The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Millions of Jews and other captive peoples were murdered here by the evil Nazi monsters. In Israel, world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and French President Emmanuel Macron gathered at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial to commemorate this event.
At the international gathering at Yad Vashem, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin wisely observed that “Antisemitism does not stop with Jews — no democracy is immune.” He also correctly and importantly noted that the state of Israel is not a form of compensation for the Holocaust: “It’s our homeland.” (“Live: 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz,” Israel National News, January 23, 2020.)
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Chair Mark Levenson, Esq. said, “We must never forget the Shoah, the attempt to murder literally every Jew in the world whom the Nazis could put their blood-drenched hands on. The Nazis horrifically murdered three quarters of European Jewry — over 6 million men, women, children, and babies.”
Morton A. Klein, who is a child of Holocaust survivors, was born in a displaced persons camp in Gunzberg, Germany. Mort’s father, Rabbi Herman Klein, who was born in the Carpathian Mountains area of Czechoslovakia, was an Auschwitz survivor. Rabbi Klein lost his first family, his parents, grandparents, eight brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Mort’s mother, Sarah Griner, of Tomazov-Lubelski, Poland, lost over half of her entire family in the Shoah.
Morton Klein and Mark Levenson stated: “Antisemitism, even when put to bed, is a very light sleeper. We see this from the deeply troubling surge of antisemitism in Europe, where Jews have been attacked and murdered by radical Muslims and neo-Nazis, and even here in the United States, where Jews have been attacked and murdered largely by white supremacists and a small group of Jew-hating African Americans.
“All of us, not only Jews, now have the task and challenge of rising to defeat the scourge of antisemitism.
“We ask everyone to join us in fighting against and condemning the mainstreaming and legitimizing of Jew-hatred by public figures in Congress, including Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and by Jew-hating Muslims including Linda Sarsour, Louis Farrakhan, Temple Univ. Prof. Mark Lamont Hill, and Columbia Univ. Prof. Rashid Khalidi; and by other Jew-hating, Israelophobic professors at Columbia, Michigan, Berkeley, and elsewhere.
“We also ask everyone to join us in condemning and combatting Jew-hating, Israelophobic groups, including the so-called Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP) and BlackLivesMatter.
“We also ask everyone to join our demands that Israel-hating staffers on presidential candidates Bernie Sanders’ and Elizabeth Warren’s campaigns must be fired immediately — and that Bernie Sanders must stop campaigning with Jew-hating Israelophobes Linda Sarsour and Ilhan Omar.
“We also ask everyone to join our demand that Congress must pass a resolution specifically condemning its antisemitic members by name, and must remove them from their committees.
And we ask everyone to join us in fighting and exposing the lies that are being promoted about Jerusalem and Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria; the falsehood that Israel is an “occupier” of historic, lawful Jewish lands; the false claim that Israel’s tolerant multi-faceted society is an “apartheid” state; and the false claim that distant descendants of Arabs who temporarily lived in Israel and voluntarily left Israel at the request of the Arab league are “refugees.
“We must likewise combat the dangerous anti-Israel groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Soros-funded J Street, and IfNotNow, that spread lies about Israel. Spreading hateful lies against the Jewish State increases and promotes hatred of the entire Jewish people.”
