ALL Anti-Semitic toward ALL Semitic groups and other racism and prejudice toward "unlike" or "different" people must be denounced and challenged regardless of how unfair treatment of one group appears to others who may feel left out! How might we encourage our youth to discuss this feeling of alienation or learned behavior in a way that is ultimately transformative? If you have any ideas, please send them to me at newlease7@yahoo.com (please put oneheartforpeace in the subject heading).
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August 23
GREECE:
Video shows young man urinating on Holocaust monument on the Greek island of Rhodes
Inaugurated in June 2002, the Holocaust Monument in Rhodes commemorates the extermination by the Nazis in Auschwitz of 1,694 Jews from Rhodes and the nearby island of Cos.
The Central Jewish Board, the umbrella organisation of Jews in Greece, has denounced the broadcasting on YouTube of a video showing a young man urinating on a Holocaust Memorial on the Greek Aegean island of Rhodes.
The video was posted on Friday on a site of "a group of students" from the Venetokleio high school of Rhodes venetokleio dot hi5.com--one of the most prestigious in Greece.
The group appears to be made of young neo-Nazis.
The Central Jewish Board sent a letter to Greek Interior Minister Prokopi Pavlopoulo asking "for extra security for the synagogue in Rhodes as a large number of Jewish tourists are expected during the upcoming High
Holidays."
In the site, the self-proclaimed anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi secret group of students of the Venetoklio High School of Rhodes write that they "do not digg at all the Jews who wish to turn the island of Rhodes into a second "Land of Canaan."
They add: "After all the propaganda fed even in religion school books over the chosen people and other bullshit, we have decided to take the situation into our own hands and show to everyone with deeds of how much do we really agree with this view."
In a reaction, Giannis Papadomarkakis, the schools headmaster, told EJP that he refuses to accept the idea that the culprits were his students. "I bet my life that they are not students of our school," he said.
Speaking about the site, he said: "This kind of malicious acts does not represent our school. Be assured that if students of our school are involved I will send them for prosecution. "
Inaugurated in June 2002, the Holocaust Monument commemorates the extermination by the Nazis of 1,694 Jews from the island and the nearby island of Cos who were deported to Auschwitz on July 24, 1944.
The monument already suffered in the past years. During its construction, workers protested of being harassed by bystanders who shouted "Get out Jews," "You'll turn us all into Jews," "You'll bring Sharon here" and even hurled stones. A 24 hour police protection was needed to complete the works.
Later, however, unknown people badly damaged the monument by erasing the engraved lettering.
A demand by the Jews of Rhodes to the archaeological service for permission to built a bulletproof glass and protective rail around the monument was denied on the ground that visitors should be able to have close proximity to the monument.
2002 was reportedly one of the worst years concerning anti-Semitism in Greece with incidents rerported in Athens, Salonika, Rhodes and Ioannina.
Once dubbed "Little Jerusalem," Rhodes took in several hundred Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century who joined those already on the island.
Between the two world wars, the Jewish population of Rhodes reached about 6,000.
Today, only 40 Jews still live on the island.
SOME 67,000 GREEK JEWS PERISHED IN THE HOLOCAUST, 86 percent of the country's entire Jewish community.
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF GREECE TODAY NUMBERS AROUND 6,000 PEOPLE.
(source: EJP)
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GERMANY:
Another Berlin holocaust memorial vandalized
Berlin's memorial to the Jews murdered during the Nazi era was desecrated Saturday, only a week after a similar memorial to gays and lesbians persecuted by the Nazis was vandalized, police reported.
In Germany's national memorial to European Jewish victims of the holocaust, seven of the steles that make up the monument were desecrated with 11 Nazi swastikas in red and black paint.
On Saturday last week, a viewing window was broken and a fence pushed over at the monument for homosexuals, located across the street from Jewish memorial.
In response to last week's act of vandalism, 200 people protested in front of the gay and lesbian monument on Monday.
(source: Top News)
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