Photo dispatch: The good, the bad and the ugly

September 23, 2019

Tom Gross: This dispatch comprises photos with captions.


Marko Feingold, (in the photo above), one of the world’s oldest Holocaust survivors, has died at the age of 106. Feingold, who survived Auschwitz and three other Nazi death camps, died in the Austrian city of Salzburg on Thursday evening as a result of a lung infection, Austrian news agency APA reported.

Despite his advanced age, Feingold had remained active in speaking out about the Holocaust, taking part in numerous conferences and events for schoolchildren.

“I must have spoken to around half a million people all in all,” he told Agence France Presse in a 2018 interview, adding that he had sworn to himself in Auschwitz that if he survived he would tell his story.

Born on May 28, 1913, in the Austro-Hungarian empire in what is now Slovakia, Feingold was arrested in Prague and deported to Auschwitz.

Last year, then Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz visited Feingold and gave him an award.

 


Alex Borstein, who won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy yesterday evening, for her role in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” paid tribute during her acceptance speech to her mother and grandmother, who are both Hungarian-born Holocaust survivors.

Borstein said: “My grandmother turned to a guard. She was in line to be shot into a pit and she said, ‘What happens if I step out of line?’ He said, ‘I don’t have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will.’ And she stepped out of line. And for that, I’m here. And for that, my children are here.”

 


The European Jewish Association has demanded that the University of Ghent in Belgium remove its “racist and demeaning” video clips from the Flemish online dictionary for the hard of hearing that they have posted on the university website for students.

Above: A model gesturing a hooked nose on the university website in order to denote the word for “Jew.”

Thousands of Belgian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and racist stereotypes about Jews remain prevalent in Belgium today.

 


There is outrage among Jewish and other groups in Belgium after a large swastika painting (above) was put on display by a local politician at a Brussels art gallery several days ago.

Fatmir Limani is an artist as well as being the Socialist Party alderman in charge of cultural affairs in the Brussels-area municipality of Koekelberg.

His painting, titled “God created A. Hitler,” is scheduled to be featured until Sept. 30 in the prestigious Bog-Art gallery. The gallery is located 600 yards from the Brussels Jewish Museum, where four Jews were murdered in a 2014 terrorist attack.

 


Yet another Los Angeles synagogue has been targeted with anti-Semitic graffiti in recent days. The graffiti (above), outside the Temple Ahavat Shalom not so far from where the Poway synagogue shootings occurred earlier this year, reads “6 million $ was not enough.”

There were at least 1,879 attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions in the US in 2018, the third-highest year on record, according to the ADL.

Meanwhile violent unprovoked assaults on ultra-orthodox Jews continue in Brooklyn and the wider New York area.

On Saturday evening, two Jewish brothers were shot in the Canadian city of Montreal, although the police have not yet determined whether the motive was antisemitic.

 

British police today removed a huge banner hung by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn at the annual Labour Party conference depicting a vile antisemitic image of Benjamin Netanyahu. This and another even worse banner which resembled one used by the Nazis in 1930s Germany, were removed by the police for contravening British laws banning incitement to racial hatred. Video here.

(I am not including a photo of the other banner displayed by supporters of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, since it is so incendiary about the Holocaust.)

Seb Dance a British Labour MEP said: “I was appalled when I turned up at the conference today to see two disgusting cartoons. I am pleased to say the police have removed these.”

Anti-Corbyn Labour MP Stella Creasey expressed disappointment that the police had to be called in, and the posters were not removed by other Labour party members. She said “there should have been a queue [line] around the block to tear the posters down.”

 


Above: Quentin Tarantino, the director of “Pulp Fiction” and other classic movies, stands in line to buy popcorn at a local Jerusalem cinema last week. He had come to watch his own new film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. Tarantino is married to an Israeli, and visits the country often.

 


Air coexistence: Above, a (Muslim) airplane captain from Egypt, and a (Jewish) First officer from Israel, flying a plane together in the US last week.

Meanwhile, in a new poll released yesterday, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Arab-Israelis said they were proud to be Israeli citizens – the highest rate since 2003. Asked how they self-identify, 38 percent said as Arab, 36 percent said by religion (Muslim, Christian or Druze), 13 percent said as Palestinian and 9.5 percent said as Israeli.

 

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