Thursday, August 13, 2009

Fwd: Hamodia Kosher and Treif Press

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robin Ticker <faigerayzel@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 6:07 AM
Subject: re: Hamodia Kosher and Treif Press
To: letters@hamodia.com, weekly@hamodia.com

bs"d

Dear Editors of Hamodia, amv"sh

Thank you for returning my phone call. Let me start off for praising Homodia for many worthwhile articles. Last week you featured the Ethics Symposium Aseifa in Boro Park in response to the arrest of Rabbanim and politicians. The text of the speeches of this Aseifa were inspirational, informative and very newsworthy. Also the special report of the massacre in Hebron revisited 80 years later was excellent!

But... why do you have a headline reading "Reassuring Signals From Washington". Please visit the posts below and you will feel anything but reassured.

I understand your circulation is in the tens of thousands many of whom are in the chareidi community and your paper is their only source of news. Why then do you publish articles from AP, REUTERS and HAARETZ when these articles have a slant that is harmful to the the Torah, to Israel and to America.

Why bring to your paper treif sources? Can't you syndicate from the following Kosher sources

GOOD NEWS SOURCES

Palestinian Media Watch , www.palwatch.org,
Independant Media Review Analysis _IMRA
http://israelbehindthenews.com - David Bedein
Yosef and Melody Hartuv, Love of the Land,
http://www.eish-l.org subscribe to their newsletter
Israel National News - Arutz7
Act for America - Brigitte Gabriel
The David S. Wyman Institute forHolocaust Studies

http://www.afsi.org/OUTPOST/outpost.htm - link to past issues

Outpost July August 2009- (12 pages long, very worthwhile reading)

www.yeshabulletin.com (excellent online news source )

http://yeshabulletin.blogspot.com/

Women In Green Unbelievable!

Mattot Arim Unbelievable!

Example of Treif Press in Hamodia

White House Stands by Decision to Honor Robinson Washington (AP) August 5, 2009 D5 . (The worst thing this article can say about Mary Robinson, was that Jewish groups say Ireland's first female president is biased against Israel )

compare that with Arutz7 news item

Jewish Groups Slam Obama's Honoring Anti-Israel Leaders

Recently the news is filled with articles condemning Jews for money laundering and for tax evasion. Naturally, I do not promote money laundering or tax evasion. However, wouldn't most honest Americans prefer that their hard earned tax money be spent on Torah religious institution like Spinka rather than to Educational Institutions that promote terror and terrorists. Here is the proof! http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=608

I almost cried reading the exclusive to Hamodia - an interview with the Spinka Rebbe entitled "I am Hopeful that Others will Learn from What I Went Through" which is the admission of the Spinka Rebbe of wrongdoing at the Ethics Symposium that took place in Viznhnitz Hall. Hamodia says that the Rebbe lives in a simple apt. and described growing up in a home that was open to the public to all needy people all the time as his father told a Yid in need, "whenever you want come eat ..sleep and as a child never had a bed that was his own and was always giving his bed to guests, the homeless, the brokenhearted. Once when he got a silver Menorah as a Bar Mitzvah gift it was given to a needy family since he was told "He has nothing and you should have a silver Menorah?" This reminded me of the home of Rav Osher Freund zt"l that I myself had been to on several occasions. His Rebbetzin accepted that her home was public domain. So why did the Spinke Rebbe use money from sources that were not exactly legal? Out of desperation he said, to keep his institutions in operation and pay salaries of employees that had very large families. One has to admit though, isn't there some heavenly justice in the fact that money from Ehrlich Jews should not go to places that will harm Jews but rather to places that teach Torah. This is not money that was used for fancy cars and to support bad habits. However, the Rebbe did admit to wrongdoing and publicly said so.

But I am sure there is tremendous pain in being part of a chillul Hashem. This ethics committee, especially the lawyers made it clear that stealing and disregard of anothers property is wrong according to the Torah. Fear of getting caught, imprisonment, embarrassment and creating a chillul Hashem are not the primary motives for staying out of trouble. Doing the right thing is. Abiding Torah law keeps one out of Trouble. Rav Schorr quoted this Pasuk: Devarim 6:18


יח וְעָשִׂיתָ הַיָּשָׁר וְהַטּוֹב, בְּעֵינֵי יְהוָה--לְמַעַן, יִיטַב לָךְ, וּבָאתָ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה, אֲשֶׁר-נִשְׁבַּע יְהוָה לַאֲבֹתֶיךָ.	18 And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the LORD swore unto thy fathers,

What comes to mind is this. Wasn't the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Gush Katif blatent disregard for the property of a fellow Jew?Where was Yasher VeTov what is right and good? Where were the voices of SHAS, UTJ? How could we as a nation allowed that expulsion to happen? and happen again G-d forbid in Judea and Samaria?

