#Menachem Z. Rosensaft

[dougielombax]

Speaking of history.

This goes without saying but it has to be mentioned in light of recent developments either way.

You can’t acknowledge one atrocity and DENY another.

You HAVE to acknowledge them all. This isn’t up for discussion or a debate.

Anyone who says otherwise is a dangerous idiot and/or a revisionist with some sort of putrid agenda in mind.

This applies universally to any and all such atrocities.

I know that sounds a bit obvious to say but you’d be surprised at the amount of people who fail to realise this.

It’s deeply troubling.

To do otherwise sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

I’ll leave an extract from a quote here by Menachem Z. Rosensaft (attorney and founder of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors) concerning such attitudes:

(The context of this quote concerns denial of the Bosnian genocide)

“I cannot in good conscience condemn the perpetrators of the genocide in which my brother and my grandparents perished unless I also condemn the perpetrators of all other acts of genocide, including the genocide that took place at Srebrenica.

I cannot in good conscience mourn my brother as a victim of genocide unless I similarly mourn all other victims of genocide, including the victims at Srebrenica.”

His words sum it up rather aptly I think.

Just saying.

Edit: I mean ALL atrocities! Just in case it wasn’t clear.

[balkanin]

Svjetski jevrejski kongres: Dodikov i Greifov izvještaj o Srebrenici je gebelsovska propaganda

Svjetski jevrejski kongres: Dodikov i Greifov izvještaj o Srebrenici je gebelsovska propaganda

Menachem Z. Rosensaft, potpredsjednik Svjetskog jevrejskog kongresa Samozvana “nezavisna” međunarodna istražna komisija, imenovana na inicijativu separatističkog čelnika bosanskih Srba koji negira genocid, na čelu s izraelskim akademikom koji zastupa preuveličane prosrpske stavove, izdala je prošle sedmice svoj “Zaključni izvještaj” o “Patnjama svih ljudi u regiji Srebrenice između 1992-1995.”,…

[jewish-privilege]

Seventy-five years ago, on April 26, 1943, SS Gruppenführer–a rank equivalent to major-general–Jürgen Stroop reported to his superiors that his shock troops had that day combed through “the entire former living quarter” of the Warsaw Ghetto. “Practically without exception,” Stroop wrote,

the shock troops reported resistance that was nonetheless completely broken through returning of fire or blowing up bunkers. It appears that the ranks are finding the Jews and bandits most tenacious and capable of resistance. Several bunkers were forcibly opened whose inhabitants had not come to the surface since the beginning of the Action. In a series of cases the inhabitants of the bunkers, after the bunkers had been successfully blown up, were scarcely able to crawl to the surface. According to statements of the captured Jews, a large number of inhabitants in the bunkers have become insane due to the heat, the thick smoke and the successful explosions.

This was the eighth day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first organized urban armed resistance against the Nazis in German-occupied Europe. Stroop wrote that the “result of today’s undertaking” was as follows:

30 Jews displaced, 1,330 Jews pulled out of the bunkers and immediately destroyed, 362 Jews shot in battle. In total captured today: 1,722 Jews. Thereby the total number of captured Jews was raised to 29,186. Beyond that, it is likely that countless Jews died in the 13 blown-up bunkers and through fires.

Seventy-three years ago, on April 26, 1945, tens of thousands of erstwhile inmates of the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen near the German city of Hanover were struggling to remain alive. When British troops had entered the camps 11 days earlier, they encountered a devastation of humanity for which they were entirely unprepared. Most of the 58,000 inmates there, the overwhelming majority of them Jews, were too weak even to walk. In the main camp, more than 40,000 prisoners were crammed into barracks that should have held no more than 8,000; between 15,000 and 25,000 more who had arrived in early April from the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp complex were in barracks of a nearby Wehrmacht army base. My mother, who had been at Bergen-Belsen since the previous November when she was sent there from Auschwitz-Birkenau, described the camp in the days prior to liberation as:

an indescribable hell. . . . The camp was overcrowded. Typhus, tuberculosis, and other epidemics raged. In the hospital and throughout the camp about a thousand people a day lay on the floor, starving and dying. . . . The small crematorium could not cope with all the corpses, even though it was kept burning day and night. The unburned corpses were strewn all over the camp. The SS, who felt that their own end was near, cut off the water and electricity. We were given one piece of bread per person only three times a week and one-half bowl of so-called soup daily. On top of this the Germans kept us in mortal fear by telling us that the camp was surrounded by mines and that we would be blown up if we tried to escape. Such was our situation on the eve of liberation. Disease, starvation, despair, fear, and not a single ray of hope.

