Thursday, May 2, 2019
Holocaust: Not a Soap Opera
Holocaust: Not a Soap Opera
Thursday, May 02, 2019 | Tsvi Sadan
Calling Israelis Nazis has become so common that people now think it something to be seriously considered. According to these new antisemites, Jews are supposed to remain forever victims, and the fact that they are now accused of victimizing another people justifies equating the Jews with Nazis.
Of course, to begin with, reducing every human conflict to victims and victimizers is a Marxist discourse transforms every victor into a villain, and every rebel into a hero. The victim/victimizer division assumes that in every case, the victim is guiltless, and the victimizer is a criminal. It's a simplistic and artificial dichotomy, but one that's been used effectively to portray Israel as the very worst type of villain for daring to defeat and suppress her sworn enemies.
What's antisemitic about it all is that these same voices are rarely, if ever, heard condemning China or Morocco as "Nazi" states. Or how about Great Britain? Does anyone consider it a "Nazi" state for, with the help of the Americans, reducing Germany to rubble and then occupying it?
The fact that Israel alone is so condemned is a warning that those who today are drawing a comparison between sovereign Jews and the Nazis are laying the mental groundwork for another Holocaust.
Comparing Jews to Nazis paves the moral road to reducing Israel to rubble, and for the very same reason Germany suffered such a fate. Placing Israel on the same moral level of Nazi Germany is so fictitious, outrageous, dangerous, that one finds it hard to even begin dispelling this evil notion.
Israelis can explain until they're blue in the face that they are defending themselves against enemies dedicated to Israel's destruction, and not arbitrarily launching military action against innocent victims. They can point out that the very notion of a genocide against the Palestinians is ludicrous given that there are more Palestinians living today than ever before in their brief, ad-hoc history. (By comparison, the Jews, who endured an actual genocide, still haven't reached their pre-World War II numbers.) Israelis can explain all this, but all they'll get in return is a condescending antisemitic shrug.
The vile moral equivalence between Israel and the Nazis has reminded me of a long-forgotten funeral that took place in Romania in January 1946. In the above picture are hundreds of Jews following two coffins to be buried in the Jewish cemetery. But the coffins didn't contain bodies. Rather, they contained bars of soap made from the fat of Jewish victims of the death camps.
Similarly, several years later, the Pardes Hana municipality in northern Israel issued the following laconic announcement that "due to a funeral for soap made from Jewish carcasses, the office will be closed from 3:30 till 4:30."
This is the real Nazi legacy, which is not a cheap soap opera played by cynical actors, but rather horror beyond belief. That's what the new antisemites are accusing Israel of.
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
What If a Girl in the Holocaust Had Instagram?
What If a Girl in the Holocaust Had Instagram?
Thursday, May 02, 2019 | Israel Today Staff
That was the question posed by a new online project called "Eva Stories," launched today as Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Eva Stories” is a dramatic online portrayal of Eva Heyman, a 13-year-old teenager who perished in the Holocaust. Her story is told as though Eva had a smartphone in 1944 during WWII and is posting her experiences on her Instagram account @eva.stories.
The innovative social media story, which hopes to capture the attention of Israel’s phone-gripped youth, is based on the real-life experiences of Eva Heyam, a young Jewish girl who kept a regular diary right up until the days she was sent to a Nazi death camp, where she was then murdered.
The @eva.stories Instagram account went live for the start of Israel’s annual Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day on Wednesday evening. A massive advertising campaign promoting the project has drawn some controversy as to whether a social media platform like Instagram is appropriate for a serious look at the Holocaust. Proponents argue that this is the best and perhaps only way to get their attention and teach youth about the history of the Holocaust.
As of this writing, @eva.stories has over 700,000 followers in less than 24 hours since it was activated. Throughout Holocaust Memorial Day, short episodes are being upload as an actress playing Eva shows her Instagram followers what it was like when she and her family were forced out of their hometown in Hungary (in 1944, the year Eva wrote her diary, more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz). We follow Eva as she copes with wearing a yellow Jewish star, and see her horror as she watches Nazi stormtroopers harassing her mother.
Through the lens of Eva’s phone, we see her taken with her family from their beautiful life and home, packed into a filthy truck and thrown into the overcrowded, disease-infested ghetto. Through Eva’s selfie camera, followers can feel as though they are right there with her as she's forced onto a train that will transport her to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp from which she never returns.
Some 400 people were involved in the production. Mati Kochavi, an Israeli tech executive who produced the clips together with his daughter, developed a camera that the actress portraying Eva could hold like a phone. Tanks and truck were resourced, and extensive scenery recreated on set in Ukraine, where the production was filmed.
The Kochavi’s say they created “Eva Stories” in an effort to educate phone-connected post-millennials on Holocaust history and encourage them to remember the survivors who will soon no longer be with us. The Kochavis said the nonprofit project cost less than $5 million dollars to produce.
Despite criticisms that the smartphone world of selfies and stickers and emojis is an inappropriate platform to portray the horrors of the Holocaust, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the project days before it went online. My wife and I have been deeply moved by following the Instagram account. Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s distinguished Holocaust memorial, put out a statement that while it had not yet seen the project, “Yad Vashem believes that the use of social media platforms in order to commemorate the Holocaust is both legitimate and effective.”
Eva was killed in Auschwitz on Oct. 17, 1944, one of 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust. Her mother, Agnes Zsolt, survived the Holocaust and found her daughter's diary when she returned to their home in Hungary. She eventually committed suicide.
On Thursday morning, sirens wailed across Israel, and the entire country stood in silence as one to mourn and remember. By the end of the day, Eva's Instagram story will also come to an end.
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
The Holocaust as a Reminder of Our Enemy's Defeat
Thursday, May 02, 2019 | Ryan Jones
As our day-to-day life came to a brief, but total halt this morning during the two-minute siren calling upon us to remember the six million who perished in the Nazi Holocaust, it got me thinking about how that dark chapter was such an utter defeat, not for the Jewish people, but for the enemies of Israel.
Yes, the Jewish people suffered an unfathomable tragedy, and one that would have debilitated most other nations. But, as I sat in the park yesterday evening with my children, surrounded by hundreds of other Israeli families who were also there to participate in a ceremony marking the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day, I realized something.
We are just 75 years after a nearly-successful attempt to wipe out most of the world's Jewish population. And yet, the nation of Israel has never been stronger, more successful or more influential on the world stage than it is today.
The Nazis (and the bigger Enemy that stood behind them and all those who previously tried to annihilate Israel) succeeded in snuffing out six million individual Jewish lights. In their place arose in the form of the reborn State of Israel a beacon of light visible around the globe. The Enemy lost. Israel and the Jewish people are more at the forefront than ever before.
It sounds unprecedented, unbelievable, absurd even!
The prophet Isaiah thought as much when he first heard about what would happen thousands of years before it occurred:
"Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children" (Isaiah 66:8).
And yet, here we are.
PHOTO: David Cohen / Flash90
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Subscribe To The New Under Ground Church
Posts
All Comments