1978, to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where it now forms the Gerald Reitlinger Gallery.

Here some paragraphs from “Final Solution”:
“The inquest is over, but it is not the business of the coroner to find the culprits or to judge them. Nevertheless, the reader, who has had the patience to follow even a fraction of this somber narrative, will have asked himself a dozen questions, and some of these must be discussed even if they cannot be answered.

How much did the man in the street in Germany know and how much did he care? How was it possible that so many hundreds or even thousands of hard-working bureaucrats of all grades went daily to their offices to compose, copy, or pass on the obvious correspondence of race-murder? Why, seeing that every ministry was fighting with every other ministry and that Hitler never knew in the least what was happening, any more than Tolstoi’s generals at the battle of Borodino, did not one of the righteous men, who said their piece at Nuremberg, make a single active Protest? (…)
Is the discarding of selected victims endemic in the overgrown modern ‘democratic’ State? Can it happen again and can it happen here? It may be very long before we know the answers to these questions, which recur throughout this inquest on the Final Solution in the form of a sort of repeat design or chintz.

It is difficult to believe that there existed any fully conscious beings in Germany or German-occupied Europe in the last two years of the war who did not know that most of the Jews had disappeared and who had not heard some story that they had been shot or gassed. Nor do I suppose that there was anybody who did not have a friend who knew somebody else who had seen a massacre. More than a hundred million people must have known such things and whispered about them, and yet they could not make the climate unpleasant for the few thousands who carried them out. (…)

And the higher the Germans rose, the more frightened they became till we reach the case of Heinrich Himmler, who was made head of the Police State almost by chance and whom Hitler retained just because he was a frightened man who could be informed on and intimidated. (…)

But before the July 1944 plot to murder Hitler, not even the obscurest of wartime officials was ever taken away and shot. (…) Were these the me to stand up for the rights of humanity? They were, it is probable, mostly no more cruel and callous than the Germans or, indeed, the human race as a whole. (…)

The German of 1933 was a sort of caricature of European civilization which had grown more frivolous, greedier, and less critical, as material progress undermined some of the older disciplines. (…)

Hiob on his dunghill wished ‘that mine adversary had written a book’ and his prayer has been answered, for indeed there is nothing that this adversary did not commit on paper. I have spent close to four years among these documents and I have found their company neither gloomy nor depressing. For on many pages darts and gleams that thing which prevents all government becoming a living hell – human fallibility. (…) It is possible that murderous racialism is something ineradicable in the nature of ants and men, but the Robot State which will give it full effect cannot exist and never will.”

 

Party, Politics and Commemoration (Sex, Lies and Videotapes)

European Diary, 27.1.2020: Today marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Primo Levi, who survived the camp, has never been able to describe this “liberation” except in quotation marks. Four soldiers of the Red Army were the first people from the world “outside” who encountered him on January 27, 1945.

“They appeared to us as if the nothingness filled with death, in which we had been circling like extinguished stars for ten days, had acquired a solid center, a condensation nucleus, and so it probably was: four armed men, but not armed against us: four messengers of peace with peasant, childlike faces under their heavy fur hats.” At the sight of the camp survivors, they froze. “It was the same well-known shame that overcame us after the selections and whenever we had to witness an ill-treatment or endure it ourselves: that shame that the Germans did not know, that the righteous feels before a guilt that someone else brings upon himself and that torments him because it exists, because it is irrevocably brought into the world of existing things, and because his good will counts for nothing or not much and is powerless to prevent it.” This shame has also accompanied Primo Levi for the rest of his life.

When – four days ago – 50 heads of state met in Jerusalem at the Yad Vashem memorial, a day after a cocktail party organized for the guests by the mayor of Jerusalem, there was nothing, but absolutely nothing, of this shame. Only political calculation.
The Israeli prime minister and the American vice president used the “World Holocaust Forum” to declare Iran the greatest enemy of mankind. The Russian president, friend of the Iranian regime and at the same time of the Israeli hosts, used the day to declare his superpower the savior of mankind. The Polish president took the opportunity to stay at home offended, after the Poles had previously been told from Moscow that they were to blame for the Second World War.
Hardly anyone was interested in the last survivors of the Holocaust. Video recordings of them is what will remain in the archives.

PS: In the Jewish Museum Hohenems one can watch some of them and reflect on what remains of this legacy. The exhibition “End of Testimony?” will travel even further, to Flossenbürg and Munich, Augsburg, Berlin, Vienna and Frankfurt.

Photo: Dietmar Walser

Bruno Kreisky: or the courage of the unfinished

European Diary, 22.1.2021: 110 years ago today, Bruno Kreisky was born in Vienna. To this day, the memory of the probably most popular chancellor of the republic is polarizing., a chancellor who was at the same time anything but a typical Austrian politician. His political opponents in particular left no doubt about this. In 1970, ÖVP Chancellor Josef Klaus ran for office with the slogan “A real Austrian. This, according to the party’s calculations, said everything there was to say about Kreisky, a Jew and emigrant. But Bruno Kreisky led the SPÖ to a relative majority of 48.5 %. And after an interlude of a cabinet tolerated by the FPÖ, which was highly controversial even among his friends, the SPÖ achieved an absolute majority three times in a row with Kreisky. It’s been a long time, one might say.

Bruno Kreisky
Photo: Konrad Rufus Müller / Source: Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue

Kreisky had no qualms about working with former National Socialists. Precisely because he did not want to be told that he was doing politics as a Jew. Kreisky was above all a European politician, and his own experience of persecution and exile had taught him his own Austrian patriotism: which consisted of not wanting to be a nationalist. And certainly not a Jewish nationalist.
This was eventually to drive him into a dispute in which neither his opponent nor he himself could reap any glory. His bitter feud with the arch-conservative Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal stands to this day like an erratic block in the Austrian memory landscape.
Simon Wiesenthal, whose good relations with the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) were not a bit clouded by the traditional anti-Semitism of the Christian Socialists, gleefully scandalized Kreisky’s lack of inhibitions about cooperating with former Nazis, whether such in the FPÖ or those in the SPÖ. Four of the thirteen ministers in Kreisky’s Social Democratic cabinet in 1970 had belonged to the NSDAP. And FPÖ leader Friedrich Peter, with whom Kreisky was considering a coalition in 1975, had been active in an SS terror unit, which Wiesenthal also deliberately brought to public attention.
Kreisky’s subsequent insults against Wiesenthal (“Nazi collaborator”) are legendary. Austria was able to watch two Jews at each other’s throats in public. But behind the dispute was by no means only Kreisky’s political calculation to curry favor with parts of the electorate. Behind it was – more or less unspoken – the dispute about Jewish experiences from which Wiesenthal and Kreisky had drawn diametrically opposed conclusions.
Kreisky’s traumatic experiences did not begin in 1938 with National Socialism, but in the Austrian fascism of the Ständestaat. In 1936, the young socialist Kreisky was sentenced to imprisonment. He had every reason to distrust the political descendants of the Austrofascists as much as the National Socialists, who drove him into exile in 1938. Kreisky survived in Sweden, where he also met Willy Brandt, who had emigrated from Germany – the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Kreisky remained a passionate European, but he did not like Zionism. For him, there was no question of helping to build a democratic Austria after 1945. His four chancellorships were marked by reform initiatives in social policy and education policy, as well as in family and criminal law – and, as with so many Social Democrats, by a confidence in technical progress that also made him blind to the new issues that came onto the agenda with the dispute over the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant. Even defeat in the referendum, however, did not prevent him from winning the 1979 elections for the fourth time.

While Wiesenthal made Israel as a “Jewish state” the core of his own identity in Austria, Kreisky tried to mediate in the Middle East conflict. Which entangled him in contradictions. He cultivated relations with Arab politicians such as Sadat and Gaddafi, and discreetly negotiated with Moscow for the release of Jewish Soviet citizens who wanted to emigrate to Israel.
What Kreisky mastered best was the art of playing with the public. His press conferences are unforgotten. Not necessarily what they were about in each case. But the style was new. Instead of pronouncements, there was communication.
“I don’t value wreaths that posterity will weave for me. I don’t value monuments. What I would like, however, is for the period in which I was able to influence political conditions in Austria to be regarded as a period in which great reforms were introduced, which left their mark on society and brought about an improvement in social conditions. Nothing would be more gruesome than the thought of having merely administered.”

Much of what Kreisky wanted to set in motion is still waiting to happen.
Willy Brandt, Kreisky’s companion for over fifty years, delivered the eulogy for him at Vienna’s Central Cemetery. “Farewell, my dear, my difficult friend.”

 

A plea for open discourse

European diary, 10.12.2020: This morning, the “Initiative GG 5.3 Weltoffenheit” (world openess) was presented at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, a growing working group of cultural and academic institutions in Germany that is concerned about freedom of art, science and opinion, in a situation of a growing and disturbing instrumentalization and abuse of accusations of “anti-Semitism”, which increasingly place critical discourse about racism, colonialism, but also about the Middle East under blanket suspicion and prevent necessary debates. In addition to major institutions such as the Humboldt Forum, the Goethe Institute, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of Wo9rld Cultures), the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin or the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal cultural foundation), and the Alliance of International Centers of Cultural Production, the Einstein Forum in Berlin, the Moses Mendelssohn Center, the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism in Berlin – and the Jewish Museum Hohenems were also involved. Here is the link to the plea and the complete list of those involved so far. The press conference at the Deutsches Theater is the prelude to a series of further events.
Please see page three of the link for the English translation of this joint declaration.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14WBPlOswuU8Vm2pQm1cteCLrDnPs7FZ5/view?usp=sharing

 

 

Omri Boehm: Rethinking Israel

European Diary, 3.12.2020: Yesterday the Israeli philosopher and political thinker Omri Boehm was our guest, in a Zoom event organized together with the German-Israeli Society of the Lake Constance Region.
His book “Israel – a Utopia” is causing lively discussions and joins a growing number of critical voices that no longer cling to the failed phantom of a “two-state solution” but explores new visions for a binational state.
Our Zoom-webinar with him was attended by 150 guests from Vienna to New York and Berlin to Zurich. Here is the recording of the talk, that was mainly conducted in English.