The following was already sent to you but I am resending in case you did not see it.

I will reserve our discussion about whether or not Jews must wait for Moshiach to settle the Land to a future post. I suggested that perhaps money had something to do with Hamodia's Silence and failure to support a Torah position of entitlement of the Land rather than on a Torah position. You were deeply offended for the mere suggestion of any impropriety on the part of Hamodia. I came to this conclusion however, because it says that Bribery blinds the wise and the mainstream Jewish Press is blind to the fact that the Palestinian STate is equivalent to a Nazi State chas vechalila. Illegal money buying silence can come very subtly. Like via promises of gov't subsidies to religious institutions and a child allowance, silencing Rabbinic figures and silencing media who act as their spokespeople.

-----------------------

Is America using a substantial amount of tax money to benefit America or is that money being spent in ways that will actually bring harm to America and to Israel?

Here are some examples:

20.3 Million Dollars to relocate residents of Gaza to America It is a known fact that Gaza after the expulsion of Jews, is run by Hamas terrorists who have terrorized Southern Israel with rocket attacks and who would love to see the Jews and the Jewish State annihilated. Their ideology is no different than Nazi ideology and surpasses in passion by encouraging Jihad, and to be a Shahid a Martyr, to commit suicide for the sake of this "Holy War" against infidels. Why would Obama want these people in our country?

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/fsalvato/2009/02202009.htm

United States provides billions of dollars of loans to Israel but they are tied to conditions. U.S. re-approves Israel loan guarantees program

"According to the deal, the guarantees amount may be reduced for activities "the president of the United States determines are inconsistent with the objectives and understandings reached between the United States and State of Israel regarding implementation of the loan guarantee program."

United States does not recognize Judea and Samaria. parts of Jerusalem as legal and therefore are applying all kinds of pressures to end settlement in Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem. As a result, kindergartens are not being built in these areas and housing permits are not being issued. Checkpoints necessary for security for Jews in Judea and Samaria are being dismantled in the name of increasing freedom for Palestinians. (Freedom for more acts of terror?) Natural growth in Judea and Samaria is being affected by these "conditions".

USAID Inaugurated New Projects in the Northern West Bank
Many of these houses are empty but are situated along the highway providing a safe haven for terrorists to attack Israeli vehicles on the road.

...Since 1994, USAID has provided more than $2.2 billion in U.S. economic assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza via projects designed to reduce poverty, improve health and education, implement infrastructure and water projects, create jobs, and promote democracy and good governance.

U.S. Embassy, Consulate Cater to Arabs (INN Aug 6-7/09)

The US officially regards as "occupied territory" all of Judea and Samaria and all parts of Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Western Wall (Kotel) that were restored to the Jewish State in the Six-Day War in 1967. Their website caters only to Arabs. Please note that there is no Hebrew on this website.

http://jerusalem.usconsulate.gov/

U.S. Provides $200 Million in Budget Support to Palestinian Authority

Local Grant Summaries 2009

Obama Honors Durban Hate-Fest Organizer Mary Robinson

Why is America honoring Mary Robinson?

Honoring Mary Robinson, Obama honors appeasement of anti-Semitism

Posted by Gil Troy

US General Builds a Palestinian Army According to this article as of May 2009 th US has spent $161 Million dollars to train a Palestinian Army who allegedly is supposed to fight gangsters and Hamas. It is quite clear that this "army" is to build an army for a Palestinian State which is clearly against Israel's wishes and harmful for Israel's security. Why would we want our tax money to go for this?

Israel suffers another blow from the Obama administration

Ed Lasky writes: "The Obama administration has announced reversal of an important policy toward Israel, one that weakens that nation's ability to survive in its hostile neighborhood.

The key to Israel's strategy to avoid another Holocaust has been a policy of ambiguity over the question of whether it has nuclear weapons. Like many high-tech and potent weapons, a nuclear arsenal is best left sheathed. The reluctance of Israel to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NNPT) has allowed it to avoid a raft of intrusive inspections that might blow this policy of ambiguity to smithereens...
There is a range of tools that Barack Obama can use to try to compel Israel into signing the NNPT: threats to partnerships on weapons development, threats to withhold support in international organizations, public rebukes, threats regarding foreign aid and loan guarantees, and other ploys that can be used to coerce Israel into signing the Treaty."

