NJ GSI Conference Schedule

Rutgers University Busch Campus Center

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10:00-10:15 am – Registration
10:15 –10:30 am - Welcome
Dr. Paul Winkler – Executive Director, NJ Commission on Holocaust Education
Dina Cohen - GSI
Dr. Gary Rendsberg – Chair, Jewish Studies, Rutgers

10:30 – 11:15 am - Keynote  – Contributing to the Conversation:  Facts and Fictions
Discussion, Reading and Book Signing by
Thane Rosenbaum

Critically-Acclaimed Novelist , Human Rights Law Professor, Essayist on culture and politics

11:20 – 12:30 – Panel Discussion

            Creative Responses to the Legacy of the Holocaust

 Carolyn Dorfman – Dance

Naava Piatka - Theater

Debbie Teicholz-Guedalia - Photography/Art

Barbara Wind - Poetry

12:35 – 1:15 pm – Lunch – Honoring the Torchbearers, Sharing Session

1:20 – 2:50 pm – Workshops

Psychological Legacy of the Holocaust –  Dr. Irit Felsen

Transforming Memory: A Writing Workshop –  Dr. Nancy Gerber

Speaking Effectively about the Holocaust – Esther Finder

Roots in Pages of Testimony – Ilana Apelker, American Society for Yad Vashem

2:50 – 3:00 Wrap-up

3:15 – Special performance: Reading of the play, Dear Esther, about Sobibor survivor Esther Raab, introduced by her son Abe Raab

Book signings            Art Showcase

CONTRA COSTA TIMES/MERCURY NEWS.COM
This might not be the newsiest or most surprising day around People Central. Madonna didn’t get in trouble. Mel Gibson isn’t talking. And rapper C-Murder is in trouble for … you guessed it.

So let’s start with Gibson, who turned down an offer to publicly apologize to Los Angeles Jews on holy day Yom Kippur for anti-Semitic comments he made last month, according to IMDb.com. Rabbi David Baron invited the actor to speak with his Temple of the Arts congregation to prove he isn’t anti-Semitic. Gibson made anti-Jewish comments to a traffic cop during an arrest for suspicion of drunken driving in Malibu last month.

Baron told Web site Tmz.com he has since been contacted by Gibson’s publicist, who thanked him for his offer, but declined. “I was told Mr. Gibson is deeply involved in personal work, which includes rehab, therapy and counseling for alcoholism,” he said.

Don’t worry, rabbi. One of those 12 steps involves celebrities apologizing to the thousands upon thousands of people they don’t remember offending. He’ll come around.

Baron is still not willing to give up on the movie star, extending the offer to a later date. He’s also volunteered to join with a group of Jewish leaders dedicated to educate Gibson about the dangers of anti-Semitism.

Reuters, Aug. 21:

MUMBAI, India - A new restaurant in India’s financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler and promoted with posters showing the German leader and Nazi swastikas, has infuriated the country’s small Jewish community.

Hitler’s Cross, which opened last week, serves up a wide range of continental fare and a big helping of controversy, thanks to a name the owners say they chose to stand out among hundreds of Mumbai eateries.

“We wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people’s minds,� owner Punit Shablok told Reuters. “We are not promoting Hitler. But we want to tell people we are different in the way he was different.�

But India’s remaining Jews — most migrated to Israel and the West over the years — say they are outraged by the gimmick.

“This signifies a severe lack of awareness of the agony of millions of Jews caused by one man,� said Jonathan Solomon, chairman of the Indian Jewish Federation, the community’s umbrella organization.

“We are going to stop this deification of Hitler,� he said without elaborating.

The small restaurant, its interior done out in the Nazi colors of red, white and black, also has a lounge for smoking the Indian water pipe or “hookah.�

Posters line the road leading up to it, featuring a red swastika carved in the name of the eatery. One slogan reads: “From Small Bites to Mega Joys.�

A huge portrait of a stern-looking Füehrer greets visitors at the door. The cross in the restaurant’s name refers to the swastika that symbolized the Nazi regime.