 

There is a blatant contradiction between a Jewish state and a liberal democracy, says the Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm. For a Jew (and thus a fully-fledged Israeli citizen) is only someone who is ‘of Jewish descent’ – or religiously converted. In his great essay, he sketches the vision of an ethnically neutral state that overcomes its nationalist founding myth and thus finally has a future.
Israel has changed dramatically in the last two decades: While religious Zionism is becoming increasingly popular, both leftists and liberals lack convincing ideas and concepts. The two-state solution is widely considered to have failed. In view of this disaster, Omri Boehm argues for a rethink of Israel’s statehood: Only the equal rights of all citizens can end the conflict between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish state and its occupied territories must become a federal, binational republic. Such a policy is not anti-Zionist; on the contrary, it lays the foundation for a modern and liberal Zionism.
Omri Boehm, born in 1979 in Haifa, studied in Tel Aviv and served in the Israeli secret service Shin Bet. He received his doctorate at Yale with a dissertation on “Kant’s Critique of Spinoza.” Today he teaches as professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is an Israeli and German citizen, has conducted research in Munich and Berlin, and writes about Israeli politics in Haaretz, Die Zeit, and The New York Times.
The book:
Omri Boehm: Israel – eine Utopie,
Propyläen Verlag, Berlin 2020, hardback, 256 pages,
€ 20.60, ISBN 978-3-549-10007-3
The English edition, A Future for Israel: Beyond the Two-State Solution, will appear in April 2021 at New York Review Books.

Avraham Burg: Reading Stefan Zweig

European Diary, 1.12.2020: A few days ago the Willy Brandt Center in Jerusalem celebrated Stefan Zweig’s birthday together with us and other partners. Avraham Burg shared his personal reflections on Stefan Zweig’s autobiography The World of Yesterday. Memories of a European, reading the book several times in various translations. A journey from education sentimental to a vivid portray of present challenges. Thanks to the Willy Brandt Center Jerusalem for the permission to share Avraham Burg’s thoughts here.

Stefan Zweig: Café Europa

European Diary, 28.11.2020: 139 years ago on this day Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna. On February 23, 1942 he took his life in exile in Petropolis, Brazil.
On the way to this last refuge, during the months of his exile in the USA, he wrote his autobiography Die Welt von gestern. Memories of a European. In Hohenems 2014, when we took a look back at the first Europeans, at the Habsburg Jews until World War I in 1914, Stefan Zweig’s critical, melancholic and ironic retrospective view of the “World of Security”, the “dream castle” of the Habsburg monarchy and of Europe inspired by the belief in humanity and progress, which turned out to be a deadly illusion from 1914 to 1945, formed the epilogue, so to speak. We were able to borrow some pages from his manuscript in the original from the Library of Congress in Washington.

Stefan Zweig about the Hohenems Family of his mother Ida Brettauer

In the foreword to his autobiography, Stefan Zweig wrote about the upheavals in Europe and what it meant: “as an Austrian, as a Jew, as a writer, as a humanist and pacifist, to have stood precisely where these earth tremors had the most violent effect. (…) But I do not complain; it is just the homeless man who becomes free in a new sense, and only he who is no longer connected with anything needs to take no more consideration for anything. (…) I was born in 1881 in a large and powerful empire, in the Habsburg monarchy, but one does not look for it on the map: it has been washed away without a trace. I grew up in Vienna, a two-thousand-year-old supranational metropolis, and had to leave it like a criminal before it was degraded to a German provincial city. My literary work has been burnt to ashes in the language in which I wrote it, in the same place where my books have made friends of millions of readers. So I no longer belong anywhere, a stranger everywhere and at best a guest; even the true home that my heart chooses, Europe, is lost to me, since it has been suicidally torn apart for the most part in the war between brothers.
Stefan Zweig was the first and last European at the same time. In front of one of the houses where his Hohenems family lived in the 19th century, a sculpture today reminds one of Walter Benjamin and his “angel of history” – who, like Zweig’s “world of yesterday”, became his legacy before he took his own life on the border in 1940 while fleeing to Spain.
Stefan Zweig managed to escape, but the destruction of Europe also haunted him into exile, until that day in February 1942, when the strength to continue had apparently left him. Years later, his farewell letter was to end up with another emigrant in Petropolis, also a descendant from Hohenems.

The Willy Brandt Center in Jerusalem invites you to an online event in memory of Stefan Zweig on Saturday, November 28, 2020, from 13.00 to 21.00 (Central European Time).

Access to the zoom video livestream:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83094429169?pwd=bG4wU1dWaEhmc0c4bWJ5Y2tUcTg1UT09

The birthday party for Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) offers readings, reflections and music from Jerusalem and Ramallah, Hohenems and Vienna, Berlin and Addis Ababa, London, Paris, Tel Aviv and Zurich.

The Hohenems session begins at 4.30 pm (CET) and reminds us of Zweig’s Hohenems origins and his last journey to Brazil, of the first and last Europeans. Hanno Loewy, the actor Michael Schiemer and the “World of Yesterday”, and the Brazilian musician Sergio Wagner will be heard.
Thanks to Petra Klose for the wonderful idea and organization of this event.

Here is an overview of the entire program:
1pm (CET) Jerusalem Session – in English
We will welcome you with stunning views from the roofs of the Willy Brandt Center and the Austrian Hospice,
followed by a performance of Stefan Zweig’s text about Viennese coffeehouses by Guy Bracca who will read to us from the Café Triest.
After that enjoy with us a musical performance of Zweig’s favourite composers Beethoven and Mozart by pianist Dima Milenova
followed by an interview with the young writer Iman Hirbawi, participant of the Willy Brandt Center’s Young Writers Project.
2pm (CET) Addis Ababa Session – in English
Filmmaker Terhas Berhe presents to us the Ethiopian world of coffeehouses and ceremonies in Addis Ababa
2.30pm (CET) Berlin Session – in German
Actress Joanna Castelli reads from Stefan Zweig’s World of Yesterday and his discovery of freedom in Berlin.
3pm (CET) Talk with Avraham Burg – in English
Avraham Burg speaks about Stefan Zweig’s universal approach to Judaism, his concept for Europe and his legacy today.
3.30pm (CET) Tel Aviv Session – in German
Interview with journalist Peter Münch about what Stefan Zweig tells us today from a European perspective.
4pm (CET) Zurich Session – in German
Dramatic reading with actor Christian Manuel Oliveira about Stefan Zweig’s impressions of wartime Zurich
4.30pm (CET) Hohenems Session – in German
Sergio Wagner brings music from Brasil to the Café Europe.
Hanno Loewy, director of the Jewish Museum in Hohenems talks about the current exhibition “The last Europeans” and Stefan Zweig’s family connections to Hohenems,
followed by a reading of actor Michael Schiemer.
5.30pm (CET) Paris Session
Musical performance of Debussy’s Prélude “Danseuses de Delphes” by pianist Emmanuel Strosser
6pm (CET) Vienna Session – in German
Readings by the authors Anna Goldenberg, Doron Rabinovici and Timna Brauer
In cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv
7pm (CET) London Session – in English
Introduction and a performance by Rita Manning and Chris Laurence
7.30pm (CET) Vienna Session – in English
Readings by the authors Julya Rabinowich and Nadine Sayegh with a musical performance of oud player Marwan Abado
In cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv
8pm (CET) Ramallah Session
Performance of “La Vie en Rose” from the Palestinian artist Café Garage by accordion player Mohammad Qutati
8.30 pm (CET) Jerusalem Session – in English
Presentation of the Young Writer’s Project with photographer Iuna Viera and young author Hagar Mizrachi Dudinksi.
We will close the program with a dramatic reading of Stefan Zweig by actor Alex Ansky.

Yad Vashem: A Memorial, a Name, a Controversy

European Diary, 26.11.2020: Almost exactly ten years ago, an aspiring nationalist politician from Austria visited the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It was at the beginning of December 2010. Instead of wearing a kippa or a hat, he entered the memorial site with a fraternity cap, a symbol of the right wing, often Antisemitic traditional students organizations in Austria and Germany. At home in Vienna, right-wing extremists of all colors were thigh tapping happy about this macabre joke. Others were worried that the demonstrative pro-Israel course could now make right-wing populists presentable in Austria as well. If Israel welcomes him into the country like this, “sooner or later no one in Austria will be able to say anything. He makes himself capable of governing”, a representative of the Viennese Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance warned. Well, seven years later the strange guest from Austria was Vice-Chancellor of Austria. And he would probably still be today, if he had not run into a fake oligarch on Ibiza, a trap created by critical journalists who exposed the corruption of these right wing politicians.

Now there is a dispute about Yad Vashem again. Also this time it is about a right-wing extremist racist. But according to Benjamin Netanyahu, this racist is not supposed to visit, but to take over the management of the “World Holocaust Memorial”: Effi Eitam.

Eitam’s military career as a brigadier general culminated in the fight against the Palestinian intifada. Four of his soldiers beat a Palestinian prisoner to death on his orders and were – after all – sentenced. Eitam got off with a reprimand, but was no longer promoted.
Consequently, he was drawn into politics, where he attracted attention as a member of the Knesset and as a minister with racist statements, among other things, when he called Arab Israelis a cancer and demanded that these citizens be deprived of the right to vote. He demanded that Palestinians be forcibly expelled from the West Bank and that one of the most popular Palestinian leaders, Marwan Bargouti, be murdered.

The planned appointment has triggered protests worldwide, from Holocaust survivors as well as scientists, memorials, archives and Jewish museums. Finally, Yad Vashem is also a scientific institution and one of the most important archives in the world. Should it be the plaything of nationalist politics and the explicit oppression of minorities in the future? On Tuesday, survivors of the Shoah took to the streets in Israel and protested outside the offices of the responsible minister Ze’ev Elkin. “The way Eitam talks about our citizens and neighbors reminds me of what I heard when I was a child,” one of the aged and apparently awake and young protesters, 92-year-old Eva Morris, told the Jerusalem Post.

In the conflict over this occupation, of course, only those contradictions that have long been a problem are revealed in a grotesquely exaggerated way. And not only in Israel. Memorials are and have always been a plaything of nationalist politics. Whether in Poland, where for decades in Auschwitz the Polish suffering was celebrated as “Jesus among the nations,” and the Jewish victims were appropriated among the Polish. Or in Buchenwald, where the “true” Germany, liberated from fascism and capitalism, ranked among the peoples of the world whose salvation consisted in communism. Whether in the “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny”, where an inflated copy of a “Pieta” by Käthe Kollwitz since 1993 also commemorates all Jewish and other victims of mass extermination in Christian iconography and as anonymously fallen soldiers. And thus at the same time declared victims of an equally anonymous evil that had nothing to do with Germany. Or in Yad Vashem, which, as a memorial, not only claims to be a universal world memorial, but at the same time incorporates all victims of the Holocaust not only in an understandably Jewish but also in a nationalist narrative. As a “memorial to the martyrs and heroes of the State of Israel in the Holocaust”, Yad Vashem (following an Israeli law) declares the dead posthumously as Israeli citizens. My grandfather would turn over in his grave – if he ever received a grave.