So rather than filling up our Jewish newspapers with articles condemning and vilifying those arrested for tax evasion, lets take a closer look at the evils being perpetrated against Israel with LEGAL taxpaying Dollars. The more we look into it the more people might find justification to stop paying taxes unless they know that their taxes will be going to places that benefit America and society rather than to places that promotes terror and is to the detriment of America and Israel. And the more prosecutors publicize the evils of tax evasion highlighting the Jews, the greater our campaign should be to publicize the evils of our tax money supporting terrorist educational institutions and a terror Palestinian State.

The PA has its origins with an ideology aligned with Nazi Germany and whose founding father, the Mufti of Jerusalem was a partner with Hitler.

Let us emphasize and publicize the importance for Israel's ability to defend itself against its enemies.

Peter Bergson in Not Idly By :

"...Jews should begin not by screaming, 'While they're murdering six million Jews, the Gentiles stood idly by.' They should say, 'We stood idly by.'"

Monday, August 10, 2009

Evelyn Hayes1929-2009: 80 year Anniversary! a holocaust before the Holocaust. The Jewish story of Judenrid in Israel must be remembered and reported.

bs"d

An important post by Evelyn Haies! The massacre of Hebron was incited in 1929 by the Mufti Haj al Husseini a partner with Hitler. Fatah follows in his footsteps. Read the gruesome details and shudder at what our generation and our children are facing chas vechalila unless our generation WAKES UP. Hashem Yerachem!

"Of the Jewish Orphanings from Family and Country"

by Evelyn Hayes, author of The Plague Series because hearts were softened to accept the unacceptable

August 6, 2009

Today I met an orphan of the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem because of a blood libel. Shmuel Tsefania survived the massacre under his dead mother's body. He survived the Friday mutilations and massacre in the Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem called Nissan Bak, near the Damascus gate. When the Jews came to bury their dead on Friday, the bodies were un-identifiable. The burial was postponed until Saturday evening. The sound of a baby's cry came from below the dead. That baby is now 81. His tale is the tale of Jewish rights and reality that needs rectification for the dead and for the living. We heard his story and said kaddish in front of the mass grave at the Mount of Olives Cemetery.

From a loving established family, left was s a Jewish orphan. Not only was he orphaned, but the neighborhood of Batei Nissan lost most of its Jews in 1929 and all of its Jews by the Jordanian invasion and occupation in 1948. The neighborhood was established by a printer from Tsefat who left Tsefat because of the earthquake. . He also put up a shul, the tallest in the Old City which had housed 58 shuls which the Jordanians destroyed. It was called Batei Eshel Avraham. The parking lot outside this neighborhood where we parked today was all Jewish houses that were homes to 200 families. Jews were killed. An orphan survived. The neighborhood was almost Judenrid because of the pogroms that killed about 133 Jews. The dead of Nissan Bak are buried in a mass grave in the Mount of Olives Cemetery. We visited the dead again 80 years later. They rest above the valley looking at the walls of ancient Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple Mount. May their rest be more tranquil as there are Jews again living in their neighborhood orphaned of Jews, displaced from country and kept from reclamation because so many are ignorant of history and fail to claim what was taken illegally by savagery. As the world again screams divide Jerusalem, are they screaming for more Jewish orphans and more of Israel to be orphaned from its Jews? As the world screams that Jews are settling in East Jerusalem, do they fail to recognize this is Jewish property or are they part of a new blood libel that seeks to kill more Jews, take their property for their own.

In 1929, on a Friday, Haj al Husseini, of the clan warring with the Nashashibis incited a blood libel that led to mass murder and fleeing of the Jewish survivors from authentic established Jewish neighborhoods. He was installed by Jewish Sir Herbert Samuels as mufti, replacing the Nashashibis, making a terrorist a statesman and getting terrorism and a partnership with Hitler for genocide of the Jews. Making this terrorist a statesman made an infant orphan survivor in Jerusalem and another in Hebron. It also orphaned parts of the land from its Jewish people

It is eighty years later. Who remembers Muswara? Over 100 Israelis came to remember. They were the orphan, the survivors, those who were part of the country, leaders, tour guides and students, those who remembered and were learning of that which must not be orphaned from Jewish memory. Some experienced the massacres. Others felt it their duty to study and tell the story of the Jews in Eastern Jerusalem on the street named Ha Na'viim Street , the street of The Prophets, which continues across the highway from Meah Shearim to the Damascus Gate, an old Jewish neighborhood. We sat in the backyard garden under plum trees of Jewish owned and re-inhabited HaNavaaim 18 and recalled the massacres of 1929 in Jerusalem and Hebron.

