#Palestine-Israel / Israel abandons diaspora Jews' fight against real antisemitism to join forces with Europes’s antisemitic and islamophobic far right

Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry (Amichai Chikli) is inviting representatives from parties with histories of #antisemitism and current Islamophobic positions to a conference specifically about combating antisemitism, titled The International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, further undermining the credibility of frameworks like the #IHRA definition.

Shared Islamophobia is becoming a unifying factor between Israel's government and European far-right movements, previously rejected by Jewish communities as antisemitic or Neo-Nazi.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Jordan #Bardella leads France's anti-Muslim National Rally, founded by #holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen's; Hermann Tertsch comes from Spain's #Vox party, known for inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric; Charlie Weimers represents #Sweden Democrats with its neo-Nazi origins; Marion Maréchal, Le Pen's granddaughter, has aligned with extreme right movements; and Kinga Gál represents Hungary's #Fidesz party, criticized for antisemitic dog whistles in campaigns against George Soros while promoting strong anti-Muslim policies.

haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-0… or archive.is/VNXK0

@israel
@palestine
#anstisematism #islamophobia

2021: History Boy Summer (Part 14) Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away at Union Station

Normally when I do these, I am visiting local historical sites and talking about historical events that happened in the Western Missouri, Eastern Kansas areas. This entry is a bit different because I was able to attend a traveling exhibit at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. Union Station usually does one or two big exhibits per year, and they are almost ALWAYS incredible. If you head over to my other blog, I have a similar review up for an exhibit on Stonehenge from a few years ago. I wanted to see this exhibit because I was able to visit an actual concentration camp in 2001 in Munich, Germany. That experience was sobering, as being able to see the actual buildings such as ovens or a gas chamber clearly labeled “brausebad” (lit “shower bath”) over the top made it that much more real rather than reading about it in a history book. At that time, there wasn’t much of a “museum” or sorts at Dachau (to my recollection, I could be mis-remembering from 20 years ago), so I was unable to see too many artifacts. When given the opportunity to see these items leave Poland and Germany for the US for the first time ever was an experience I had to have. Seeing that Auschwitz is notoriously “the worst” of all concentration camps, I knew this was going to be heavy.

Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away at Union Station; Kansas City, Missouri

Advice time: If you are in the area and want to see this – good luck going on a weekend prior to January of 2022 (the last month it’s open). I was able to go on a Tuesday morning without too many issues, and I see that its open on certain government holidays as well in case work makes it impossible to see during the week. I have posted the official website below for ticketing information. Also, be sure to buy the hardcover book upon ticket purchase. It’s 45 dollars, but is huge and good value for the price. It basically sums up the entire exhibit in case you miss anything. I have no idea if this can be purchased in any way other than the museum, but I do see it on Amazon, so there is that as well.

Background

According to Union Station’s official site for this exhibit:

This groundbreaking exhibition brings together more than 700 original objects and 400 photographs from over 20 institutions and museums around the world. Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. is the most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the history of Auschwitz and its role in the Holocaust ever presented in North America, and an unparalleled opportunity to confront the singular face of human evil—one that arose not long ago and not far away.

Official Website

And general info from Wikipedia:

“Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis’ Final Solution to the Jewish Question. […] In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries, established the camp’s reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died. The death toll includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 ethnic Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.[7] Those not gassed died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.”

Reading

Prior to this trip, I read The Commandant of Auschwitz – Rudolf Höss by Volker Koop. I wanted to look into the mindset of a man that was so ruthless that he could oversee the wholesale murder of over a million people, then claim he had no idea that was going on under his watch. It’s an infuriating and depressing read, as with anything involving The Holocaust, but I felt like it was important.

The Trip

Union Station was not too busy when I attended this exhibit – due to The Covid-19 Global Pandemic you have to arrange tickets online, and only a certain amount of people are allowed in each 30 minute increment. Masks were required, and at no time did I feel unsafe in attending. Patrons are provided with these devices that can be best described as an MP3 player of sorts and a headset, all cleaned after each use. These devices act as a guided tour for everyone during the exhibit. at various points, you will see a number on the wall or an object that coincides with an audio segment that gives more insight and background to everything. This blew me away and is easily the best guided tour thing I have ever seen in any museum. I honestly hope more adopt it as it really helps make the exhibit feel important.