The path through the history museum of Yad Vashem, which was reopened 15 years ago, does not end with an architectural gesture of trauma, no authentic or staged expression of what the survivors since 1945 have to cope with. No, the path through the museum ends on an imperial balcony, a view from above in triumph over the land – and with a side view of that hill on which the village of Deir Yassin stood, whose inhabitants were massacred by right-wing militias under the orders of Menachem Begin in 1948.

As early as 1988, Yehuda Elkana captured the inner contradiction of every Holocaust remembrance in a memorable formula. There are two conflicting imperatives that lead to completely different consequences: “this shall never happen again” – or “this shall never happen again to us“.
At the same time, the conflict over Eitam also reveals the fundamental dilemma of the Israeli state, which wants to be both a democracy and a Jewish state. Omri Boehm has described this in his new book “Israel- a Utopia” with good reasons as an attempt to say something like: “A square is square in so far as it is round, and a circle is round in so far as it is square. One asserts nothing more than a contradiction, but with pathos, and believes in it.”

As a “national memorial”, Yad Vashem, too, is supposed to be a squaring of the circle, a manifesto against racism and the oppression of minorities, and at the same time an institution for the establishment of Jewish Israeli identity, which symbolically excludes a growing number of Israeli citizens. Effi Eitam would indeed be the man to “dissolve” this contradiction. With fatal consequences, of course. For Yad Vashem is also one of the most important archives in the world, a research site where many people have seriously dedicated their lives to the memory of the greatest crime of humanity. A crime that can only be remembered if its universal and Jewish dimensions are taken into account equally. Without abusing it for national political purposes, that is, for domination over others.

And finally, the dispute over Yad Vashem reveals a growing contradiction between Jews in the Diaspora and the Israeli state, which usurps Jews even against their will, dead or alive, and plays them off against the Arab citizens of Israel and against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. A dispute that has now even encompassed the occupation of leading positions in Zionist organizations around the world, decisions that the Israeli government has made the sole concern of its internal coalition deals, instead of coordinating them with Jewish organizations in the diaspora as it has done in the past.

If the appointment of the chairman of the board of directors of Yad Vashem is now also the subject of a coalition dispute between Israel’s “best enemies”, Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and Benjamin (Benny) Gantz, then it is not because Benny Gantz has problems with abusing Yad Vashem as a place of nationalist brainwashing, but because a number of top positions within Israel are currently being occupied again. And both of them want to make a good cut. After all, Netanyahu needs people in leading positions in the judiciary who will spare him the threat of a trial.
Ze’ev Elkin, the minister responsible for Yad Vashem, who wants to hold fast to Eitam’s occupation, has already reached the peak of cynical hypocrisy:  He hopes, he told the Israeli daily Haaretz, that “Yad Vashem will not become a hostage in a political game. There are things that are above politics. If Effi Eitam can be prevented, a bitter aftertaste will remain. And much to do. We need to know that.

An extreme right wing politician as chair of Yad Vashem?

There is international resistance to the announced appointment of the extreme right-wing politician Effi Eitam as the new chairman of Yad Vashem, the prestigious ‘World Holocaust Remembrance Centre’ and museum in Jerusalem. In a joint declaration, Jewish and non-Jewish scholars and employees of Jewish museums, Holocaust memorial sites, university and non-university research and educational institutions, and archives around the world protest strongly against this worrying move which threatens to instrumentalize one of the most important Holocaust memorial institutions in the world for partisan political interests. Within a few days, more than 750 international signatories have joined the appeal.
Scholars and professors of Jewish Studies and History in the USA, Israel, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, Hungary, Poland, South Africa, Canada, Brazil, France, Czech Republic etc: including Omer Bartov, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Michael Berenbaum, Deborah Lipstadt, Steven Aschheim, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, James Young, Sander Gilman, Norbert Frei, Aleida and Jan Assmann, Michael Brenner, Marion Kaplan, Derek Penslar, Ron Barkai, Alfred Bodenheimer, Dariusz Stola, Vivian Liska, Daniel Boyarin, Gertrud Koch, Shulamith Volkov, Peter Hayes, Konrad Kwiet, Christoph Schulte, Deborah Dwork, John Efron, Amos Goldberg, Moshe Zimmermann, Moshe Rosman, Lawrence Baron, Joel Rubin, Anson Rabinbach, Micha Brumlik, Atina Grossman, David Myers, Jacques Picard, Liliane Weissberg, René Bloch, Alan Steinweis, Christina v. Braun, Michael Steinberg and many more.

Directors and staff members of numerous Jewish museums, Holocaust memorials, educational centers, research institutes and archives in the USA, Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain, Slovakia, Greece, Turkey and Israel

including Zsuzsanna Toronyi (Jewish Museum Budapest), Volkhard Knigge (former director of the Buchenwald Memorial), Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Berlin), Zygmunt Stępiński (Director of the Museum Polin, Warsaw), Sybille Steinbacher (Fritz Bauer Institute Frankfurt a.M. ), Miriam Zadoff (NS Documentation Center Munich), ), Lori Starr (former director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco), Martha Keil (Institute for Jewish History of Austria), Miriam Rürup (Moses Mendelssohn Center, Potsdam), Daniela Eisenstein (Jewish Museum Franconia), Maros Borsky (Jewish Museum Bratislava), Barbara Staudinger (Jewish Museum Augsburg), Zanet Battinou (Jewish Museum Athens), Bernhard Purin (Jewish Museum Munich), Anja Siegemund (Centrum Judaicum Berlin) and many others.

Writers, artists and filmmakers including Lizzie Doron, Max Czollek, Doron Rabinovici, Amos Gitai, Ruth Beckermann, Melvin Jules Bukiet, Michal Rovner, Abraham Burg (the former speaker of the Knesset) and rabbis such as Andreas Nachama (President of the General Rabbinical Conference in Germany) have also added their names in protest.
For the initiators of the appeal:

Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (independent curator and museologist, Vienna)
Hanno Loewy (Director, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Austria)
Joanne Rosenthal (former chief curator of the Jewish Museum London)
Cilly Kugelmann (Chief Curator of the Permanent Exhibition of the Jewish Museum Berlin)
Susannah Heschel (Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth, USA)

OPPOSITION TO THE SUGGESTED APPOINTMENT OF EFFI EITAM AS CHAIR OF YAD VASHEM

“For many years the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, its archives and research departments, has been one of the most important partners of our work, wherever we are situated, whether Jewish or non-Jewish scholars of Holocaust, Antisemitism and Jewish studies, active in universities, museums, archives, education or research.

Yad Vashem, the Israeli state ‘Memorial to the Martyrs and Heroes of the State of Israel in the Holocaust’ commemorates the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Its declared goal is not only documentation, research and education but also prevention – of barbarity and future acts of genocide. The International School for Holocaust Studies, which is part of the memorial, aims at combatting anti-Semitism, racism and exclusion within society at large.

This urgent mission – to encourage civil society to actively watch, involve and intervene wherever racism and hatred threaten religious, ethnic or other groups and communities – is now at risk of being handed over to the outspoken right-wing extremist and historically illiterate politician Effi Eitam.

We are shocked by this outrageous proposal and protest against it in the strongest possible terms. Eitam’s hateful rhetoric towards Israeli Arabs and Palestinians stands in opposition to the stated mission of Yad Vashem.

We add our voices to the protests of many notable Holocaust survivors in Israel who have spoken out against this proposed appointment. Appointing Effi Eitam as Chair of Yad Vashem would turn an internationally respected institution devoted to the documentation of crimes against humanity and the pursuit of human rights into a mockery and a disgrace.”