...Within a few days following the liberation [of Bergen-Belsen], Brigadier H. L. Glyn-Hughes, the Deputy Director of Medical Services of the British Army of the Rhine, appointed my mother, a not yet 33-year-old Jewish dentist from Sosnowiec, Poland, to organize and head a group of doctors and nurses among the survivors to help care for the camp’s thousands of critically ill inmates.

For weeks on end following the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, my mother and her team of 28 doctors and 620 other female and male volunteers, only a few of whom were trained nurses, worked round the clock with the British military medical personnel to try to save as many of the survivors as possible. Despite their desperate efforts — it was not until May 11, 1945, that the daily death rate fell below 100 — the Holocaust claimed 13,944 additional victims at Bergen-Belsen during the two months after the liberation.

The end of the war found the survivors alone, mostly abandoned, just as the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had been alone, mostly abandoned. “For the greater part of the liberated Jews of Bergen-Belsen,” my mother recalled many years later, “there was no ecstasy, no joy at our liberation. We had lost our families, our homes. We had no place to go, nobody to hug, nobody who was waiting for us, anywhere. We had been liberated from death and from the fear of death, but we were not free from the fear of life.”

...The right-extremist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany–or AfD–party is now the largest opposition party in the German federal parliament. A number of its leaders have been accused of Holocaust denial.

Three months ago, Wolfgand Gedeon, an AfD lawmaker in the German state parliament of Baden-Württemberg, objected to the installation of plaques bearing the names of Jewish victims of National Socialism – so-called Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones – in the pavement outside their last residences before deportation. “With their actions, the stumbling stone initiators impose a culture of remembrance on their fellow human beings, dictating to them how they should remember who and when,” Gedeon declared. “Who gives these obtrusive moralists the right to do so?”

The very idea that adherents of any present-day variation of the Hitlerite ideology might be able to influence how the Shoah is remembered in Germany is abhorrent on every possible level.

In Poland, meanwhile, the enactment of a new law that seeks to criminalize holding the Polish nation responsible for the atrocities committed on Polish soil during World War II is widely seen as an attempt to whitewash those Poles who victimized Jews during the years of the Holocaust.

Two sentences of Gruppenführer Stroop’s report on the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto jump out in this connection: “In the event of the capture of a Jew in the Aryan part of the city of Warsaw,” he wrote, “the Polish police was authorized to give to every Polish policeman one-third of the cash in the possession of the Jew in question. This measure has already produced results.”

There is no question that there were Poles who helped and saved Jews at the risk of their own lives, and they fully deserved to be recognized and honored for their heroism. At the same time, there is also no question that there were Poles who betrayed Jews to the Germans during the Holocaust years, who raped Jewish women, and who murdered Jews.

We know full well that there were Germans who resisted the Nazis, but no one of any integrity would dare suggest that they were representative of the German people as a whole. Similarly, the Poles who rescued Jews were the exception, not the norm.

...Let us also remind ourselves that one paramount reason why we are here today is that we must not, we cannot allow our dead to fade from our consciousness.

On the night of August 3-4, 1943, a little boy named Benjamin arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau with his parents and grandparents. In her posthumously published memoirs, my mother recalled her final moments with her son, my brother: “We were guarded by SS men and women. One SS man was standing in front of the people and he started the selection. With a single movement of his finger, he was sending some people to the right and some to the left. . . . Men were separated from women. People with children were sent to one side, and young people were separated from older looking ones. No one was allowed to go from one group to the other. Our five-and-a-half-year-old son went with his father. Something that will haunt me to the end of my days occurred during those first moments. As we were separated, our son turned to me and asked, ‘Mommy, are we going to live or die?’ I didn’t answer this question.”

Benjamin is one of between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 Jewish children who were murdered in the Shoah. Since my mother’s death in 1997, he has existed inside of me. I see his face in my mind, try to imagine his voice, his fear as the gas chamber doors slammed shut, his final tears. If I were to forget him, he would disappear.

But it is not enough for me to remember my brother. I must transmit his memory, his image, into the future, so that that one day my grandchildren will tell their children and grandchildren about Benjamin.

Read Menachem Z. Rosensaft’s full remarks at Tablet.

