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Pub patron in England tells Jewish student: ‘We should have f***ing gassed the lot of you’
Pedestrians walks past the Hedley Verity pub in Leeds, the United Kingdom. (Google Maps)
(JTA) — An argument at a British pub over social distancing sparked an altercation in which one patron told a Jewish student that “we should have f ***ing gassed the lot of you.”
Danielle Greyman, a 21-year-old sociology student, filmed the incident Thursday at the Hedley Verity pub in Leeds, in northern England. The patron self-identified to her that he was German.
Greyman, who was at the pub to meet friends for a drink, said “there were two strangers at our table not socially distancing and refusing to move,” she told MailOnline. After the argument, Greyman said the man asked if she was Jewish, at which point she started filming the exchange.
Greyman asked the man whether she looked Jewish, to which he replied in the affirmative.
Another man at the bar threatened to hit Greyman, she said.
The man who spoke about gassing Jews left with the other “stranger,” a woman, at the staff’s request. Yorkshire Police said they were looking into the incident but had not received a formal complaint about it.
Separately, a patient at a London-area hospital complained to management that a caretaker there had assaulted an elderly patient after learning the man was Jewish.
Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow is investigating and notified police, a spokesperson for the hospital told The Jewish Chronicle, according to an article published Monday by the newspaper.
Hungary’s largest Jewish group expels rabbi who said Zionism is causing another Holocaust
Rabbi Peter Finali speaks at a Budapest synagogue in 2016. (Peter Finali/YouTube)
(JTA) — Hungary’s largest Jewish group expelled a rabbi who has accused Israel of appropriating the money of Holocaust victims and putting Diaspora Jews in danger.
The rabbinical council of the Mazsihisz umbrella announced in a letter to Israeli Ambassador Yacov Hadas-Handelsman that it was “terminating its relationship” with Rabbi Gabor Finali. The letter said it was “an indefinite suspension” of Finali, 43, who since 2017 has served as the resident rabbi of a Mazsihisz-affiliated congregation, the Ohel Avraham Synagogue in Budapest.
It’s an unusual development for Eastern and Central Europe, where leaders of Jewish communities are rarely expelled and seldom express acrimonious public criticism of Israel.
The most controversial remarks by Finali, who supports multiple left-wing causes, came in July on his Facebook page.
“Israel took all the benefits and most of the compensation from Germany for the death and suffering of our relatives,” he wrote. “The chaos that Israel has been causing since 1948 is the reason for most, if not all, attacks on Jews in the Diaspora. The money spent on security until recently (2018) was because we suffer the consequences, we’re the soft targets … Herzl’s mission failed because it didn’t stop the Holocaust, but soon it will lead to a new one.”
Finali apologized for and retracted the post, but Mazsihisz in its letter to the ambassador last week said it was cutting its ties with the rabbi because he “is more loyal in his writings to the enemies of Israel than to Israel.”
Finali belongs to the Neolog denomination of Judaism, a stream that evolved in Central Europe in the 19th century and is similar to Masorti, or Conservative, Judaism.
In a 2018 interview with the Szombat Jewish magazine, Finali said: “The state of Israel lives and thrives thanks to God, I wholeheartedly support its existence,” but added he doesn’t consider it to be “a pure virgin.”
HolocaustFaceMasks.com stops selling the masks and plans to shut down
(JTA) — A website dedicated to selling face masks featuring images of the Holocaust has stopped selling the masks and said it would shut down on Aug. 11.
HolocaustFaceMasks.com, which had sold fewer than 10 masks as of July 29, had marketed masks emblazoned with famous pictures of the Holocaust. One showed a child with his hands raised at gunpoint and an image of crematoria at a concentration camp.
The site stopped selling the items apparently because of the backlash it received.
“We have removed items with the most complaints, and our other items will remain available until we close the website August 11,” its homepage said.
The message defends the intention behind the site and appears to implicitly criticize Jews who objected to it. The site’s founder told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in July that he believes requiring face masks could lead to something like the Holocaust “or even more sinister.”
Anti-Semitism watchdogs have called such comparisons an unacceptable trivialization of the Holocaust.
“Unfortunately and understandably, many had emotional reactions to the original designs and the concept behind them was not considered,” the message on the site reads. “The reaction to demand that people should not be able to express their opinion that tyranny is afoot, is troublesome. This reaction is especially troublesome when it is made by those who claim to have the strongest associations with one of the most tyrannical events in human history.”
Nazis who killed children ran German children’s homes after the war, report finds
(JTA) — One was a former SS officer who helped murder 220 Lithuanian Jews. Another was a doctor who sent at least seven children to their deaths on Nazi orders.
After World War II, both Werner Scheu and Albert Viethen were among a group of former Nazi officials who ran children’s homes in West Germany where torture, abuse and malnourishment were commonplace, according to an investigative report broadcast this week on the German TV network ARD. Public heath insurance funded the homes.