The Arabs, incited by Husseini on the Temple Mount, first killed the Jews in Jerusalem and then went on to Hebron, announcing in "turnspeak" that Jews had killed the Arabs, doubling the incitement and the crime. Not only did a blood libel in Jerusalem mutilate and murder; the turnspeak libel caused the death of 67 Jews in Hebron, the injury of so many others and the orphaning of Jewish neighborhoods from the Jewish mandate for the Jewish people in the former Ottoman Empire, world recognized as a Jewish entity by the Bible, the Balfour Mandate and the League of Nations. Britain, custodian of that mandate failed as guardian to protect the people and even denied access to the 6,000,000 supporting genocide by Haj al Hussein and Hitler who was attacking Britain itself.

It is 80 years since, and this weekend the Yeshiva of Hebron will host its survivors. It will remember Shmuel Rosenholtz, a student from Yeshiva Hevron who the British police did nothing to protect. The Arabs even destroyed the Hadassah Hospital founded in 1891 which treated them as well as the Jews and also slaughtered the pharmacist who treated them. Although the British did not allow photos of the brutality and savagery worse than even chronicled in Sodom and Gemorrah, pictures can be seen in Beit Hadassah which houses a Museum in Memory of the Slaughtered, a reminder that there was a thriving ancient Jewish community in Hebron. Dr. Judith Resnick, the American astronaut had a father and grandfather learning in Hebron at the time. The Schneersons and Slonims were popular families in Hebron for centuries. Nachum Segal's father studied in Hebron. A Baby Shlomo Slonim survived, saved by his mother's dead body. Such miracles in the midst of madness left a baby survivor on bus #2 leaving the Kotel in the Olso Peace Process of today which seeks to orphan Jewish memory, neighborhoods with roots and realities of the Bible , all times as well as the pre and Mandate period from Israel proper. This attempted orphaning of Jews from history and place has the desire to genocide all Jews again. There were over 450 Jews in Hebron at the time. According to a Montefiore diary, there were 489 Jews in Hebron in 1865 and 4 yeshivas. Considering the failure of Jewish numbers to multiply, there was not natural growth. The world today is again ranting against natural growth and re-settlement of Jews. Although there are valid claims to the property of survivors, the Israeli government to please a world ignorant to the facts and favoring the facts of Jew deniers is enforcing Jewish orphaning from its homes, reinforcing the British land laws which ceased when Sir Moses Montefiore purchased Ramsgate in southern England in 1831. A proud Jew made it respectable for Jews. Ramsgate hosted the King, Queen and parliament. Strange that these land laws against the Jews which have been eliminated worldwide are activated against the Jews by the Jewish government in Israel. Perhaps it is because so many Jews came from the lands where pogroms raged and came to a land where pogroms had ravaged and orphaned.

With voices connected and united, informed and informing, let there be an end to Jewish orphaning, killing Jewish people and their rights to the land in their only eternal immemorial country to which they were always connected, the nation promised this land, exiled and now returned, always identifying and remembering. Let us remember and reclaim what belongs to those slaughtered and the Jewish nation, their inheritors. Let there not be denial, an orphaning from truth. Let there be affirmation and recapture of all the losses and let there be multiplications into what should have been and needs to be rectified and re-actualized.

Chevron Yeshiva Graduates to Visit the Holy City 80 Years After the Arab Massacre
August 3, 2009
It will be an emotional event, 80 years after the 1929 Arab massacre in Chevron, in which 76 Jews were murdered, 24 talmidim of the Chevron Yeshiva, talmidim and former talmidim will return to the Holy City, walking in the footsteps of the holy martyrs and seeing the area where the yeshiva once stood.
On Friday and Shabbos, 17 and 18 Av, will mark 80 years since that infamous act known as "Tarpat", taking place as the dates fall this year, on Friday and Shabbos. 24 students of the Slobodka Yeshiva in Chevron were among the Kedoshim, the daily HaMevaser reports.
The rabbonim at the time called for the kvura to take place in Yerushalayim but the British, who ruled, did not permit this, demanding the burials take place in Chevron.
A number of efforts over the years to return the yeshiva to Chevron failed, and today, it continues in Yerushalayim.
Marking 80 years, thousands of former talmidim are expected to visit Chevron to mark the event. In addition, arrangements have been made to bring relatives of the Kedoshim now living abroad to come to Eretz Yisrael to take part.
While the final schedule has not been decided upon, it appears they will visit the yeshiva site on Sunday, 19 Av, at 4:00pm. From there, the tens of buses will make their way to the Old City, and the Old Cemetery. Roshei Yeshiva and Rabbonim Shlita will address the tzibur.
At 7:00pm, mincha will take place in the Machpelah while a small group including selected talmidim and roshei yeshiva will visit the old building, now in an area under PA (Palestinian Authority) occupation under a heavy IDF presence. They will make a siyum on Kiddushin, daven mincha and recite kaddish for the Kedoshim.
On the way back to Yerushalayim, they will make a stop at Kever Rachel at about 8:30pm.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Billboards of USAID in SHDEMA and Dov Stein msg to Come on Aliya!