[mentalnahigijena]

Svjetski jevrejski kongres odbacio izvještaj Komisije RS o Srebrenici Potpredsjednik Svjetskog jevrejskog kongresa Menachem Z. Rosensaft u potpunosti je odbacio zaključke konačnog izvještaja međunarodne komisije predvođene izraelskim akademikom Gideonom Greifom, nazivajući sadržaj izvještaja “sramotnim" za akademsku zajednicu. Rosensaft je objasio kako se sadržaj izvještaja kosi se s utvrđenim činjenicama u međunarodnom pravu, te da izvješaj “očito ignoriše” presude Međunarodnog krivičnog suda Ujedinjenih naroda za bivšu Jugoslaviju (MKSJ). Istakao je kako je ova komisija umjesto toga uveliko zasnovala svoj izvještaj na jednom izdvojenom mišljenju nakon suđenja u jednom ranih predmeta ovog suda. Vlada bh. entiteta Republike Srpske (RS) predstavila je 11. juna u Banjaluci izvještaj u kome se navodi da "u Srebrenici nije počinjen genocid". Komisiju koju je Vlada RS-a formirala u februaru 2019. godine, s ciljem, kako je saopšteno, "istraživanje stradanja svih naroda u srebreničkoj regiji u periodu od 1992. do 1995. godine". Njome je predsjedavao Izraelac Gideon Greif. Rosensaft je obzrazložio kako je komisija imenovana na inicijativu “separatističkog lidera bosanskih Srba koji negira genocid”, a na njenom čelu je izraelski akademik “poznat po svojim pro-srpskim stavovima.” “Kao sin dvoje preživjelih iz Auschwitza i Bergen-Belsena koji su se posvetili prenošenju dokaza o zločinima počinjenim nad evropskim Židovima tokom Holokausta budućim generacijama, posebno sam zgrožen besramnom manipulacijom istine u izvještaju”, naveo je on. Rosensaft je napisao kako je riječ o dokumentu ‘koji zaslužuje da bude poslan na smetljište historije’ i koji je ‘korišten samo za demonstraciju moralnih propusta pojedinaca – poslovično “korisnih idiota”, koji se upuštaju u poricanje i iskrivljavanje genocida’. "On se također pridržava spisa odavno diskreditovanih negatora genocida u Srebrenici kao jevanđelja, ne osvrćući se na pisanje historičara i pravnih naučnika koji su došli do dijametralno različitih zaključaka”, napisao je on. Potpredsjednik Svjetskog jevrejskog kongresa ističe i to kako izvještaj ‘odbacuje ili ignoriše na preko 1,000 stranica’ sve što su naveli međunarodni sudovi, ‘kao i zaključak da su ubistva i progoni u Srebrenici bili čin genocida.” U više navrata u izvještaju, ističe Rosensaft, Bošnjaci su predstavljani kao agresori a bosanski Srbi kao “žrtve u prekrajanju historije koja podsjeća na opravdanja ministra propagande Trećeg rajha, Josepha Goebbelsa, za nacistički njemački antisemitizam”. "Izvještaj predstavlja ‘očajnički nastavak četvrt stoljeća napora nacionalista bosanskih Srba i njihovih pomagača da uvjere svijet da ono što se dogodilo u Srebrenici nije genocid. Ovi napori se kreću od pokušaja osporavanja broja poginulih do okrivljavanja žrtava za njihov pokolj, tvrdeći da je to bila posljedica provokacija od strane Bošnjaka”, piše Rosensaft. Ono što je “posebno cinična karakteristika tekuće kampanje poricanja genocida” je imenovanje izraelskog akademika Gideona Greifa na čelo Nezavisne međunarodne istražne komisije, piše Rosensaft, tvrdeći da je to učinjeno “vjerovatno da bi dalo pseudo-akademsku auru onome što je očigledno trebalo biti još jedno pobijanje, ili u najmanju ruku umanjivanje rasprostranjenih kršenja međunarodnog prava – među njima i užasnih zločina protiv čovječnosti i genocida – koje su počinile paravojske bosanskih Srba i njihovi rukovodioci tokom balkanskih ratova devedesetih.” Komisija, koja je označena kao "međunarodna", formirana je skladu sa Zaključcima Narodne skupštine Republike Srpske (NSRS) iz avgusta 2018. godine, tokom sjednice na kojoj je odbačen raniji izvještaj rađen 2003. i 2004. godine. U tom izvještaju tadašnja Vlada RS je priznala da se u Srebrenci desio genocid nad Bošnjacima. Snage Vojske RS-a, tokom genocida u Srebrenici u julu 1995. godine, ubile su oko 8.000 muškaraca i dječaka u Srebrenici i okolini. Zločin u Srebrenici iz jula 1995. godine, jedini je koji se dogodio na prostoru bivše Jugoslavije, a koji je pred međunarodnim i domaćim sudovima okarakterisan kao genocid.