List of Signatories:
Gisèle Abazon, Interpreter, Israel
Irit Abir, Israel
Prof. Dr. David Abraham, Professor of Law, University of Miami, USA
Mr. Shai Adar, Tel Aviv Sexual Assault Crisis Center, Volunteer and Board Member, Israel
Nance Adler, JDS Seattle – Jewish Studies, USA
Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center, New York, USA
Dr. Michal Aharony, University of Haifa, Editor, The Journal of Holocaust Research, Israel
Dr Avril Alba, University of Sydney, Australia
Mr Jonathan Alexandre, Israel
Mr Mario Dominic Alfonso, USA
Dr Jean-Rémi Alisse, Israel
Mr Yuval Alpan, Israel
Dr. Karen Alterthum-Wajsberg, Children and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Munich, Germany
Mr Eitan Amiel, Israel
Prof. Rabbi Yehoyada Amir, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Israel
Marita Anderson, Chaplain at Northside Hospital, USA
Claire Andrieu, History Professor, Sciences Po, Paris, France
Professor Shoshana Anily, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Mr Léo Apotheker, UK
Mrs Liliane Apotheker, UK
Jack Arbib, Israel
Mr Bertie Aronson, Israel
Professor Steven Aschheim, Emeritus, Hebrew University, Israel
Ofer Ashkenazi, Associate Professor, Director, The Koebner-Minerva Center for German History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Prof. Dr. Aleida Assmann, University of Konstanz, Germany
Dr Roger Assouline, Israel
Prof. Dr. Jan Assmann, Universities of Heidelberg and Konstanz, Germany
Dr Irene Aue-Ben-David, Director, Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem, Israel
Karen Auerbach, University of North Carolina, associate professor of history, USA
Arie Avidor, Ambassador (ret.), Israel
Bernard Avishai, Visiting Professor of Government, Dartmouth College, USA / Israel רחל ארבל ,ישראל
פנחס ביבלניק ,האוניברסיטה העברית ירושלים ,ישראל
אריאלה בכר ,ישראל
Professor Anthony Bale, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
אילו בר ,עצמאי ,ישראל
Naomi Ban, Israel
Dr Ronald Ban, Israel
Rabbi Ehud Bandel, Israel
Dr. Yair Barak, Research fellow Cohn Institute Tel Aviv University, Israel
Miriam Barak, Israel
Prof. Emeritus David Bar-Gal, Hebrew University, Israel
Uri Barbash, Film and TV Director, Israel
Hillel Bardin, Israel
Ron Barkai, Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Thamar Barnett, Holocaust Educator, UK
Lawrence Baron, Professor Emeritus, San Diego State University (retired), USA
Professor Omer Bartov, Brown University, USA
Professor Neima Barzel, Oraim college of education, Israel
Prof. Dr. iur. J.Friedrich Battenberg, Technical University Darmstadt, Department of History, Germany
Ms. Zanet Battinou, Director, The Jewish Museum of Greece, Greece
Mrs Laure Baumgarten, France
Sammy Beck, Director, Practicing Medicine Program, Cornell University, USA Professor Annette Becker, Paris-Nanterre, Genocide Studies, France
Ruth Beckermann, Filmmaker, Austria
Dr. Michael Beigel, Director, Multimedia Assisted Learning, The Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University, Israel
Sylvia Beigel, Teacher, Alyn Rehabilitation Hospital, Israel Claudette Beit-Aharon, Child of Survivor, USA
Dr. Margalit Bejarano, Hebrew University (Research Fellow), Israel Ruth Belluco, Israel
Galit Ben Ami, Israel
Batsheva Ben-Amos, Shoah scholar, Philadelphia
Professor Dr. Shlomo Ben-Hur, IMD Business School, Switzerland David Ben Ishay, Direction de projets environnementaux, Israël
מנשה בן מאיר ,מרחב תרבות ,ישראל
Dr. Michal Ben-Nun, San Diego, CA, USA
Professor Ram Ben-Shalom, The Hebrew University, Israel
Ms. Orit Ben Shitrit, Film Department Chair, San Francisco Art Institute, USA
Professor Hanoch Ben-Yami, Central European University, Austria
Ohad Ben Itzhak, Israel
Mr Shmuel Ben-Tovim, Director, BTC Ltd., Israel
Nesim Bencoya, Turkey
Isaac Benguigui, Prof. University of Geneva, Switzerland
Tal Benoliel, Hebrew teacher, France
Ms. Anat Benson, Israel
Ms Valérie Bercovici, Israel
Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University, USA
Elie Beressi, France
Professor Andrew Stuart Bergerson, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA
Bonnie Berkowicz, USA
Dr. Nathaniel Berman, Rahel Varnhagen Professor, Dept. of Religious Studies, Brown University, USA
Dr. Margit Berner, Austria
Daniel Bessis, Delegate for innovation, Israel and France
Dr. Henry Bial, Professor, University of Kansas, USA
Dr. Pinhas Bibelnik, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Professor (emeritus) Yoram Bilu, Prof. of anthropology and psychology Hebrew University, ISRAEL
Professor Marco Antonio Bin, PUC SP, Brasil Professor Daniel Blatman, Hebrew University, Israel
Mr Bruno Bloch, Cercle de Genealogie Juive, France
Carine Bloch, France
Professor René Bloch, University of Bern, Institute of Jewish Studies, Switzerland
Dr. Lisa Bloom, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Mr Remi Blum, Masorti congregation secretary in Neve Tzedek, Israel
Dr. Rachel Blumenthal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Mr Bruno Boccara, Socio-Analytic Dialogue, USA
Professor Alfred Bodenheimer, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland
Miriam Bodian, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Professor Dr Omri Boehm, The New School for Social Research, Israel/ USA
Dr. Maroš Borský, Jewish Community Museum and Jewish Cultural Institute, Bratislava, Director, Slovak Republic
Rabbi Dr Barbara Borts, Newcastle University, UK Professor Viviana Bosi, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Dr. Sabina Bossert, Fachreferentin Jüdische Zeitgeschichte am Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Professor Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Prof. of Talmudic Culture, UC Berkeley, United States
Prof. Dr. Stephan Braese, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Dr. Elisabeth Brainin, Psychoanalyst, Vienna Psychoanalytic society (WPV), Austria Professor Zachary Braiterman, Syracuse University , USA
Caroline Bray, Museum Consultant, UK
Professor Michael Brenner, American University, Washington DC and University of Munich, USA Professor Haim Bresheeth, SOAS, University of London, UK
Claparede albernhe Brigitte, France
Mrs. Aline Brodt, Brodt Center for Jewish Culture, Israel
Susan Bronson, Executive Director, Yiddish Book Center, USA
Dr. Rivka Brot, Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, Israel
Max Yeshaye Brumberg-Kraus, Artist with ARC (Arts, Religion, Culture), USA
Dr. Micha Brumlik, Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin, Germany
Tal Bruttmann, Historian, France
Melvin Jules Bukiet, author, Sarah Lawrence College, Board Member of the American Friends of Yad Vashem
Mr Avraham Burg, Former Speaker of the Knesset, Israel
Rauzel Candib, Retired School Administrator, Montreal, Quebec
Dr. Katerina Capkova, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
Professor Marc Caplan, Dartmouth College, Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, USA Steven Carr, Purdue University Fort Wayne, USA
Galia Chai, Israel
Isolde Charim, Austria
Prof. Israel Charny, Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem, Co-Founder, Internaitonal Association of Genocide Scholars, Israel
David Chemla, JCall, European general secretary, France
Nancy Civin, Baltimore Jewish Council, Holocaust Remembrance Council, USA
Tsila Cochavi, Israel
Carine Cohen Libermann, Law Student, Israel
Dr. Elliot (Yisrael) Cohen, Retired from Yad Vashem, Hebrew University, Israel
Professor Emerita Esther Cohen, Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Judith Cohen, Retired teacher, Ort, Israel
Julie-Marthe Cohen, curator, Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Prof. Richard Cohen, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Professor Veronika Cohen, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Israel
Ms Catherine Colloms, Trustee, Wiener Holocaust Library, UK
Alon Confino, Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies, Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
Dr Bryan Conyer, Bialik College, Australia
Jonathan Crewe, Dartmouth College, USA
Roz Currie, Curator at Islington Museum, formerly curator at Jewish Museum London, UK Sarah Cushman, Director, Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, USA Anat Cygielman, Journalist, Israel
Dr. Max Czollek, Author, Germany
דפנה דה הרטוך ,ישראל
Talia Dadash, Israel
Sebastian Dallinger, Austria
danielle danielle, retraitée, CNRS, France, Israel
Patrick Danis, France
Paige Dansinger, Director, Better World Museum, USA
Emmanuel Darmon, France
Tamar Daus, Israel
Dr. Efraim Davidi, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Professor SIDRA DeKOVEN EZRAHI, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Dr. Aviv De-Morgan, Israel
Dr Anath Ariel de Vidas, CNRS, France
Dr. Irit Dekel, Assistant Professor, Jewish Studies and Germanic Studies, Indiana University, USA
Professor Mikhal Dekel, Professor and Director of the Rifkind Center for the Humanities & Arts, City University of New York, USA
Prof. Dr. Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany Annalisa Di Fant, Historian, Italy
Emily Dische-Becker, Journalist & researcher, Berlin, Germany
Weill Dominique, Lawyer, France
Lizzie Doron, Writer, Israel
Dr. Axel Doßmann, University of Jena, Germany
Rachel Douieb, Author, composer, Musician, curator, France
Daniel Dratwa, former museum curator, Belgium
Dr. Werner Dreier, erinnern.at, director, Austria
Laura Dressel, Austria
Dr. Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Reader in History, the University of Manchester, UK
Marcel Drimer, Holocaust survivor USHMM, USA
Dr. Gali Drucker Bar-Am, Israel
Dr. Irith Dublon-Knebel, Minerva Institute for German History, Tel Aviv University, research fellow, Israel
Prof Arie Dubnov, Associate Professor of History & Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies Director, Judaic Studies Program The George Washington University, USA
Dr. Rina Dudai, Kibbutzim College of Education (retired), Israel Ms Joanne Dufty, Sydney, Australia
Shoshana Dweck, USA
Prof Deborah Dwork, Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity; Graduate Center–CUNY, USA
Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht Hartmann, Cardinal Franz König Chair in Austrian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Monique Eckmann, Prof. em. University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Geneva, Switzerland
Professor John Efron, Koret Professor of Jewish History, University of California—Berkeley, USA
Daniela F. Eisenstein, Director, The Jewish Museum Franconia – Fürth, Schnaittach & Schwabach, Germany
Dr. Sagi Elbaz, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Yair Eldan, Law Faculty, Ono academic College, Israel
Allal Elie, France
Dr. Aya Elyada, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Pierre Ech-Ardour, France
Sandy Fainer, Canada
Mrs Yael Falk, Israel
Sandro Fasching, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI), The Future of Memory – Museum Simon Wiesenthal, Austria
Mr Sam Fayon, Director, Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Liliana Ruth Feierstein, Humboldt Universität Berlin, Germany
Professor Jackie Feldman, Ben Gurion Universität of the Negev, Professor of Anthropology, Israel
Prof. Miriam Feldon, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Michaela Feurstein-Prasser, XHIBIT.AT, Curator, Austria
Jacques Fijalkow, Professor emeritus, université de Toulouse, France
Raymonde Fiol, Past President, Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada, USA
Chuck Fishman, Photographer / historian, USA
Louise Fishman, USA
Shlomit Fishman, Israel
Professor Henryk Flashner, University of Southern California, USA
Professor Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Rutgers University, USA
Dr. David Forman, Cornell University, USA
Professor Everett Fox, Glick Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies, Director, Program in Jewish Studies, Clark University, USA
Dr. Daniel Fraenkel, (Retired), Director of the Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Germany, Israel
Karen S. Franklin, USA
Ms Carol Freeman, Director, Melisma Arts, USA
Prof. ChaeRan Freeze, Professor, Brandeis University, USA
Prof. Dr. Norbert Frei, University of Jena, Germany
Laura Freidberg, UNAM, Mexico
Professor Eli Friedlander, Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Mr Dominique Friedman, Sept & demi Incoming Europe, Chairman, France
Jeanette Friedman, President, the Brenn Institute, USA
Jordan Friedman, Hebrew Seminary for the Deaf and Hearing, USA
Professor Dr. Judith Frishman, Leiden University, Jewish Studies, Netherlands
Eva Frojmovic, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
Dr. Iris Fry, Israel
Professor Emeritus Michael Fry, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Sarah Gabbai, Retired Journalist, Israel
Professor Ofer Gal, University of Sydney, Australia
Dr Yoav Galai, Lecturer in Global Political Communication, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Professor Katharina Galor, Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University, USA Mr Tsahi Ganon, Israel
Dr. Daniel Gerson, University of Bern,Institute of Jewish Studies, Switzerland Dr. Sharon Geva, Kibbutzim College and Tel Aviv University, Israel
Erika Gideon, Switzerland
Noa Gidron, Retiree, Independent Holocaust researcher, Israel
Mr Binyomin Gilbert, UK
Smadar Gilboa, USA
Professor Abigail Gillman, Professor of Hebrew, German, and Comparative Literature, Boston University, USA
Professor Sander Gilman, Emory University , USA
Hans Jakob Ginsburg, Journalist, Germany
Prof. Yonatan Ginzburg, Professor of Linguistics, Université de Paris, France
Oren Giorno, Youth Director at Judaïsme en Mouvement, France
Rabbi Dr. Irving Yitz Greenberg, Senior Scholar in Residence,Hadar Institute, USA and Israel
Professor Amos Guiora, USA
Amos Gitai, Professor college de France, Israel
Mr. Carlos Gitin Hochberg, Son to a survivor, Brasil
Dr. Mario Glanc, Argentina
Tamara Gleason, University College London, UK
Yael Glickman, Israel
Nechama Gliksberg, Israel
Jason Gold, Legal Counsel, Canada
Prof. Amos Goldberg, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Dr. Jean Goldenbaum, Researcher at the European Centre for Jewish Music (Music University of Hannover), Germany
David Goldfarb, Independent scholar and translator, USA
President John Goldsmith, Anne Frank Fonds (Trust), Basel, Switzerland
Ms. Alexa Goldstein, AJEEC-NISPED, Resource Development Coordinator, Israel
Dr Noami Goldstein, Grand daughter of shoah survivors, Israel
Dr. Yossi Goldstein, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, lecturer, Israel
Rabbi Samuel Gordon, Senior Rabbi, Congregation Sukkat Shalom, USA
Geoff Gottlieb, USA
Alain Tsion Grabarz, Hashomer Hatsaïr (president), France
Professor Henry Green, Department of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies, University of Miami, USA
Dr. Jeffrey Green, Translator, Israel
Judith Green, Hebrew University, Israel
Prof. Charles Greenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Reesa Greenberg, Art and Exhibition Historian, Canada
Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann, Rabbis For Human Rights, Israel
Dr. Leonard Grob, Professor Emeritus, USA
Ms Nili Gross, Israel
William Gross, Director of the Gross Family Collection, Israel
Professor Atina Grossmann, Professor of History, Cooper Union, New York, USA
Ruth Ellen Gruber, Author, “Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe”, Italy/Hungary/USA
Dr. Samuel Gruber, President, International Survey of Jewish Monuments, USA Dr. Karen Grumberg, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Rabbi Nardy Grun, Tkasim, Israel
Prof. Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, Professor of History, Founding Director USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, University of Southern California, USA