Billboard on the way to Shechem ("Nablus") boasting of USAID help towards the building of Arab infrastructure. Indeed the evidence of massive building is all too clear. That the source is US tax-payers money is simply outrageous!

2009/8/9 דב <dbtc@bezeqint.net>

Dear Robin Ticker

The conclusion is that USA is going to be Anti-Semitic and therefore the Jews should move to Israel with no delay. Remember Germany!!!!.

The existing of Jews any where in the world in any country makes this country rich and with power, The existing of Jews(3-6 Millions) in USSR made the Anti-Semitic policy of this country at the past dangerous to Israel. The improved weapons that were sent to the Arab countries were paid by Jewish blood when the brain behind these weapons was often Jewish. The same is now happened with USA. USA is sending improved weapons to Saudi and Egypt and Jordan. This weapons may some times be against Israel. The fact that USA is also sending weapon to Israel does not necessarily empowered Israel because if any conflict will occurs between Israel and Arabs USA will be able to force Israel to obey to it's dictates otherwise no fixing part will be delivered and the weapon will be useless. So leave USA now when it is possible before the economic crisis is going to be happened (The experts are expecting it will occurs in October) and therefore the anti-Semitic will raise and you will not be able to save your property and you will come, If you will be able to come, to Israel as refugees with small ability to accept you and to feed you etc. If you come now you will be able to use your property to absorbed in the Israel economy. Beside you should know that Israel thru 60 years became from a very poor country to developed country and the Jewish brain will make this country thru the next 40 years to be the richest country in the world.

Dov Stein

Re: Money Laundering - Where is our hard earned honest American taxes going??

bs"d

Recently the news is filled with articles condemning Jews for money laundering and for tax evasion. Naturally, I do not promote money laundering or tax evasion. However, wouldn't most honest Americans prefer that their hard earned tax money be spent on Torah religious institution rather than to Educational Institutions that promote terror and terrorists http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=608

Is America using a substantial amount of tax money to benefit America or is that money being spent in ways that will actually bring harm to America and to Israel?

Here are some examples:

20.3 Million Dollars to relocate residents of Gaza to America It is a known fact that Gaza after the expulsion of Jews, is run by Hamas terrorists who have terrorized Southern Israel with rocket attacks and who would love to see the Jews and the Jewish State annihilated. Their ideology is no different than Nazi ideology and surpasses in passion by encouraging Jihad, and to be a Shahid a Martyr, to commit suicide for the sake of this "Holy War" against infidels. Why would Obama want these people in our country?

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/fsalvato/2009/02202009.htm

United States provides billions of dollars of loans to Israel but they are tied to conditions. U.S. re-approves Israel loan guarantees program

USAID Inaugurated New Projects in the Northern West Bank
Many of these houses are empty but are situated along the highway providing a safe haven for terrorists to attack Israeli vehicles on the road.

U.S. Embassy, Consulate Cater to Arabs (INN Aug 6-7/09)

U.S. Provides $200 Million in Budget Support to Palestinian Authority

Local Grant Summaries 2009

Obama Honors Durban Hate-Fest Organizer Mary Robinson

Why is America honoring Mary Robinson?

Honoring Mary Robinson, Obama honors appeasement of anti-Semitism

Posted by Gil Troy

US General Builds a Palestinian Army According to this article as of May 2009 th US has spent $161 Million dollars to train a Palestinian Army who allegedly is supposed to fight gangsters and Hamas. It is quite clear that this "army" is to build an army for a Palestinian State which is clearly against Israel's wishes and harmful for Israel's security. Why would we want our tax money to go for this?

Israel suffers another blow from the Obama administration

Ed Lasky writes: "The Obama administration has announced reversal of an important policy toward Israel, one that weakens that nation's ability to survive in its hostile neighborhood.