[joanbaez]

Menachem Z. Rosensaft  “The Second Generation”

[radiogornjigrad]

Independent: Svjedočimo pokušajima rehabilitacije ustaškog pokreta

Independent: Svjedočimo pokušajima rehabilitacije ustaškog pokreta

Menahem Rozensaft (Menachem Z. Rosensaft), upozorava da ekstremistički desničarski pokreti u Hrvatskoj godinama pokušavaju očistiti međupovezane konotacije Jasenovca i Ustaša

Potpredsjednik i generalni savjetnik Svjetskog jevrejskog kongresa Menahem Rozensaft (Menachem Z. Rosensaft), u autorskom tekstu u Independentu, upozorava svijet kako „svjedočimo pokušajima rehabilitacije“ ustaškog…

[shivoa]

Ostensibly, Kohl invited Reagan to accompany him to a German military cemetery during the state visit to celebrate the normalization of relations between their two countries on the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II. In fact, however, ever since coming to power in 1982, the conservative Kohl had endeavored to rehabilitate as many Germans who had served the Third Reich as possible. In 1983, for example, his government had removed the veterans' organizations of the Waffen-SS from a list of extremist right-wing groups on which the West German Ministry of Interior was required to make annual reports to Parliament, and Kohl had repeatedly blocked demands by the opposition Social Democrats to ban the highly controversial reunions of former Waffen-SS members. Kohl's request to have Reagan go to Bitburg was thus part of a strategy to rewrite recent German history and curry favor with the most reactionary elements of the West German electorate.

Reagan's planned trip to Germany first drew fire because it did not include a stop at the site of a Nazi concentration camp. At a press conference on March 21, 1985, Reagan explained that "since the German people have very few alive that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way … they have a feeling and a guilt feeling that's been imposed upon them." Thus, he considered a visit to a concentration camp "unnecessary." Reagan's comments drew a sharp response from Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Writing in The New York Times on March 30, he pointed out that all Germans who were the same age as the president certainly remembered the war, and that two years earlier he had told a gathering of thousands of Holocaust survivors that the Holocaust must never be forgotten. Rosensaft noted that while it was "politically advantageous for [Reagan] to speak about the Holocaust to Jewish audiences in the United States, he does not want to risk offending anyone – even Nazis – in Germany."

At a press conference on April 18, Reagan made matters worse by appearing to equate dead German soldiers with the victims of the Holocaust. "They were victims," he said of the soldiers buried at Bitburg, "just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." Reagan's comments drew angry responses from American Jewish leaders. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, described Reagan's remarks as a "distortion of history, a perversion of language, and a callous offense to the Jewish community." [...]  Former President Richard M. Nixon, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and conservative columnist William F. Buckley, among others, endorsed the Bitburg visit, and several public opinion polls indicated that only about 52 percent of Americans were opposed to it.

[jewishbookworld]

God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors by Menachem Z. Rosensaft

God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors by Menachem Z. Rosensaft

The book at Amazon and on Kindle

From major religious or intellectual explorations to shorter commentaries on experiences, quandaries and cultural, political and personal affirmations, almost ninety contributors from sixteen countries respond to this question: how have your parents’ and grandparents’ experiences and examples helped shape your identity and your attitudes toward God, faith,…

[balkanin]

Odbačen sramni izvještaj Komisije RS-a o Srebrenici

Odbačen sramni izvještaj Komisije RS-a o Srebrenici

AMELA LONČARIĆ Menachem Z. Rosensaft, potpredsjednik Svjetskog jevrejskog kongresa, u potpunosti je odbacio zaključke konačnog izvještaja tzv. nezavisne međunarodne istražne komisije, predvođene izraelskim akademikom Gideonom Greifom, nazivajući sadržaj izvještaja sramotnim. Komisija je, kako kaže Rosensaft, imenovana na inicijativu “separatističkog lidera bosanskih Srba koji negira genocid”, a…