In total, the exhibit took me two hours and some change, but I can imagine it would be somewhere between 2-2.5 hours for most people. My only real issue were people standing in front of exhibit pieces listening to their device blocking the view. I adopted a system where I would go around an area, read all the signs the stand away from everyone and go through the videos. This seemed to help me stay away from people and ensured I wasn’t stuck in any sort of bottlenecks.

The most jarring items in the exhibit were the things about children. There is a simple child’s shoe at one point, where you can see balled up socks tucked inside as if the kid thought he was going to have a quick shower then go out an play or something. Sadly, it’s almost guaranteed that was the last thing the child did before his life was ripped from him by the monstrous regime of Adolf Hitler. I didn’t cry in this area, but I felt anxious and teared up a bit. It was very uncomfortable as it should be. I have included this in one of my pictures above.

Conclusion

This is both a VERY important exhibit and an extremely heavy one to experience. It’s well put together, and honestly has one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen. It’s on the expensive side ($25 per person) but its well worth the money considering the content and how long it takes to get through. I plan to go back with my girlfriend at some point to see what she thinks, as I feel like everyone that can see this, should. In a time when people go to YouTube to come up with all sorts of inane alternate versions of history that they can, something like this really could ground someone and show them why we do certain things like we do. Seeing people constantly equating things of slight annoyance to The Holocaust, or Nazis gets tiresome, and seeing something like this definitely shows why. Here’s hoping nothing like this EVER happens again, and if it does, hopefully we can stop it.

This article is part of my summer series History Boy Summer, which you can keep up with by following this LINK.

#Allies #Auschwitz #Axis #ConcentrationCamp #Death #Germany #Historical #historicalPhoto #History #HistoryBoySummer #HistoryTour #Holocaust #jewish #Jews #kansasCity #missouri #museum #MuseumTrips #nazi #Nazis #Poland #UnionStation #WorldWarII #WWII

Stephen K.

2021-03-29 07:05:19

REVIEW: The Commandant of Auschwitz – Rudolf Höss (2021)

A book by Volker Koop

NOTE: I received a free preliminary, and likely unedited copy of this book from Netgalley for the purposes of providing an honest, unbiased review of the material. Thank you to all involved.

At some point this year, assuming Covid doesn’t keep ravaging the country, Kansas City will be hosting an exhibit that will showcase artifacts from Poland’s Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Having visited Dachau some twenty years ago in person, this might be the closest I could get to seeing these items for a long time, if ever. And if its anything like Dachau, I’m sure just seeing the artifacts will be a rough, if not VERY sobering experience. I mention this, because today’s topic is the man that made Auschwitz Concentration Camp so notorious, Rudolf Höss, and this new book about him The Commandant of Auschwitz, by Volker Koop and published by Pen and Sword Books. I basically wanted to educate myself more than what I was on the topic, and figured this book would be a solid look at the man responsible for one of the worst episodes in world history.

Koop does a solid job of not just regurgitating things from the memoirs of Rudolf Höss, and quickly points out that Höss appears to be a habitual liar in pretty much everything he does. Much of the information comes from things such as this material, but using historical records, and conflicting accounts by contemporaries, the portrait of a truly terrible man is painted. Even when everything was lost, and the man faced trial, he claimed to be a normal guy that just did his job and had no idea bad things were happening under his command. Reading some of the atrocities he signed off on, such as throwing children directly into a fire pit while still alive, was infuriating to say the least.

This was a tough read, for obvious reasons, but I enjoyed it and learned a lot about, perhaps, one of the biggest monsters in modern history. One would have hoped that he would have stayed in prison much longer than he did when he literally committed a political murder, but alas Hitler needed the most despicable to do his evil deeds. Very good book, if you are curious, or a WWII history buff, I’d check it out.

#Auschwitz #bookReview #books #Evil #History #PenAndSword #PenAndSwordPublishing #Poland #RudolfHoss #War #WorldWarII #WWII

The Commandant of Auschwitz

Described as one of the greatest mass-murderers in history, Rudolf Höss, was born in Baden-Baden, on the edge of Germany’s Black Forest region, on 11…

^{Pen and Sword Books}