The PA has its origins with an ideology aligned with Nazi Germany and whose founding father, the Mufti of Jerusalem was a partner with Hitler.

Let us emphasize and publicize the importance for Israel's ability to defend itself against its enemies.

Peter Bergson in Not Idly By :

"...Jews should begin not by screaming, 'While they're murdering six million Jews, the Gentiles stood idly by.' They should say, 'We stood idly by.'"

Friday, August 07, 2009

For Journalists - Authentic- NOT IDLY BY: PETER BERGSON AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST

bs"d

The first email Paul Rotenberg sent was Rabbi Amar's letter addressed to Rabbanim and Dayanim of the Diaspora

Time will tell whether they respond to the Chief Rabbi of Israel regarding the Commandment to Settle the Land.

This email has links to individuals in the past like Peter Bergson, who tried to prevent the Holocaust and more mass extermination of Eastern Europe in Hungary, but was not successful. One can argue on the bright side that had they been successful. I never would have been born. Maybe my Father's first wife and child would have survived and my father would never have married my mother. This consolation is only the remnant of shattered glass. Our job in this world is not to contemplates this matter but rather to do whatever we can to keep the Mitzvoth and create a Kiddush HASHEM and prevent another Holocaust chas vechalila. Rabbi Weissmandl comes to mind and his pain is mirrored in in the Kina for the Silence of America in the time of the Holocaust 1944.

Journalists, please note that mainstream Press such as AP and JTA in our generation is turning a blind eye to the evil generated this very week at the Palestinian Conference.

Shabbat Shalom Umevorach!!

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:14 AM, Paul Rotenberg <pdr@rogers.com> wrote:

Bergson. Ben Hecht, Jabotinsky, etc. were all vilified by the mainstream Jewish community. What would happen today?

This is the second of two related emails. I am sending two emails that have come to me in the past 24 hours.

It is so disappointing how little has changed in the past 1000's of years, but really in the last 60 years. We can learn from the 1000's but are responsible only for the 60. A small group works desperately hard for world Jewry and the "leadership" is silent, or worse, acquiescent to the problem. Ezra and Nechemia returned to Israel with only a small minority of the Jewish community, what about the rest? Similarly, there is a serious issue behind the Midrash that 4/5^ths of the Jewish community died during the plague of darkness and only 1/5^th left with Moses. What is The Rabbi's message to us in this story? Something about our belief in Torah, our mandate, our people? So, did we not learn from the holocaust?

I sat at the book launch of M.J.Nurenberger's book "The Scared and the Doomed" (you should read the book) and someone stood up after a scholarly presentation of American/World Jewry's response to the holocaust and asked "Why did the Jewish community not find a way to bomb the train tracks into the concentration camps?" Such a simple, inexpensive solution. I, myself know someone who was in the air force and volunteered for a mission to do just that, he said there was an entire volunteer crew who wanted to do it, but the Allied Forces leadership declined to mount the mission. The Allied Forces declined. Does that mean we are all absolved? There was nothing we could do? I sat there listening to this man ask the question and thought "They are going to ask us this same question". The very knowledgeable and academic lecturer stood there and had no answer. What could he say? They didn't try hard enough? They weren't really interested? They were too scared? They didn't know what was happening. The truth is most of the community really did nothing. I am a grandchild of that generation, and I have the benefit of having the scripts from my grandmother's weekly news show on the CBC. Yes my grandmother was on the air, here in Canada in the early 40's, national radio. In 1942 she talked about it on the radio, the concentration camps, the mass murder, the plight of European Jewry. Not much response. So we ask our grandparents "Why didn't anybody bomb the tracks? Do anything?".

What will we say when our grandchildren ask us? Will we have an answer for them?

Paul

DEAR FRIENDS; ANYONE WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN THIS PROJECT, TO BRING THIS DOCUMENTARY TO TORONTO THIS FALL, PLEASE CONTACT WITH IZZY KAPLAN

THIS MAY BE THE 3RD OR 4TH DOCUMENTARY ON THE SAME TOPIC TO COME OUT IN THE LAST 2 YEARS.   HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF IN FRONT OF OUR VERY EYES, BUT NO ONE SEEMS TO BE RESPONDING. WE CONTINUE TO RECEIVE THE MESSAGE THAT NO ONE IS HEEDING!

NOT IDLY BY Peter Bergson, America and the Hololcaust

a documentary short by Pierre Sauvage (40 min., Varian Fry Institute, 2009)

We said we didn't know.
We said we couldn't have done anything even if we had known.