Yosef Grunfeld, Israel
Professor Francois Guesnet, University College London, UK
David Guez, France
Paula Guitelman, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dr. Stefan Gunther, USA
Hila Gutmann, Israel
Rivka Gutman, Architect, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem, Israel
Prof. Ruth HaCohen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Artur Rubinstein Professor of Musicology, Israel
DYNEL Hanan, Journaliste, ISRAEL
Sarah Harel Hoshen, Israel
Professor Galit Hasan-Rokem, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Dr. Peter Hayes, Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies, Northwestern University, USA
Georges Haymann, France
Professor emeritus Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, Professorial research fellow at Queen Mary College, London, UK
Barbara Heller, Researcher, Universidade Paulista (Brazil), Brasil Ms Claudia Heller, Unesp, Brazil, Brazil
Prof. Dr. Johannes Heil, Ignatz Bubis-Lehrstuhl, Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, Germany
Viola Heilman, Journalistin, Graz
PD Dr. Susanne Heim, Berlin, Germany
Dr Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, Independent curator, Austria
Professor Elizabeth Heineman, Professor of History, University of Iowa, USA
Mr Rami Heled, Israel
Dr. Lois Helmbold, San Jose State University, professor emerita, USA Tammy Hepps, Independent researcher, USA
Ariel Herman, Israel
Dr. Manja Herrmann, Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany
PhD Medical doctor Albert Herszkowicz, Chairperson Memorial98 association, France
Joel Herzog, Swiss Friends of Yad Vashem, Switzerland
Professor Susannah Heschel, Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College, USA
Professor Hannan Hever, Yale University, USA
Brad Sabin Hill, Washington DC, USA
Dr Odelia Hitron, Israel
Dr. Sabine Hödl, Institut für jüdische Geschichte Österreichs, Austria Mrs Osnat Hochman Gerhard, Legal Counsel, Israel
Esther Hoernlimann, Center for Jewish Studies, Switzerland Mr. Avi Hoffman, USA
Kitty Hoffman, Canada
Dra. Odile Hoffmann, Geographer, IRD, France
Professor Elie Holzer ,Bar Ilan University, Israel
Assumpció Hosta Rebés, Director, Patronat Call de Girona, Spain
Puttermilec Huguette, Teacher, France
Professor Curtis Hutt, Goldstein Center for Human Rights/Schwalb Center for Israel and Jewish Studies, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA
Agnieszka Ilwicka, USA
Dr Sarah Imhoff, Indiana University, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, USA Laurent Israël, Israël
Dugi Israeli, meshek 58, Israel
Dr Saul Issroff, London
Dr Dror Izhat, Israeli Cinematheque library, Israel
Emeritus professor Andrew Jakubowicz, UTS, Australia
Dr Vivienne Jackson, UK
Daniel Jacoby, Secular humanistic rabbi, Israel
Busseuil Jacques, Particulier, Israel
Sr Simeão Jaime, Brasil
Gdalia Janine, Societaire de la SGDL, France
Peter Jassem, Padt Chair, The Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, Canada Berman Jehan, Israel
Prof. Dr.Uffa Jensen, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Dr Eve Jochnowitz, Workers Circle, USA
Dr. Laura Jockusch, Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University, USA
Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt University, USA
Jüdischer Salon am Grindel, Hamburg
Ms Ann Jungman, IJV Treasurer, UK
אברהם קלדרון ,החלוץ למרחב ,ישראל
Irene Kacandes, The Dartmouth Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College, USA
Mordechai Raphael Kadovitz, USA
Michal Kalfon, Switzerland
Dr. Moshe Kam, Dean of Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Dr. Tair Kantor, Israel
Dr. Jonathan Kaplan, Associate Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Marion Kaplan, NYU, USA
Harold Kasimow, George Drake Professor of Religious Studis [emeritus], Grinnell College, Holocaust survivor, USA
Caryn Katz, Canada
Professor Ethan Katz, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Jason Katz, USA
Tamara Katzenstein, Film-Maker at Philbus Production, Brazil
Uri R. Kaufmann, director, Alte Synagoge Essen. Germany
Dr. Martha Keil, Institute for Jewish History in Austria, Director, Austria
Alain Keler, Photojournalist, France
Rabbi Naamah Kelman, Israel
Arturo Kerbel, Yiddish House London, UK
Nili Keren, Research fellow, Bar Ilan University, Israel
Prof Zohar Kerem, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Lea Kibanoff-Ron, Writer and editor, ISRAEL
Dr Audrey Kichelewski, Strasbourg University, coeditor of Revue d’histoire de la Shoah, France
Andrea Kirchner, Fritz Bauer Institute Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Professor Emerita, New York University, Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator, Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, USA
Prof Michelle Kisliuk, University of Virginia, USA
Rabbinerin Elisa Klapheck, Frankfurt am Main
Joyce Klein, Israel
Ultrajante Alberto Kleinas, UNIVERSIDADE PRESBITERIANA MACKENZIE, Brazil
Professor Irena Klepfisz, USA
Mary Kluk, South Africa
Dr Brian Klug, St Benett’s Hall, University of Oxford, UK
Prof. Dr. Volkhard Knigge, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Director emeritus Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Germany
Dr Anna Koch, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Leeds, UK
Prof. Dr. Gertrud Koch, Germany
Dr. Patrick B. Koch, Emmy Noether Research Group Leader, University of Hamburg, Germany
Leah Koenig, USA
Dr Szonja Komoróczy, Hungary
Yulian Kondur, Project coordinator at the Roma Women’s Fund “Chiricli”, Ukraine
Dr. Karen Körber, Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Hamburg, Germany
Dr. Eugene Korn, Israel
Professor András Kovács, Central European University, Austria/Hungary
Dr Alexandra Kowalski, Central European University, Austria
Ms Shirly Krakover, Social worker for Holocaust Survivors, Israel
Prof. Robert Kramer, St. Norbert College, USA
Ms. Yaffa Krindel, Israel
Tally Kritzman-Amir, Visiting Assistant Professor, Boston University School of Law, USA
Professor Bjorn Krondorfer, Director, Martin-Springer Institute, Northern Arizona University, USA
Cilly Kugelmann, Chief Curator of the new permanent exhibition, Jewish Museum Berlin, Germany
Dr. Sophie Kulaga, McGill University, Canada
Dr. Daniel Kupfert Heller, Kronhill Senior Lecturer in East European Jewish History, Monash University, Australia
Anna Kupinska, University of Alberta, PhD student, Canada
Daniel Kurtzer, Ambassador (Ret.), USA
Emeritus Professor Dr Konrad Kwiet, Macquarie University Sydney, Australia
Dr. Jacob Ari Labendz, Youngstown State University, USA
Dan Laloum, France
Dr Karine Lamarche, CNRS, France
Professor Michael Lambek, University of Toronto
Dr. Dana Landau, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Basel, Switzerland
Shawn Landres PhD, Senior Fellow, UCLA School of Public Affairs, USA
Frederick Langendorf, USA
Trudi Langendorf, Chicago, USA
Professor Ruth Langer, Theology Department, Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, Boston College, USA
Benjamin Lapp, Associate Professor of History, Montclair State University, USA
Yablonka Laurence, Israël
Dr. Hilla Lavie, The Hebrew University, Israel
Professor Nitzan Lebovic, Professor of History and Holocaust Studies, Lehigh University, USA Mr Bernard Lebrun, France
Hugues Lefevre, Stolpersteine en France, association member, Germany Pinchas Leiser, Israel
Dr Gerald Lejzerowicz, France
Professor Alan Lelchuk, Dartmouth College, USA
Dr Carole Lemee, Université Bordeaux teacher and researcher, France Rene Lenard, Brazil
Ronit Lentin, Associate Professor, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Dr. Manuel Lerdau, University of Virginia, Professor, USA
Professor Cathy Lesser Mansfield, The Sparks Fly Upward Foundation, Exec. Dir., USA Rebecca Lesses, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Ithaca College, USA
Mark Leuchter, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism, Temple University, USA PD Dr. Stefanie Leuenberger, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Mr Itamar Lev, Holocaust survivor testimonials translator at Yad Vashem, department of German language and history, bachelor of American history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Ora Lev, Israel
Shiri Levi, Israel
Professor Noam Levin, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Ms Ora Levy, Israel
Mrs Roseline Lewin, Belgium
Dr. Tamar Lewinsky, Jewish Museum Berlin, Curator, Germany
Eva Lewitus, Perú
Dr Ricardo Lewitus, USA
Victor Lewitus, CEO Israion Technologies Ltd, Israel
אילן לב, ישראל
ישי לב ,ישראל
Laura Levitt, Temple University, USA
Professor Gayle Levy, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Associate Professor, USA
Prof. Dr. René Levy, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Daniela Lieberman, Vienna
Richard Lippeman, USA
Professor Deborah Lipstadt, Emory University, USA
Sylvia Liska, President, Friends of the Secession, Vienna, Austria
Professor Vivian Liska, Professor of German Literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies University of Antwerp/Hebrew University, Belgium
Professor Emeritus Marcia Sachs Littell, Stockton U. Founding Director, MA Program in Holocaust & Genocide Studies, USA
Mr. Scott Littky, Institute for Holocaust Education, USA
Dr. Anat Livne, Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Director (retired), Israel
James Loefler, Berkowitz Professor of Jewish History and Kolodiz Director of Jewish Studies, University of Virginia, USA
Dr Hanno Loewy, Director, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Austria
John Lombardo, USA
Ronit Lombrozo, Israel
Professor Yosefa Loshitzky, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London, UK Mr Shay Lotan, 2nd Generation, Israel
Prof. Dr. Andrea Löw, Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History, Munich, Deputy Director, Germany
Dr. Oded Lowenheim, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Dr. Naomi Lubrich, Director, Jewish Museum of Switzerland, Switzerland Mark Ludwig, Executive Director, Terezín Music Foundation, USA
Professor Ian Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Chair, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Professor Shaul Magid, Dartmouth College, USA
Professor Shulamit Magnus, Professor Emerita Jewish Studies and History, Oberlin College, Israel
Dr. Daniel Mahla, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, Germany
PD Dr. Stefanie Mahrer, Universities of Basel and Bern, PI, Switzerland
Helene Maimann, Historikerin und Filmemacherin, Wien
Professor Udi Makov, University of Haifa, Israel
Sandrs Malek, JGSLA, President, USA
Dr. Nir Mann, A Spiegel Felloe in The Finkler institute of Holocust Research, Bar Ilan University, Israel
Dr Davide Mano, Université de Strasbourg, France
Malka Marcovich, Historienne, ecrivaine, consutante internationale, France
Joëlle Marelli, Former head of program at the Collège international de philosophie, Paris, France Prof. Rabbi Dalia Marx, HUC-JIR, Israel
Lizzie Marx, Trustee, Wiener Holocaust Library, Netherlands
Florian Marxer, President of the Association of Liechtenstein Friends of Yad Vashem
Zeev Matalon, Coach, Israel
Eugene Matanky, Tel Aviv University, PhD Candidate, Israel
Dr. Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Jacqueline Mautner, Israel/Australia
Dr Eyal Mayroz, The University of Sydney, Australia
בתיה מקובר ,ירושלים ,ישראל
Mr Claude Meillet, Israel
Meira Meisler, Tel Aviv, Israel
Mr. Gilad Melzer, Beit Berl college, Israel
Dr. Meron Mendel, Anne Frank educational centre, Germany
Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago and Hebrew University, USA
Christina Meri, Curator of the Jewish Museum of Greece, Athens, Greece
Mr. Omri Meron, Israel
Mr. Omer Messing, Partner-director ar Balasha-Jalon, Israel
Kobi Metzer, Professor Emeritus of Economics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Mr Shmuel Meyer, Novelist, Israel
Prof. Dr. Thomas Meyer, LMU Munich, Germany
Dr Joanna Michlic, University College London, UK
Gerhard Milchram, Wien Museum, curator, provenance-research, Austria
Dr. Avraham Milgram, former historian at Yad Vashem, Israel
Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, Israel
Michael L. Miller, Associate Professor, Nationalism Studies Program, Central European University, Austria and Hungary
Professor Yair Mintzker, History Department, Princeton University, USA
Dr. Gali Mir-Tibon, Bar Ilan university, Israel
Fersztman Mondek, Belgium
Daniel Monterescu, Associate Professor, Central European University, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Hungary and Austria
Laura Morowitz, Wagner College Holocaust Center, USA
Prof. Amos Morris – Reich, Director, Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Naomi Moss, Israel
Jose Murciano, Israel
Professor Frederek Musall, Heidelberg Center for Jewish Studies, Germany
Professor David Myers, UCLA, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History, USA
Prof. Dr. Andreas Nachama, President, Allgemeine Rabbinerkonferenz Deutschland, Germany Dr. Lilach Naishtat Bornstein, Kibbutzim College of Education, Israel
Dr. Ron Naiweld, CNRS, France
Tali Nates, Director, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, South Africa
Roberta Newman, Writer and Researcher, USA
Prof. Francis Nicosia, University of Vermont, USA
Mrs Hagit Noam, Guide at Yad Vashem, Israel
Linda Novak, USA
Professor Stanisław Obirek, University of Warsaw, Poland
Margaret Olin, Senior Research Scholar, Judaic Studies, Yale University, USA
Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, USA
Professor Adi Ophir, Tel Aviv University, Emeritus, Brown University Visiting Professor, USA
Michelle Ores, USA
Dr Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Shanna Orlik, Israël
Professor Andrea Orzoff, History Department, New Mexico State University, USA
Dr. Sarah Ozacky-Lazar, The Ven Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel
Dr. Heloisa Pait, UNESP, Professor of Sociology, Brazil
Mrs. Marla Palmer, Teacher; Board Member of South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, USA
Robert Parzer, Dokumentations- und Inormationszentrum Torgau, researcher, Germany
Chatelus Pascale, Israel
Mir Pascale, Citoyenne, France
Professor Avinoam Patt, Director, Center for Judaic Studies, and Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies, University of Connecticut, USA
Professor Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies, Appalachian State University, Leon Levine Distinguished Professor and Director, USA
Ms Peta Pellach, Director of Education, Elijah Interfaith Institute, Israel
Professor Derek Penslar, Harvard University, Professor of Jewish history, USA
Michal Perlman, Israel
Denis Peschanski, Senior Researcher at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), President of SAB Rivesaltes Memorial Camp, France
Prof. Dr. Erik Petry, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland
Teresa Petrzelka, North Shore Temple Emanuel, Australia
Mr David Picard, Collective Trauma Healing affiliate, Israel
Prof. Jacques Picard, Emeritus, University of Basel, Switzerland
Dr Kathrin Pieren, Director, Jewish Museum of Westphalia, Germany Prof. Amit Pinchevski, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
מינה פנצר,משרד החינוך ,ישראל
Professor Griselda Pollock, UK
Prof. Dr. Dina Pomeranz, Assistant Professor, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Professor Catherine R. Power, Assistant Professor, Glendon Campus, York University, Canada Dr Yael Poznanski, Achva Academic college and Ben-Gurion U Eilat Campus, Israel
Renée Poznanski, Professor emerita, Ben Gurion University, Israël
Dr. Lea Prais, Israel
Ronit Prince, USA
Eetta Prince-Gibson, Israel
Dr Jay Prosser, University of Leeds, Reader in Humanities, UK
Bernhard Purin, Director, Jewish Museum Munich, Germany