According to an organization founded by survivors of the homes, from the 1950s to the 1980s, some 8 million to 12 million children were sent to the homes for spa treatment based on the advice of doctors, schools or welfare officials, according to the magazine Deutsche Welle. The survivors’ organization has more than 3,000 members.
At the homes, children would be beaten, put in solitary confinement, separated from their siblings, force-fed and subjected to other forms of mistreatment, according to the ARD report. The system of children’s homes was created in the 1930s.
“The children came back sicker than when they left, they were malnourished, had to be hospitalized,” said Anja Röhl, who founded the survivors’ organization. “Sometimes they were so disturbed they didn’t recognize their parents.”
Manfred Lucha, the chairman of Germany’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs Ministers — an association of German state officials responsible for labor and social policy — told ARD that the group is “looking into some depths, some dark holes” and will address the misconduct detailed in the report.
Dozens of Jewish headstones discovered under Polish town’s market square
A view of the town hall and market square of Leżajsk, Poland in 2010. (Wikimedia Commons/Krzysztof Dudzik)
(JTA) — Dozens of Jewish headstones were discovered under the asphalt of a local market in Poland.
The headstones had been placed in the heart of Leżajsk, a town located about 120 miles south of Warsaw, at least 80 years ago, according to a report Friday in the Gazeta Wyborca daily.
The headstones, which were uncovered during construction work that began in June, have been removed and stored by the municipality, which will consult Jewish community officials on what to do with the find.
Between 1918 and 1939, Leżajsk’s population of about 5,000 was 90% Jewish, according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum. Many of them were saved thanks to the town’s proximity to the partition line that separated the German and Soviet occupation zones in Poland following the invasion of those armies into Poland in 1939.
The Germans sent many Leżajsk Jews to the Soviet occupation zone, where some were exiled into the heartland of Russia — a turn of events that meant they were safe from the Nazis when they opened the eastern front with the former Soviet Union in 1941. But the Jews of Leżajsk never re-established a community there after the Holocaust, ending a centuries-old Jewish presence in the town.
Both the Nazi occupation forces and communist regimes used Jewish headstones as building material throughout Eastern and Central Europe.
About 90% of Poland’s Jewish minority of 3.3 million people perished in the Holocaust.
Holocaust museum in New York plans to reopen in September
A view of the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City (Courtesy of the museum)
NEW YORK (JTA) — New York’s Holocaust museum is planning to reopen in September.
The Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust said Tuesday that pending approval from the city and state, it would open with limited capacity. The museum will be open three rather than five days a week with only a quarter of its previous visitor capacity and additional cleaning protocols.
New York’s museums have been closed since March due to the coronavirus pandemic and have still not been given the green light to reopen by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The museum also said it would be extending its popular exhibit about Auschwitz through May 2021. The world’s largest-ever traveling exhibition about the Nazi death camp has more than 700 original items from Auschwitz and 400 photographs.
“First and foremost is the safety of our visitors and our employees,” the museum’s president and CEO, Jack Kliger, said in a statement. “As people venture out again seeking educational experiences in safe public places, museums such as ours are uniquely qualified to welcome them back.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art said last month that it was planning to reopen at the end of August following guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control, New York state and New York City.
Jewish man called ‘dirty Jew’ and beaten unconscious in Paris elevator
A residential area in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, the scene of an alleged assault against a Jewish man visiting his parents. (Xavier Testelin/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
(JTA) — A Jewish man told police he was beaten by two men in the elevator of a Paris building where his parents live and called a “dirty Jew.”
The alleged victim, 29, said two Black men followed him into the elevator on Thursday, according to his police complaint and the National Bureau for Vigilance against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, the nongovernmental watchdog group wrote in a statement Tuesday.
BNVCA identified the alleged victim only as David S.
David sustained minor injuries to the face and throat.
The assault happened at a residential building in the 19th arrondissement, or district, of Paris, where many Jews live.
At around the 18th floor, one of the men told David, “Dirty Jew, dirty Jewish son of a whore, you’re a dead man, dirty Jew,” according to the alleged victim’s testimony. They fled when the elevator stopped on the floor where David’s parents live. David said he was rendered unconscious for several minutes because of the force of the blows.
Medical staff prescribed eight days of rest for David. In France, the number of rest days prescribed to assault victims may affect the sentence passed on offenders in case of a conviction.
NJ man pleads guilty to threatening Orthodox Jews during pandemic’s early days
An Orthodox woman pushes a stroller in Lakewood, N.J., in 2013. The population in the largely haredi Orthodox town has boomed in the past couple of decades, and haredi families are looking to move to neighboring towns. (Dennis Fraevich/Flickr)
(JTA) — A New Jersey man has pleaded guilty to threatening the Jewish community of Lakewood over violations of the state’s lockdown rules that took place there in March.