Peter Bergson, a militant Jew from Palestine,
led a controversial American effort to fight the Holocaust.

This is his testimony.

UPCOMING SCREENINGS

Pending, fall 2009

COMMENTS

During World War II, Peter Bergson led the single most effective public campaign to press the U. S. government to try to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. This excellent film, meticulously assembled by Pierre Sauvage, presents Bergson's own powerful testimony about the obstruction that he and his group met—and about the very limited commitment to rescue that was finally extracted from the Roosevelt Administration.
    Dr. David S. Wyman, historian, author, The Abandonment of the Jews and co-author, A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust

A provocative film about a provocative man who is finally given his full say for history on one of the enduring questions of the Shoah: What could have been done by the U.S. and its allies and by American Jews to save the Jews of Europe—and why wasn't it done. Bergson presents his views boldly and Pierre Sauvage has empowered him for posterity.
    Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust scholar, served as project director in the creation of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

The film—of the utmost importance—shines a bright light on a shamefully neglected aspect of the tormented and at the same time uplifting story of the Jewish people.
    Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer, and one of Britain's leading historians

This provocative film will open festering wounds that need to be pierced to form a scab of healing.  No one who witnesses this cautionary tale will leave unmoved.
    Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis

Bergson's voice resounds, his passion challenges anew, as he warns that massive abuses of human life will rage with impunity as long as people of all kinds are silent, fearful, and busy with other news. By remembering the past, Bergson and Sauvage rightly hold all of us accountable in the present and for the future.
    Dr. John K. Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy; Founding Director, The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College

Pierre Sauvage's new documentary means much to all those who work for remembering the Tragedy.
    Elie Wiesel

A fascinating and powerful film about a man whose words and actions were, tragically, ignored.
    Bernard Weinraub, author, The Accomplices, a play about Peter Bergson and those times in America

Documents the agonizing efforts by Bergson, a militant Palestinian Jew, to arouse America in the early 1940s to the Nazi extermination of Europe's Jews. Based largely on interviews with Bergson decades later, the documentary chronicles his rare triumphs, but mainly his inability to break through the don't-make-waves mentality of the Jewish establishment, hostility of the U.S. State Department and political caution of President Roosevelt. Director Pierre Sauvage (Weapons of the Spirit), noting current threats facing the Jewish people, observed "How can we meet the challenges of the future, if we don't examine the failures of the past?"
    Tom Tugend, Jewish Journal, Los Angeles, April 15, 2009

An insightful filmmaker's vision of this legendary man.
    All About Jewish Theatre: L. A. Celebrates Peter Bergson

    PAST SCREENINGS
Lessons and Legacies Holocaust scholars' conference, Nov 1, 2009 (paper and excerpts from work-in-progress)
American Jewish University, Los Angeles, March 18, 2009 (full work-in-progress screening), under the auspices of Dr. Michael Berenbaum, with Pierre Sauvage
Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, April 26, 2009, with Pierre Sauvage
Temple Valley Beth Shalom, Encino, CA, May 11, 2009, 7:30pm, followed by panel discussion with Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, and Pierre Sauvage
Association of Holocaust Organizations convention, June 8, 2009, Chapman University, Orange, CA, with Pierre Sauvage


Other documentaries, past and future, by Pierre Sauvage:
Weapons of the Spirit—20^th anniversary edition!
Yiddish: the Mame-Loshn—30th anniversary DVD edition of the Emmy Award-winning documentary, to be released summer 2009
And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille—upcoming in 2010 Long-in-the-making feature documentary about the most successful private American rescue effort of World War II



Peter Bergson in Not Idly By :

"We cannot resurrect the dead. Eighty-five or ninety percent of those that Hitler wanted to kill were killed. What we can do and what we must do is reexamine ourselves.

I am the last one on earth to condone the passivity of the political leadership of the United States—with President Roosevelt at the head—and of Great Britain, and of the Soviet Union, itself in a state of occupation by a tyrant.

But the people who should have dramatized, shook up, awakened the... otherwise busy, like Ben Hecht's ballad [see above and below]—'the world is busy with other news'—the otherwise 'unrealizing' world leadership to what's going on should have been the Jewish leaders. They knew the Jews were being killed. But the grasp wasn't there.

You couldn't have stopped the massacre. You could have slowed the massacre. You could have made it an inefficient massacre. The people who made it efficient were the Allies who didn't interfere. And the people who didn't urge them to interfere were the Jews.