Dr. Marcus Pyka, Associate Professor of History, Franklin University Switzerland (Lugano), Switzerland
Alon Raab, Israel
Anson Rabinbach, Phillip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Princeton University, USA
Dr. Doron Rabinovici, Austria
Prof. Iris Rachamimov, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Mr Andrew Rajcher, Founding Board Member, Australian Society of Polish Jews & Their Descendants, Australia
Ben Ratskoff, Doctoral candidate, UCLA, USA Yehuda Rajuan, Israel
Ami Raz, Computer Technician, Israel
Dr. Michal Raz, Teacher at EHESS Paris, France Nomi Raz, Psychotherapist, Israel
Prof. Emeritus Shimon Redlich, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
Professor Emeritus Stuart Rees, University of Sydney, founder, inaugural Director Sydney Peace Foundation, Australia
Drorit Regev, Israel
Dr. Anika Reichwald, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Austria
Dr. Steven Reisner, USA
Oren Richard, Denmark
Mr. Lorne Richstone, University of Oklahoma, Associate Professor of Music, USA
Jeremiah Riemer, Free-lance (formerly Asst. Prof. European Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins Univ.), USA
Dr. Rotraud Ries, Director, Johanna Stahl Center for Jewish history and culture in Lower Franconia, Germany
Dr. Michael Riff, Director, The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA
Dr. Elisheva Rigbi, Music historian, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Avraham Roet, holocaust survivor, Israel
Professor Freddie Rokem, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Na’ama Rokem, Director, Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies, University of Chicago, USA
Dr. Stefan Rokem, Hebrew University, emeritus, Israel Dr. Adina Rom, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Katia Rom, Switzerland
Dr. Samuel Rom, Icz zürich, Switzerland
Jennifer Romaine, Visiting Profesor, Pratt Intitute, NYC, USA
Dr. Carmit Romano-Hvid, Denmark
Dr. Esther Romeyn, Center for European Studies, University of Florida, USA
Shoshana Ronen, Professor, head of Hebrew Studies, Department, The University of Warsaw, Poland
Professor Jacqueline Rose, Professor of Humanities, Co-Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, UK
Professor Robert Rosen, School of Law, University of Miami, USA
Prof. Tova Rosen, Literature, Tel Aviv University (Emeritus), Israel
Dr Anna Rosenbaum, Australia
Dr Ellen Rosenberg, Retired Faculty Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, USA
Joanne Rosenthal, Independent curator, former Chief Curator, Jewish Museum London, UK Martha Rosler, Rutgers University, New Jersey, Professor II Emerita, USA
Gaylen Ross, Film Director. Killing Kasztner, USA and Israel
Moshe Rosman, Bar-Ilan University, Professor Emeritus of Jewish History, Israel
Dr. Brigitta Rotach, Head of the cultural programs, House of Religions, Bern
Rebecca Rotenberg Nadler, Canada
Dr Alice Rothchild, Harvard Medical School, retired Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, USA
Lilach Rotman, Educational counselor, Educational Ministry, Israel
Michal Rovner, artist, Israel
Dr. Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, USA
Estelle Rozinski, Australia
Prof. Emerita Minna Rozen, University of Haifa, Israel
Krzysztof A. Rozen, Association of the Jewish Historical Institute, Poland Deborah Rozenblum, Switzerland
Dr. Joel Rubin, Associate Professor, University of Virginia, USA/Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Ursula Rudnick, apl. Prof at the Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany
Prof. Dr. Miriam Ruerup, Director Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European Jewish Studies, University of Potsdam, Germany
Professor Dirk Rupnow, Institute for Contemporary History & Dean, Faculty of Philosophy and History, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney, Australia
Avi Rybnicki, Psychoanalyst, Israel
Samuel Saada, photographer, France
Professor Angeli Sachs, Head of MA Art Education, Curatorial Studies, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
Ms. Kael Sagheer, Institute for Holocaust Education, Education Coordinator, USA Maayan Sagiv, Israel
Dr. Rochelle Saidel, Remember the Women Institute, USA
Christa Salamandra, CUNY, USA
Prof. Hagar Salamon, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Dr. habil. Dorothea Salzer, Universität Potsdam, Germany
Rabbi Jan Salzman, Rabbi, congregation Ruach haMaqom, USA
Dr. Victoria Sanford, Professor of Anthropology, Lehman College, City University of New York, USA
Galia Sasson, Israel
Silke Schaeper, Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, Univerdität Hamburg, Germany
Teya Schaffer, USA
Professor Paul Scham, Director, Institute for Israel studies, UMD, USA
Dr. Silvina Schammah Gesser, Bar Ilan University , Truman Institute, HUJI, Israel
Prof. Emer. Eliyahu Schleifer, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, Israel
Professor Joachim Schlör, The Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton, UK
Dr Christine Schmidt, UK
Prof. Dr. Benigna Schönhagen, Institut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde, Universität Tübingen, Germany
Prof. Dr. Julius Schoeps, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Moses-Mendelssohn-Stiftung, Berlin
Yara Schreiber Dines, Unesp Araraquara, Brasil
Prof. Dr. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Director Center for Research on Antisemitism, Germany
Prof. Dr. Christoph Schulte, Universität Potsdam, Germany
Mr L Tadd Schwab, WUPJ, USA
Professor Daniel B. Schwartz, George Washington University, USA
Dr. Johannes Schwartz, State Capital Hannover, Culture Department, Nazi Era Provenance Research, Germany
Professor Seth Schwartz, Departments of History and Classics, Columbia University, USA
Dr. Susanna Schrafstetter, professor of history, University of Vermont, USA
Michal Sela, Journalist and translator, Haifa, Israel
Professor Marcio Seligmann, State University of Campinas, Brazil
Mrs. Odile Senouf, ISRAËL
Dr. Shoval Shafat, Bar Ilan University, Faculty of Law, Israel
Yaara Shafrir, MA student, Israel
Prof. Dr. Galili Shahar, Chair, The Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem , Israel
Professor Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University, Distinguished Professor, USA
Professor Joshua Shanes, College of Charleston, Jewish Studies, USA
Carrie Shapiro, USA
Professor Susan Shapiro, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Dr. Noa Shashar, Sapir Academic College, Israel
Rosa Shein, Mexico
Prof. Orly Shenker, Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Professor and Senior Vice Provost Jeffrey Shoulson, University of Connecticut, USA
Professor Haia Shpayer-Makov, University of Haifa, Israel
Sam Shuman, University of Michigan, PhD Candidate, USA
Ms Eve Sicular, Music from Yiddish Cinema, USA
Rivka Siden, USA
Jodi Siegel, USA
Lea Sigiel-Wolinetz, Executive Director of World Society of Czestochowa Jews and their Descendants, USA
Dr. Anja Siegemund, New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation, Germany Professor Carol Silverman, University of Oregon, USA
Daniel Silverstone, UK
David J. Simon, Director, Yale Genocide Studies Program, USA
Paulo Simon, Brazil
Mr Doronn Victor Sitruk, Spain
Prof. Jonathan, Skolnik, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Professor Dan Slobin, University of California, Berkeley – Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics, USA
Jean-Yves Slon, Israël
Mrs Sabine Smadja, Daughter of holocaust survivors, Israel
Dariusz Sobczyk, Friends of Polin Museum, Poland
Sahar Soffer, Israel
Dr. Orly Soker, Sapir College, Israel
Dr. Phyllis Soybel, Chair, History and Political Science, College of Lake County, USA
Mr. Matthias Spadinger, Chairman Verein GEDENKDIENST, Austria
רות שפרלינג ,ישראל
Professor Neta Stahl, Chair of the Stulman Program in Jewish Studies, Johns Hopkins University, USA
P.I Stain, Professor of Exact sciences, Canada
Lori Starr, Former Director, Contemporary Jewish Museum, USA
Dr. Barbara Staudinger, Director, Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia, Germany
Ambassador ( Ret.) Shimon Stein, INSS Senior fellow, Israel
Prof. Dr. Sybille Steinbacher, Fritz Bauer Institute and Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Barbara Steinberg, USA
Professor Michael Steinberg, Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History, German Studies, and Music, Brown University, USA
Linda Steindl, Austria
Rabbi Dr. Oren Steinitz, Rabbi, Congregation Kol Ami; Adjunct Professor, ALEPH Ordination Programs, USA
Prof. Alan Steinweis, University of Vermont, Raul Hilberg Distinguished Prof of Holocaust Studies, USA
Adina Stern, Germany
Zygmunt Stępiński, Director, POLIN Museum, Poland
Prof. Frank Stern, Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna, Curator Annual Film Series at the Mauthausen Memorial, Austria
Noga Stiassny, Postdoctoral fellow, Israel
Dr. Oren Stier, Professor of Religious Studies and Director, Holocaust & Genocide Studies Program, Florida International University, USA
Prof. Dariusz Stola, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Professor Jeremy Stolow, Concordia University, Canada
Professor Dan Stone, Royal Holloway, University of London. Professor of Modern History, UK
Moises Storch, Brazilian Friends of PEACE NOW – coordinator, Brasil
Professor Daniel Strum, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Hannes Sulzenbacher, Independent curator, Austria
Professor Adam Sutcliffe, Professor of European History, King’s College London, UK
Dr Chisin Sylvie, Israel
Ms. Annie Szamosi, Humber College Professor, Holocaust Scholar, Canada
Rachel Szymkowicz, France
Mats Tangestuen, Historian, Oslo Jewish Museum, Norway
Frida Tarrab, Israel
Pearl Taylor, Valley Beth Shalom, USA
Maximilian Teicher Dipl.Psych., Zurich, Switzerland
Samy Teicher Dipl.Psych., Psychoanalyst, Vienna Psychoanalytic society (WPV), Austria
Paula Teitelbaum, Yiddish teacher at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, USA
Dr Fabien Theofilakis, University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France
Prof. emer. Michael Toch, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Idit Toledano, Former guide at Massuah for Holocaust studies, Israel
Marta Topel, Universidade de São Paulo (USP) Brasil, Brazil
Dr Zsuzsanna Toronyi, Hungary
Michal Trebac, Polin Museum, Poland
Danny Trom, Senior researcher, CNRS (French national research institute), France
Myri Turkenich, Musician, Germany
Ms. Yedida Turkenich, Psychoanalyst, Israel Psychoanalytic Society, Israel
Lesley Turner, Student, University of Toronto, Canada
Dr. Christiane Twiehaus, Head of Department for Jewish History and Culture, MiQua. LVR-Jewish Museum in the Archaeological Quarter Cologne, Germany
Dr. Peter Ullrich, Center for Research on Antisemitism, TU Berlin (fellow), Germany
Dr. Scott Ury, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Professor Robert Jan van Pelt, University of Waterloo, Canada
Edward van Voolen, Curator emeritus Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, Germany
David Vanunu, Israel
Prof. Dr. Herom Vargas, Methodist University of São Paulo (Brazil), Brazil
Professor Jeffrey Veidlinger, Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies, Director of Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, USA
Professor Giuseppe Veltri, Germany
Alana Vincent, University of Chester, UK
Emily Vogl, USA
Prof. Steven Volk, Oberlin College, Professor of History Emeritus, USA
Prof. Emer. Shulamit Volkov, Tel Aviv University, the Osrael Academy of Science and the Humanities, Israel
Dr Marc Volovici, Postdoctoral researcher, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Prof. Christina von Braun, Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin, Germany
Dr. Johannes Wachten, retired Chief curator and deputy director, Jewish museum Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Morgan Wadsworth-Boyle, Former Exhibitions Curator, Jewish Museum London, UK Dr Samuel Wajsberg, Jewish Hospital Berlin (retired), Germany
Dr. Ofer Waldman, Journalist, Israel/Germany
Anika Walke, Associate Professor of History, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Dr Murray Watson, Canada
Haim Watzman, Israel
Rabbi Lee Wax, Community Rabbi & Educator, UK
Tobaron Waxman, Artist, USA
Rony Webb, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Weckel, Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, Germany
Mrs Ruth Weinberg, Israel
Dr. David Weinfeld, Harry Lyons Chair in Judaic Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA Professor Dov Weiss, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Prof. haim weiss, Ben Gurion University, Israel
Prof. Dr. Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Dr. Deborah Weissman, Consultant to the international council of Christians and Jews, Israel
Prof. Dr. Dorothea Weltecke, Chair for Medieval History, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Germany
Katharina Hadassah Wendl, board member of Verein GEDENKDIENST, former GEDENKDIENST fellow at the Yad Vashem Archives (2016-17), Austria
Florian Wenninger, Institut für Historische Sozialforschung and former Gedenkdienst-Volunteer in Yad Vashem, Austria
Ms Karen Wesler, 2nd Generation Kindertransport, USA Dr. Evita Wiecki, LMU Munich, Germany
Romina Wiegemann, Germany
Professor Dr. Falk Wiesemann, Germany
Dr. Daniel Wildmann, Director Leo Baeck Institute London
רוחמה וייס ,היברו יוניון קולג ‘- ירושלים ,ישראל
Hannah Wilson, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Prof. Hana Wirth-Nesher, Tel Aviv University (Emerita), Israel
Prof. Hadas Wiseman, University of Haifa, Israel
Professor Rebecca Wittmann, Department of History, University of Toronto, Canada
Ruth Wodak Distinguished Professor, Chair of Discourse Studies, Lancaster University, UK/ University Vienna (Emerita), Austria
Fabian Wolff, writer and journalist, Berlin/Germany
Professor Paul Wolpe, Director, Center for Ethics, Emory University, USA
Dr. Kim Wünschmann, LMU Munich, Germany
Ms. Ayelet Yagil, Israel
Rabbi Dr. Iris Yaniv, Israel
Ophir Yarden, ADAShA, Jerusalem Center for Interreligious Encounter, Israel
James Young, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, Founding Director, Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Dr. Amnon Yuval, Historian, Israel
Professor Israel Yuval, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Florian Zabransky, University of Sussex, UK
Rabbi Dr. Efraim Zadoff, Spiegel Fellow, The Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Dr. Mirjam Zadoff, Director, Documentation Centre for the History of Nationalsocialism, Germany
Dr. Noam Zadoff, Assistant Professor, University of Innsbruck, Austria
David Zakalik, Graduate Student, Cornell University, USA
Professor Motti Zalkin, Dept. of Jewish History, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
Professor Michael Zank, Director, Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, USA
Ms. Alexandra Zapruder, author and educator; founding staff member of USHMM, current Education Director of The Defiant Requiem Foundation, USA
Dr Danielle Zaslavsky, El Colegio de México, México
Professor/Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Zasloff, UCLA School of Law, USA
Dr. Ingo Zechner, Director, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History, Austria
Dr. Melissa Zeiger, Associate Professor, English Department, Dartmouth College, USA Professor Froma Zeitlin, Princeton University, US
Dr Alan Zemel, University at Albany SUNY, USA
Professor Yael Zerubavel, Founding Director, Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, Emerita, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies & History Rutgers University
Prof. Dr. Moshe Zimmermann, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Tragedy or Farce