“This place is not about wars or crimes, but where people come to relax and enjoy a meal,� said restaurant manager Fatima Kabani, adding that they were planning to turn the eatery’s name into a brand with more branches in Mumbai.

The swastika has its roots in ancient Indian Hindu tradition and remains a sacred symbol for Hindus. Nazi theorists appropriated it to bolster their central hypothesis of the Aryan origins of the German people.

From Townhall.com

It is hard to think of a time when a nation — and a whole civilization — has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean that it is only a matter of time before there are nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorist organizations. North Korea needs money and Iran has brazenly stated its aim as the destruction of Israel — and both its actions and its rhetoric suggest aims that extend even beyond a second Holocaust.

Indonesian protesters carry a picture of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and shout slogans calling on Iran to stop its nuclear program, outside the Iranian embassy in Jakarta August 9, 2006. REUTERS/Dadang Tri (INDONESIA)

Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

This is not just another in the long history of military threats. The Soviet Union, despite its massive nuclear arsenal, could be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred.

Fanatics filled with hate cannot be either deterred or bought off, whether Hezbollah, Hamas or the government of Iran.

The endlessly futile efforts to bring peace to the Middle East with concessions fundamentally misconceive what forces are at work.

Hate and humiliation are key forces that cannot be bought off by “trading land for peace,” by a “Palestinian homeland” or by other such concessions that might have worked in other times and places.

Humiliation and hate go together. Why humiliation? Because a once-proud, dynamic culture in the forefront of world civilizations, and still carrying a message of their own superiority to “infidels” today, is painfully visible to the whole world as a poverty-stricken and backward region, lagging far behind in virtually every field of human endeavor.

There is no way that they can catch up in a hundred years, even if the rest of the world stands still. And they are not going to wait a hundred years to vent their resentments and frustrations at the humiliating position in which they find themselves.

Israel’s very existence as a modern, prosperous western nation in their midst is a daily slap across the face. Nothing is easier for demagogues than to blame Israel, the United States, or western civilization in general for their own lagging position.

Hitler was able to rouse similar resentments and fanaticism in Germany under conditions not nearly as dire as those in most Middle East countries today. The proof of similar demagogic success in the Middle East is all around.

What kind of people provide a market for videotaped beheadings of innocent hostages? What kind of people would throw an old man in a wheelchair off a cruise liner into the sea, simply because he was Jewish? What kind of people would fly planes into buildings to vent their hate at the cost of their own lives?

These are the kinds of people we are talking about getting nuclear weapons. And what of ourselves?

Do we understand that the world will never be the same after hate-filled fanatics gain the ability to wipe whole American cities off the face of the earth? Do we still imagine that they can be bought off, as Israel was urged to buy them off with “land for peace” — a peace that has proved to be wholly illusory?

Even ruthless conquerors of the past, from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, wanted some tangible gains for themselves or their nations — land, wealth, dominion. What Middle East fanatics want is the destruction and humiliation of the west.

Their treatment of hostages, some of whom have been humanitarians serving the people of the Middle East, shows that what the terrorists want is to inflict the maximum pain and psychic anguish on their victims before killing them.

Once these fanatics have nuclear weapons, those victims can include you, your children and your children’s children.

The terrorists need not start out by wiping our cities off the map. Chances are they would first want to force us to humiliate ourselves in whatever ways their sadistic imaginations could conceive, out of fear of their nuclear weapons.

After we, or our children and grandchildren, find ourselves living at the mercy of people with no mercy, what will future generations think of us, that we let this happen because we wanted to placate “world opinion” by not acting “unilaterally”?

We are fast approaching the point of no return.

By Steven Alan Carr

Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Just as news was breaking of Mel Gibson’s Tequila-induced tirade against the Jews during his drunken-driving arrest, as fate would have such moments, Variety was publishing a full-page ad from Comedy Central lauding an Emmy nomination for the controversial animated series “South Park.�

“C’mon Jews,� the ad urges. “Show them who really runs Hollywood.� But rather than allude to the series’ controversial episode, “The Passion of the Jew,� which satirizes Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,� the ad refers to “Trapped in the Closet,� another controversial episode satirizing Scientology. Earlier this year, Comedy Central canceled a scheduled rerun of the Scientology episode, purportedly under duress from actor and Scientologist Tom Cruise.

