The late monarch used her royal powers for justice, against strong opposition, by making it possible to prosecute war criminals who escaped to the UK.
With the exception of one case in Poland, not a single Holocaust perpetrator has been convicted and punished in any of these countries since independence… …they have totally failed to confront their crimes, and have failed in every aspect of dealing with the Shoah.
The Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation welcomes the recent announcement that New Zealand has been accepted as an Observer by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Enemies have been many and friends have been few. And the character of friends like those of Le Chambon is ultimately only proven in times of peril. The Shoah taught us that those considered friends are worse than irrelevant if they will not act.
The Holocaust Foundation contributed to the Survey of Antisemitism in New Zealand 2021, conducted by the New Zealand Jewish Council. Download the report.
When opponents of government overreach don yellow stars and deface politicians’ images with moustaches, they do their cause no good and misuse history - a history that is increasingly under assault from both friend and foe.
The Holocaust Foundation was pleased to receive a request for our stories to be shown in the pavilion and event at the Israel Expo in Dubai. Our work was also featured in Berlin at an important event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference.
Certainly in the case of Nazi Germany, education did nothing to prevent the rise of a genocidal regime and the subsequent murder of six million Jews. Indeed, it seems clear that many of the philosophical assumptions underlying the education of the time only propelled Jew hatred. But what of the present day?
2021
‘Father knew things would become very bad for Jews. He wanted to leave for America. But mother said, “No, my brother is here. I want to stay with family.” So, in the end we were sent to a camp in Ukraine.’
Hearing that testimony in Hebrew in a German courtroom was an unforgettable experience and one which I found extremely moving.
“…the one and only aim of the military operations was to hold back the inevitable victory by the Soviet Union and the Western Allies long enough to complete the extermination of the Jews.”
In 2015 I travelled to Israel to attend the Global Forum For Combatting Antisemitism. While there Dr Efraim Zuroff introduced me to Lydia Brenners, a survivor living in Rishon Letzion. With a colleague I visited Lydia at her home and photographed her while she told her story of survival. Born in Novi Sad, in then Yugoslavia (now Serbia), she survived the 1942 Novi Sad massacre. Watch Lydia’s story of survival.
Lana Hart's op-ed "How long before we can forgive?" raised many important questions regarding the justice system and the attitude toward criminal offenders, among them the recently-deceased former Waffen-SS officer Willi Huber, who achieved hero status among local skiers for his contribution to the establishment of the skiing facilities on Mt. Hutt.
“Our history was patchy at best,” said Trotter. “In the period between 1933 and 1939 a paltry 1,100 Jews were permitted into New Zealand — and those under the most stringent requirements. The policy was harsh and punitive.”
NZ Green Party MP Ricardo Menendez recently tweeted an image of himself and fellow Green MPs Chloe Swarbrick and Golriz Ghahraman at an anti-Israel protest in Auckland. The text accompanying his tweet: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Over 260 attended the Yom HaShoah 2021 and “Auschwitz. Now.” opening event held at Elim Christian College. Guest speakers included H.E. Ambassador Ran Yaakoby, survivor Robert Narev OMNZ, Dr Sheree Trotter, Dame Lesley Max and Elim’s Murray Burton MNZM and Ps Steve Green. Rebbetzin Deb Levy Friedler MC’d the event.
This is a story about a Nazi war crimes investigation that began in 1945 and continued intermittently until 2021. It is a good example of why, even today, it is still important to try and achieve justice.
2020
For about 20 years, the EU has been largely inactive, incompetent, negligent, and at times even evil in the battle against antisemitism. During that period, Jew- and Israel hatred has greatly increased in the EU.
The Zoom interview of Dr Efraim Zuroff on his latest book, Our People: Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust, co-authored by Rūta Vanagaitė. The interview addresses the problem of Holocaust distortion and the double genocide theory i.e. the equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes.
Dr Efraim Zuroff, the Coordinator of Nazi war crimes research for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has joined the Holocaust Foundation as member of our International Council. Zuroff’s recent comments on the “local hero” status of Mt Hutt’s former Waffen-SS soldier Willi Huber have been widely reported in international media.
At 17, Huber volunteered for the Waffen-SS, and served as a machine-gunner, earning two Iron Cross medals on the eastern front. After the war, he was held as a PoW for 16 months. Despite this, Huber has been the subject of several laudatory media stories, including a controversial TVNZ programme in 2017, which was heavily criticised for glossing over and minimising his Nazi past.
“Watch me kill Nazis, Dad”.
That was my youngest son, probably about 8 or 9 years old at the time, desperately wanting his old man to witness his gaming prowess and thinking the fact he was mowing down Nazis might sweeten the deal…
Since George Floyd’s abhorrent death, a number of confirmed Farrakhan fanboys - Black people with big platforms and blue checkmarks - have apparently concluded that combatting racial hatred and uplifting the Black community requires rolling out a medley of Farrakhan’s greatest hits of antisemitic tropes, stereotypes and conspiracy theories.
As a historian, I can state unequivocally that serving in a Waffen-SS unit on the Eastern front, there is no way that Mr Huber could possibly not have been aware of the massive atrocities carried out by the SS and the Wehrmacht…
“It seems that generic education against racism will not address this problem, because many younger people fail to see antisemitism as a form of racism. They see Jews as part of the privileged, white elite who are immune from racism…”
A spat with actor Mel Gibson also resurfaced when Ryder revealed that he had once asked her if she was an ‘oven dodger’.