Jews should begin not by screaming, 'While they're murdering six million Jews, the Gentiles stood idly by.' They should say, 'We stood idly by.'"

Most Americans—even many American Jews—believe that we didn't know. Many assume that we couldn't have done anything even if we had known. Meet Peter Bergson!

Until 1941 Nazi Germany had persecuted and sought to expel the Jews. But the doors of the West had remained closed to them. It was only then that the free nations of the world had faced a new Nazi policy: mass murder of the Jews of Europe.

A Palestinian Jew who had served with the nationalist Irgun organization in pre-Israel Palestine, Peter Bergson (born Hillel Kook, 1915-2001), had come to the U.S. in 1940. In America, this firebrand led what came to be known as the Bergson Group, whose strenuous efforts from 1942 to 1945 underscore just how much was known—and how much was attempted during those difficult years.

Vilified at the time—American Jewish leader Rabbi Stephen Wise reportedly characterized him as "equally as great an enemy of the Jews as Hitler," while others castigated the group as fascist or terrorist—Bergson remains a controversial yet relatively obscure figure in the history of America and the Holocaust.

Not Idly By—currently nearing release and available for film festival screenings—provides the riveting first-hand testimony of the charismatic and eloquent Bergson, who comments on the response to the crisis by non-European Jews and describes his determined efforts to fight the Holocaust: the innovative and provocative full-page political ads in major newspapers, the poignant, assertive 1943 Ben Hecht/Kurt Weill pageant We Will Never Die, the rabbis' march in Washington before Yom Kippur 1943, the creation of various activist committees and the energetic and productive lobbying of American government officials that ultimately helped lead to the establishment at last of a U.S. rescue agency. This is a one-sided view of those times: Peter Bergson's.

Coincidentally, Bergson is also the posthumous star of the 2009 Simon Wiesenthal Center feature documentary, Against the Tide. Has Peter Bergson's time come at last? With his help, can we break through the taboos that shroud the American experience—and the American Jewish experience—of that challenging time in history? Do Americans--Jewish and non-Jewish--not need to consider and probe further our share of responsibility in the massacre of the Jews of Europe? How can we expect to meet tomorrow's challenges effectively if we don't probe our related failures in the past?

Both Bergson documentaries (Sauvage's has been in the works since 2007) draw on the unused interview shot by Claude Lanzmann in 1978 for his epic 1985 Shoah. In addition, Not Idly By exclusively benefits from the passionate and detailed interview Bergson granted to filmmaker Laurence Jarvik for the latter's ground-breaking 1982 documentary Who Shall Live and Who shall Die? Also featured in Not Idly By are extensive audio excerpts from the Hollywood Bowl production of the historic 1943 "pageant" We Will Never Die, heard extensively for the first time since 1943.

An Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker (Yiddish: the Mame-Loshn—"the mother tongue"—to be released in a 30th anniversary DVD edition in summer 2009), Pierre Sauvage, himself a child survivor of the Holocaust, is the president of the Chambon Foundation (www.chambon.org), which includes the Varian Fry Institute. Upcoming in 2010 is Sauvage's long-in-the-making feature documentary about American rescuers during the refugee crisis of 1940-41, And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille.

Sauvage is best known for his acclaimed feature documentary Weapons of the Spirit, which will be rereleased in 2009 in a special 20^th anniversary edition. The film tells the story of a unique "conspiracy of goodness" during the Holocaust: in and around the Christian village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France, 5,000 Jews found shelter, including Pierre, who was born there. At the Holocaust commemoration at the U.S. Capitol on April 23, 2009, President Barack Obama invoked the example of Le Chambon to encourage Americans to "strive each day, both individually and as a nation, to be among the righteous (see www.chambon.org.)

Believing that it would help to know more about the Righteous, for over twenty-five years the Chambon Foundation's mission has been "to communicate and explore the necessary lessons of hope intertwined with the Holocaust's unavoidable lessons of despair." Pierre Sauvage seeks to do this both through his documentary work and through his popular video-accompanied presentations, The Challenge To Us of Holocaust Rescuers and Did Americans Fight the Holocaust?

a Varian Fry Institute production

On Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust

a few of the advertisements taken out in major newspapers by the "Bergson Group":

The upcoming DVD of Not Idly By will contain bonus materials: interviews with Peter Bergson's widow, Nili Kook, his daughter, Dr. Rebecca Kook, a lecture by Dr. David S. Wyman on The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945, as well as additional filmed interviews, audio recordings, information, photographs and documents.

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