The two incidents both reveal and replenish the ongoing storehouse of a distinctly American obsession: allegations of Jewish control over Hollywood. Of course, the Variety ad makes an ironic reference to such allegations. And the Gibson incident does not so much reveal a belief in Jewish control over Hollywood as it shows how someone prominent in Hollywood still believes in Jewish world domination.

In “Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History Up to World War II,� published in 2001, I coined the term “Hollywood Question� to describe this storehouse of statements, ideas and half-truths concerning Jews. “Hollywood Question� is derivative of the earlier, arcane, though better known “Jewish Question,� which interrogated important matters at the turn of the last century like whether Jews should have the right to vote or own land. The born-again Hollywood version politely asks whether Jews should wield such enormous control over the emergent and powerful apparatuses of mass influence, given their supposed penchant for acting as, well, Jews.

In “Hollywood and Anti-Semitism,� I documented just a few iterations of the Hollywood Question. And Mel Gibson is hardly alone in modern Hollywood. As recently as 1988, when MCA/Universal released Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ,� the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association wrote a letter of protest to the company asking, “How many Christians are in the top positions of MCA/Universal?�

Dolly Parton once explained a failed TV series about a gospel singer as a result of having to face people in Hollywood who “are Jewish. And it’s a frightening thing for them to promote Christianity.� After learning that the Riverside Police Department had visited a Rodney King-style beating upon Mexican migrant workers, Marlon Brando blamed the incident on Hollywood Jews who perpetuated the ethnic stereotypes that led to this violence.

Thus, when conservative columnist Cal Thomas weighs in on the Gibson affair (Journal Gazette, Aug. 4), he apparently remains oblivious to this history, even in the face of Gibson’s being slated to produce a miniseries on the Holocaust for ABC, an off again-on again arrangement for the network. Instead, Thomas minimizes the significance of these remarks, noting that “no honest person can say he or she has never felt bigotry against a person or group of people,� and wondering aloud why commentators care more about Gibson’s slurs against Jews than the “offense to his wife and children� for carousing in a bar until 2 a.m. The incident then becomes a pretext for Thomas to rail about Hollywood’s bigotry toward “Catholics and conservative Protestants.�

The allegation of Jewish control, of course, is bunk. That Jews always act as Jews in a secular context has as much to do with Jewish religious identity as Mel Gibson’s driving drunk has to do with Traditional Catholicism. The latter sect rejects modern reforms to Catholicism implemented by the Second Vatican Council beginning in the 1960s, and it is the version of Catholicism with which Gibson reportedly identifies.

Yet the question of whether Jews can behave themselves within secular society persists because of a mind-bending combination of historical anti-Semitism; both legitimate and irrational unease with an emergent modern society; and, of course, in a culture in which Protestantism appears transparently natural and normal, the ease with which the American image of the Jew provides a convenient palimpsest for Christian and non-Christian alike to inscribe upon their deepest fears and worries.

If Jews maintain a higher profile within Hollywood than other groups, that is because the film industry, in its infancy at the early 20th century, was one of the few places where Jews could find employment while they were being barred from such fields as law, finance, top-flight universities or even from getting a room at a hotel.

Instead of acknowledging the shameful tolerance for anti-Semitism that existed within the U.S. before the end of World War II, some prominent Americans even today prefer to hide their persistent ambivalence toward both Jews and popular culture – in some quarters, a redundant distinction – by cloaking their Hollywood Question within the more polite and acceptable view of Christianity victimized by both the commerce and liberal politics of Hollywood.

The rigidly literal correctness of this position fails to consider an alternative: That while alcohol-induced fogs might bring upon politically incorrect views of Jewish intent, a preponderance of evidence would suggest that if one is anti-Semitic, one is much more likely to act as an anti-Semite. In producing the highest-grossing independent film in history, Gibson relied upon a discredited and anti-Semitic retelling of the story of Jesus. He adheres to an ultraconservative religious sect that rejects the Second Vatican Council’s call to not hold Jews responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.