European diary, 9.11.2020: Lies have a short memory. But does memory make us smarter? There are days when you get dizzy: from the gap between all the good intentions to “learn” from history, and a reality in which the wounds inflicted by one event, memory and trauma are transformed into the next nonsense and sometimes worse. In Austria, November 9 is for most people a day like any other. In Germany it sometimes rather comes with an overkill of memories. The calendar page on November 9th is now an almost unreadable palimpsest.
On the same day that the French Revolution ended with Napoleon’s coup d’état in 1799 (and Robert Blum was shot dead in Vienna in 1848 after the suppression of the revolution), Philipp Scheidemann and Karl Liebknecht proclaimed two German republics on the same day in 1918. Five years later, Adolf Hitler and his followers wanted to undo this “black day” of the German nation and tried to march from republic to dictatorship in Munich. Two years later, in 1925 on November 9, they founded the SS. And since they had gathered on November 9, 1938, as they did every year, to commemorate the “national revolution” that had failed in 1923, this night finally offered itself as an opportunity to open the hunt for the Jews and their places of worship.

On November 9, 1989, the GDR leadership, in turn, proved to be quite awkwardly forgetful when Politburo member Schabowski stuttered in a legendary manner in response to a journalist’s question about the proclaimed facilitation of freedom of travel: “As far as I know … that’s immediate, immediate” and unleashed a storm on the Wall.