Anthony Lodespoto, 43, pleaded guilty to charges of “bias intimidation” on Friday, New Jersey Advance Media reported Monday. Prosecutors are seeking a six-month jail term for Lodespoto, who has been jailed since his arrest.
He used Facebook’s direct messaging feature to threaten the Jewish community of Lakewood, a township with a large Orthodox population that at the time had reported a higher number of coronavirus cases than surrounding areas. In his messages, which he sent to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy among others, Lodespoto said he would attack Jews there with a baseball bat.
Lodespoto reportedly was angry about parties in Lakewood, including multiple Jewish weddings, that did not comply with the state’s social distancing rules. Criticism of Lakewood’s Jews was rampant on social media at the time, prompting Murphy to condemn hate speech inspired by the pandemic.
“Scapegoating, bullying, or vilification of any community is completely unacceptable – today or ever,” Murphy wrote on Twitter in late March. “There is a special place in hell for the small minority that do this during this crisis.”
All 3 Democrats vying for House Foreign Affairs Committee chair support restricting Israel from using for annexation
Rep. Joaquin Castro sits in front of Rep. Brad Sherman at a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., July 29, 2020. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(JTA) — All three of the Democrats seeking to become the next head of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee have said they do not want U.S. money to aid Israel’s potential annexation of parts of the West Bank.
Reps. Brad Sherman of California, Joaquin Castro of Texas and Gregory Meeks of New York are vying for the role with the defeat of the current head, longtime pro-Israel voice Eliot Engel, in his New York primary in June.
“I oppose any use of American taxpayer dollars to implement the Annexation Plan or to build any permanent Israeli installation in the West Bank or Gaza,” Sherman said in a statement.
Sherman and Meeks are longtime allies of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the country’s largest pro-Israel lobby.
“Not a penny of US taxpayer money should subsidize or enable any unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank,” Castro said. “Under a two-state approach, America has a responsibility to be an arbiter of peace, which means we need trust and credibility with both Israelis and Palestinians.”
Meeks suggested that aid to Israel could be used as leverage to influence its policy.
“Annexation is anathema to a two-state solution, and America cannot be used by its proponents to justify a pro-annexation position or policy,” he said. “On the contrary, the United States must be explicit in our opposition by applying pressure against Netanyahu should he annex territory, including leveraging US aid.”
Whether or not to withhold U.S. funds to Israel has become a common question posed to politicians since Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont brought it up prominently in the Democratic presidential campaign.
Right-wing NC congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn deletes pictures from his vacation to Hitler’s retreat
Screenshots from Madison Cawthorn's Instagram account show pictures from a 2017 visit to the site of a Nazi retreat used frequently by Hitler. In the caption of the now-deleted pictures, Cawthorn called Hitler "the Führer." (Twitter)
(JTA) — A right-wing Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina has taken down pictures he posted to Instagram from a 2017 vacation to the Eagle’s Nest, the Nazi retreat in Germany that Hitler visited more than a dozen times.
Madison Cawthorn’s pictures were removed Monday, the same day that a report in Jezebel made the case that he is “following the playbook of other, more successful far-right Republicans in recent years, attempting to rebrand his extreme views … as squarely in the mainstream of the Republican Party.”
In addition to calling Hitler “Führer,” a term of reverence, Cawthorn also named his real estate company SPQR, a term popular among white nationalists, and displays in his home an early American flag that the Anti-Defamation League says has been appropriated by far-right extremists, according to the Jezebel report.
Cawthorn defeated a Republican who had been endorsed by President Donald Trump in June’s primary. Since the primary, however, the 25-year-old candidate has worked to convey his support for Trump, according to a report by AVL Watchdog, a nonprofit news organization covering the portion of North Carolina that Cawthorn is seeking to represent in the House of Representatives.
The AVL Watchdog report published over the weekend includes many of the same details as the Jezebel report, as it spells out the far-right vision that Cawthorn, who would be one of the youngest-ever congressmen if elected, is offering local voters. But it did not include the Eagle’s Nest vacation photos, in which Cawthorn said a trip to Hitler’s retreat had been on his “bucket list.”
After the Jezebel report was published, the pictures began circulating on social media before they were deleted. Among those who shared the photos on Twitter was Moe Davis, the Democrat opposing Cawthorn in North Carolina’s 11th District, a traditional Republican district in the western part of the state.
The two men are competing to fill the spot in Congress vacated by Mark Meadows after he became the Trump White House chief of staff earlier this year. Davis is a retired Air Force colonel who resigned as Guantanamo Bay’s chief prosecutor to protest a policy allowing evidence obtained through torture to be used in trials. While he is considered a long shot to win in November, population shifts mean the district may not be as safely Republican as it once was.
“Hitler’s vacation retreat is not on my bucket list,” Davis tweeted Monday.