And while one cannot hold Gibson responsible for the views of his father, the fact that Gibson never fully distanced himself from the blatant Holocaust denial of his father Hutton Gibson has been cause for concern among many Jews.

Like others before him, Gibson already has embarked down the predictable trail of apologies and redemptive theatrics. The incident will soon be forgotten. A history of genocide already has shown that anti-Semitism goes way beyond any one person’s individual weakness or failing. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Question will continue to churn, occasionally surfacing for the next brouhaha, but mostly submerged beneath a history that many Americans while sober seem content to forget.

Seattle POST INTELLIGENCER

By JOHANN HARI
GUEST COLUMNIST

A sweet little granny was sitting next to me, knitting a scarf. She was listening to an elderly professor as he delivered a speech about the Holocaust. Every now and then, at the most rousing moments, this tiny old woman would mutter her agreement. “Kikes,” she said absently as she nodded her head. “Dirty f… kikes.” Nobody objected; nobody even turned to look. This Nazi granny was among friends.

I was sitting in a bland hotel in Orange County, Calif. — one of those interchangeable global hotels that could be anywhere, or nowhere — at the 2003 conference of the “Institute for Historical Review.” It’s an outfit of maniacs who claim the Holocaust is at best exaggerated, at worst a fabrication. Robert Faurisson, a disgraced former professor of literature at the University of Lyons, represented the conference’s liberal wing: In his speech, he admitted, “The Jews were persecuted,” but quickly added, “They were protected by Hitler too.” Some grumbled — why was he so soft?

That conference has been coming back to me in Vietnam-style flashbacks over the past month. Once you have been in an immersion tank of pure Jew-hatred, it’s easier to spot its diluted flavor elsewhere. I hear it now mostly not from the Faurissons and Mel Gibsons but from people who consider themselves liberal and anti-racist.

While Israel was bombing Lebanon in its obscene, pointless war, the priority was to condemn it. Now that the Lebanese war is finally stammering to an end — although the crimes against humanity in Gaza and the West Bank continue — we need to talk about the fact that streaks of raw Jew-hatred have re-entered our public discourse. On the 350th anniversary of the glorious return of Jews to England, we are celebrating with an upsurge of spite. It is those of us who are very critical of Israel who must guard most vehemently against this impostor.

Sometimes it emerges in small, unconscious ways. While I was having a haircut, my hairdresser got talking to me about the Middle East meltdown because he knows I have spent time out in the trashed, smashed refugee camps of Gaza. “Is it true that whenever George Bush makes decisions on the Middle East, it is because a group of rabbis have been called in and he does everything they say because he has to?” In his gabbled follow-up, he said, “the Jews control Bush” more than once. His scissors were very close to my throat, so I asked where he had heard this. “From a mate,” he said.

I would have been astonished if he had made racist statements about black or Asian people; but the most surprising thing about this little encounter is that I wasn’t surprised at all. Comments like this are now circling the mainstream; I hear them at parties and on the Tube. He really didn’t know the intellectual antecedents for the idea of a secret Jewish cabal pulling the strings of the powerful. (The idea is strangely elastic: The Jews have now been responsible for capitalism, Bolshevism, 9/11 and neoconservatism).

Some people seem to think that because Jews are generally wealthier than other ethnic minorities, they are protected from the consequences of racist statements. Well, tell that to the 48 Jews attacked by racist thugs in Britain this April alone, or to the security guards who now need to search everyone as they enter a synagogue for weapons or suicide packs.

So where is the boundary between necessary criticism of Israel — or indeed the Jewish religion, which like all monotheisms is based on a ridiculous and often ugly pre-modern text — and racism? It’s easy to identify the extremes, the Faurissons or Gibsons, but harder to see the shades of gray building toward them, partly because anti-Semitism is a concept that has been more abused than Tina Turner at the hands of Ike.

From the right, the Israel-right-or-wrong brigade labels every critic of Israel a Jew-hater. Melanie Phillips takes the widespread criticism of Israel’s carnage in Lebanon as evidence that Britain is now “like Weimar Germany.” From the left, some people refuse to see anti-Semitism even when it is pogromming in their face. The Socialist Workers Party, for example, has paraded Gilad Atzmon at their conferences, a man who says it is “irrelevant” whether the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a forgery because “American Jews do try to control the world by proxy.”