Five years ago, in November 2015, a certain Heinz Christian Strache wanted to turn back the clocks and seriously recalled the Iron Curtain as a possible “solution” to Europe’s “refugee problems” (he obviously dreamed of a firing order and death strip). Like many an Austrian politician before and after him, he deliberately relied on forgetting, the lie with the shortest legs. Karl Marx already knew, when he wrote about November 9 (the “18th Brumaire”): “Hegel noticed somewhere that all great world-historical facts and persons happen twice, so to speak. He forgot to add: the one time as tragedy, the other time as farce.” But when it comes to November 9, nobody knows today whether a tragedy becomes a farce or a farce becomes a tragedy.

“Abendland”

European Diary, 13.10.2020: Tomorrow evening Micha Brumlik (Berlin) will speak in our program about the new discourse on “Christian-Jewish Occident”. To get into the right mood André Heller will sing his unrhymed chanson about “Occident”.
André Heller’s Jewish father fled from the National Socialists and lived after 1945 mainly in Paris. Thus Heller also grew up with French citizenship before he became a chansonnier in Vienna.
In 1967 he was one of the founders of the pop channel Ö3 and presented the program Musicbox. His political commitment was always a balancing act. As a “Jew living in Vienna,” he criticized Kreisky for his compromising attitude toward old Nazis and anti-Semites, and Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, even though some critics accused him of “promoting” anti-Semitism. André Heller has not challenged such poisonous absurdities. He has remained as politically awake and critical as ever. When he spoke in the Austrian Parliament on 12 March 2018 on the occasion of 80 years of “Anschluss” in the Austrian Parliament, he ended his speech with a look at the new populism of the icy cold that had entered Austrian politics – and has not been overcome to this day.

“Allow me to tell you another strange thing about my life. For decades I thought I was something better than others. Wiser, more talented, more amusing, entitled to pride. I was arrogant, narcissistic, constantly judging others, and it didn’t do me any good until one day I was looking around me in a London Underground car. There were sitting and standing very different people with different skin colors and I heard different languages: In a kind of lightning bolt into my consciousness, I realized that each and every one of these women and men, old and young, hopeful and desperate, is also myself and that German, English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic or Swahili is not our real mother tongue, but the world mother tongue is and should be the compassion. It enables us to recognize ourselves in each other and to be intimately and lovingly connected with them and to take this realization into account in all our thoughts and actions.

Late time, twilight
hour that carries hope, sadness and ashes
Take a breath, be lonely
Autumn of thoughts and last refuge for me
Occident, Occident ‘I respect and despise you
Occident!

Occident
Not my tiredness
But the longing for dreams makes me look for sleep
The disturbing possibility of the transformations of my figure
Into other characters and locations
In the Von der Vogelweide
Cervantes, Appollinaire and James Joyce
Children’s crusades, funeral pyres, guillotines, colonies
The infamy, in fornicators on the Holy See
Expeditions to the edge of consciousness
Bankruptcy of good intentions
Congresses of the cynical laughing masters
Marc Aurel’s “Astronomy of contemplation”.
The storm baptisms Vasco da Gamas
Leonardo’s mirror writing
Gaudi’s anarchy of buildings
In Pablo Ruiz Picasso
Who grabbed the wishes by the tail
The Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto
The Great Progroms of Armenia and Spain
Percival, Hamlet, Woyzeck, Raskolnikov
The flowers of evil
De Sade, Hanswurst and the man without qualities (“Mann ohne Eigenschaften”)

 

 

Angel of History

European Diary, 26.9.2020: 80 years ago today Walter Benjamin took his own life in Port Bou on the border between France and Spain. He was fleeing from the Nazis, had already crossed the border – and feared being sent back to occupied France by the Spanish border guards.

A few months earlier, in May 1940, he had written to his friend Stephan Lackner in Paris:

„One wonders whether history is not in the process of forging a witty synthesis of two Nietzschean terms, namely that of the good European and that of the last man. This could result in the last European. We all struggle not to become one.“

Benjamin’s last significant text, his theses on the concept of history, saved Hannah Arendt for posterity. Since August, a sculpture by Günther Blenke has been commemorating his “Angel of History” in Hohenems, in front of the former Gasthaus Engelburg at the intersection of the former Judengasse and Christengasse. Inspired by the piece of a burnt tree into which lightning has struck.

Installation of the sculpture in Hohenems byGünther Blenke, August 8, 2020. Photo: Julie Walser

In his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940:

“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. ”

Thanks to Günther Blenke – and Franz Sauer, who recovered the fragment of the burnt tree in the forest..

Günther Blenke, Franz Sauer and the “Angel of History”. Photo: Julie Walser

Epilogue: What if?

Photo: Eva Jünger

What if we were asked what Europe actually means to us?
How do we want to define Europe?

Is Europe our home, a “Heimat”? Is it more or less home than Central Europe, Austria, Germany, Bavaria, Munich, Hohenems?

Is Europe a continent or, indeed, just a subcontinent? Does it constitute a geographic entity? Is it the sum total of individual nation states or a historical-cultural entity?

Is there such a thing as the European canon of values? And are all of Europe’s borders in Europe? What if we were asked with which countries further EU-accession negotiations should be conducted? With all 47 European countries or just with a few selected ones? And according to which criteria should they be invited?

What if we could resume travel within Europe without any restrictions? Where would we definitely refuse to travel? Where would we rather not be? How important is freedom of movement in Europe to us?

Which borders do we need—and which do we not want?What if we had a European parliament with true authority? What if there was a European sovereign? How democratic would Europe then be?

What if we perceived Europe in a completely different way? If we perceived it as a historical responsibility? Then, cities like New York, Tel Aviv, Beirut, and many others might be European cities.

If we perceived it as a social responsibility? Then all societies working for Europe then and now would simultaneously be European societies as well. What needs to happen so that Europe can act in unison? What if we perceived Europe as a global responsibility?

 

What will our visitor’s comments be in Munich? 

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Here is what our visitors left on the maps in Hohenems by February 17, 2021 (update will follow):

Many answers to many European questions – and some new questions

“Never Forget!”

Installation “never Forget”. Photo: Dietmar Walser

The imperative “Never Forget!” is a warning that endeavors to keep the memory of the National Socialist regime’s crimes and the Shoah alive. Indeed, as early as in 1946, Communist Vienna city councilor for cultural affairs Viktor Matejka mounted a large exhibition with that title at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. It was organized by the “Austrian federal association of former politically persecuted anti-fascists,” the umbrella organization of Austrian victims of National Socialism that existed until 1948, which had been joined by the “Austrian federal association of individuals persecuted for reasons of origin.” Yet, it was only at the last moment that Heinrich Sussmann (1904–1986), a Jewish Auschwitz survivor, was commissioned with designing a poster and exhibition room VI, “Persecution of the Jews.” It was not, however, Sussmann’s poster, which addressed the suffering in the concentration camps, but rather Victor Slama’s resistance fighter forcefully destroying the swastika that became the main advertisement vehicle. Even beyond that, exhibition preparations proved to be conflict-ridden. The Austrian People’s Party was unwilling to see the events immediately preceding the National Socialist period addressed, that is, the authoritarian corporate state, which had started with Austrians shooting at Austrians; and both large parties wished to have the Austrian victim theory underscored. No party was interested in dealing with the active participation of Austrians in the pogrom and murder of the Jews.

^ Sussmann family tomb at the Vienna Central Cemetery, Vienna 2020, © Oskar Prasser

< Heinrich Sussmann, poster for the exhibition “Never Forget,” Vienna 1946, © Austrian National Library-Picture Archive

> Anti-Semitic “game” anonymously sent by mail to Simon Wiesenthal, n. d., © Archive of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

v Simon Wiesenthal, Vienna 1988, © Archive of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

Throughout his entire life, Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005) implored to never forget that the Shoah had been a consequence of the dismantling of democracy and human rights. Through the “Documentation Center of the Association of Jews Persecuted by the Nazi Regime,” which he had founded, he collected and documented Nazi crimes and searched for escaped perpetrators around the world. Politically, Wiesenthal was close to the ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party). His protest against former Nazis being ministers in the FPÖ-supported (Freedom Party of Austria) minority government of the SPÖ (then: Socialist Party of Austria) under Bruno Kreisky—who in turn had found himself berated as “Saujud” (sow of a Jew) by an ÖVP member of parliament in 1966—prompted the Federal Chancelor to maliciously insinuate that Wiesenthal had been a Nazi collaborator. Now, two Austrians of Jewish descent were attacking each other in public, and the republic watched. Despite all the educational efforts and all the affirmations of their anti-fascist convictions automatically uttered by politicians, Wiesenthal was repeatedly exposed to rude anti-Semitism. When in 1990 an FPÖ mayoral candidate let it be known in an interview: “I’ve said to Simon Wiesenthal: We are already building ovens again, but nor for you, Mr. Wiesenthal —you have plenty of space in Jörgl’s pipe,” it only was the tip of the iceberg.