Having convinced the Germans that he was a Russian-born German, Shlomo became a translator for the Nazis.
“The memory of the Holocaust is under attack from many quarters – from deniers to those who would distort the history through re-writing, relativising and universalising.”
Seventeen MP’s from across New Zealand’s political spectrum attended the official opening of the new exhibition “Auschwitz. Now.” at Parliament on Tuesday.
“Auschwitz. Now.” will open in Parliament next week. Sponsored by Hon Alfred Ngaro MP, the staging will be held in the Bowen House exhibition space. An invitation-only event will be held on 2 March, attended by MPs and dignataries. Thereafter, public viewing will be possible Wednesdays and Thursdays 10am-3pm through the month of March.
Our nation has the dubious distinction of being the only Western country in which a tertiary institution holds a thesis denying the Holocaust. In addition, New Zealand is also one of the few western-style liberal democratic nations that has not joined the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance…
A small group of several hundred Jewish teen-age boys who had managed to escape from Nazi Germany before the Holocaust began, eagerly sought an opportunity of fighting against Hitler when the United States entered the Second World War at the end of 1941.
Five hundred turned up to the beautiful Performing Arts Centre at Bethlehem College on a sweltering evening, with many other events competing for attention.
I am not sure if the Jewish civilisation can heal from this atrocity yet, can let it pass into history in order to build a more whole and undefended persona. No matter what intent, such an event will stay buried in the collective psyche for years.
Twelve years ago I began interviewing Holocaust survivors. I have spent countless hours listening to stories of hell on earth. With reluctance, I realised it was time to visit the place where many of these incomprehensible events occurred - Auschwitz.
At least twenty-eight locations around the world carry the name Bethlehem. Best known of these is, of course, the birthplace of Jesus, twenty minutes drive from Jerusalem. The Bethlehem most distant from Jerusalem can be found in Tauranga, New Zealand – adjacent to a suburb named Judea.
Two of our Holocaust Foundation board members have been awarded special honours in the New Year honours list.
2019
An event to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz will be staged in Bethlehem College’s beautiful Performing Arts Centre on 25 January 2020.
Bob Narev MNZM is a survivor of Theresienstadt. He was recently interviewed by Gary Hoogvliet for Shine TV.
Auschwitz. In popular culture the term has become an archetypal symbol, a metaphor for ultimate evil. So mind-bending were the actions undertaken at this, the largest mass murder factory in human history, that Auschwitz has become ground zero on the moral landscape.
“Too often the Holocaust is considered as a standalone event, almost as though the Jews of Europe were simply unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the events of 1940s did not happen apart from the events of the 1930s. And those events did not happen apart from the German philosophical and theological writings of the previous four centuries…”
In 1986 or 1987 I had an electrifying encounter with Alice Newman, not that I knew her name. It was at the time of the visit to New Zealand of David Irving, now known as a Holocaust denier and revisionist, but then with a reputation as an accomplished historian, even though somewhat controversial.
Our recent event, Saving The Shoah, opened with a new Shadows of Shoah story, that of Alice Newman. Eleven years old when the Nazis invaded Poland, Alice and her mother were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto… Years later, in New Zealand, Alice had an encounter with Holocaust denier David Irving.
We exist in a world 54% of Americans have ever heard of the Holocaust and 32% of those believe the event has been greatly exaggerated or is a myth… Sadly, today there are worrying signs in Europe from groups that can’t honestly claim to be ignorant.
Shadows of Shoah is delighted to welcome Deb Levy as manager. Deb is a third generation Holocaust Survivor with a background in not-for-profit management and education.
Last month we learned of the passing of Moshe Fiszman. We had met Moshe in 2011 when we visited Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Centre to interview a number of survivors. He had a great impact on us. Moshe was profound and expressed himself in a way that connected deeply. I remember that we stopped and told him so.
…while the mini-skirt may be a trite example, the worrying spectre of white supremacists openly parading on European and American streets, the murder of Jews in places of worship, the blatant denial of the Holocaust in much of the Muslim world and the increasing acceptance of antisemitism in political discourse, all suggest that the lessons of the Holocaust have not been learnt.
The Holocaust ― the term given to the industrial-scale slaughter of the Jews of Europe ― is often examined in isolation. An event without precedent and without successor.
Today, one-third of Americans and nearly half of British people do not believe that 6 million Jews, more than one-third of the entire population of Jews in the whole world, were systematically murdered by the Nazis. Those who believe that the Holocaust happened at all, far under-estimate the death toll.
In an attempt to deal with an unconscionable history, the narrative of the past has, in many of East European countries, been rewritten.
Imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, Eli managed to escape and spent the rest of the war hiding. He attributed his survival to luck and the fact that he “didn’t look like a Jew.”
"The only country that refused to take legal action after a governmental enquiry was New Zealand”, says The Last Nazi Hunter, Dr Efraim Zuroff.
Roald was aware of the incredible danger that lay beyond his hiding place. Although he was confined in difficult circumstances Roald remembers being surrounded by family and cocooned in an atmosphere of love.