But these twin delusions are no excuse for rational people to refuse to see the truth. The line between criticism and racism lies with one, unspoken idea: that there is an underlying Jewish essence that can be distilled and condemned. Anti-Semites invariably believe “the Jews” stand for one thing, whether it is communism or Christ-killing (step forward, Mel) or hyper-Zionism. This is absurd when applied to any ethnic group, but particularly foolish when applied to Jews, one of the most fissiparous groups ever to huddle together under one tribal label. After the fall of the Taliban, the two remaining Afghan Jews were found guarding a synagogue — and they were eager to tell bemused journalists why the other Jew was a traitor and a pig. It was a living illustration of the old quip that where you have two Jews you have three factions.

Does anybody really think a tribe that includes Ariel Sharon and Noam Chomsky, Leon Trotsky and the Rothschilds, Mel Brooks and Mel Phillips, has a shared essence? Of course it is reasonable to condemn the views of some Jews, some of the time. But at every stage you must point out that there are other Jews holding precisely the opposite opinions. Those who condemn “the Jews” for what they do or think are chasing a yellow-starred will o’ the wisp; there is nothing there except a quaint tribal identification that would probably have melted away long ago without the constant opposition of Jew-haters.

Anti-Semitism used to be called “the socialism of fools.” Today, it is the radicalism of morons.

JEWISH GROUPS SHOULD WITHDRAW INVITATIONS TO MEL GIBSON,
IN RESPONSE TO NEWS OF HIS TIES TO HOLOCAUST-DENIERS

In the wake of the new disclosure that Mel Gibson has been involved with a Holocaust-denial group in Australia, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies is urging Jewish and other organizations that recently extended speaking invitations to Gibson to withdraw them.

The U.S. State Department officially considers Holocaust-denial to be a form of antisemitism.  In the State Department’s January 2005 “Report on Global Anti-Semitism,” there are nine separate references to incidents of Holocaust-denial included among the report’s listing of antisemitic incidents in various countries.

Family escaped Nazi Germany in 1941

By Krista J. Stockman

The Journal Gazette

Lowens

Frances Lowens lived to help others.

She helped those in need when she worked at the American Red Cross of Northeast Indiana. She helped her congregation by spending years translating minutes from German to English. And, now, in death, she will help medical students learn to become doctors by donating her body to Indiana University.

Lowens, a Holocaust survivor and longtime Fort Wayne resident, died Monday. She was 93.

Born in Cologne, Germany, in 1913, Lowens married her husband, Ernest, in 1938. Three years later the Jewish couple escaped Nazi Germany and came to the United States, their son Mark Lavie said.

“They managed to escape when almost no one was escaping anymore,� he said. His parents were able to stay hidden until their American visas came through. When they left, they were allowed to take only one suitcase and no pictures or family memorabilia. They left with their mothers waving from the front porch.

“Everyone knew what was going to happen to them,� Lavie said. “Most of the relatives on both sides perished in the Holocaust.�

Ernest and Frances Lowens didn’t want to live in a big city, so the agency they worked with sent them to Fort Wayne. They never left.

In 1957, Frances Lowens became a secretary for the Red Cross. Though she did not have a college education, she set up a service to assist military families. Through the service, families could receive counseling, housing assistance and food.

“Mostly, in her case, it was a sympathetic ear,� Lavie said. “She had a slight accent, and people would come into the Red Cross and ask for the French lady.�

Although his parents managed to escape, the Holocaust shaped their lives nonetheless.

“It contributed to my mother’s lifelong drive to help people who were less fortunate than she was,� Lavie said.

Donating her body to IU is just a continuation of that giving, he said.

“As Holocaust survivors, her and my father’s evaluation and vision of death is different than the rest of us,� Lavie said. “Death itself doesn’t mean a whole lot to them. They wanted to be remembered for how they lived as opposed to a gravestone somewhere.�

Lowens is survived by her sons, Mark and Stephen, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.