(NEWS) Malvina Burstein, 97, Helped Save 1,500 Fellow Jews During WWII

"Malvina Burstein, 97, who helped obtain identification papers that she hoped would save 1,500 fellow Jews in Budapest during World War II, died Oct. 18 at the Ring House retirement community in Rockville. She had dysphagia, a swallowing disorder.

Mrs. Burstein's home town of Trebisov, Czechoslovakia, fell under Nazi occupation early in the war. After closing her millinery shop and hiding for a year in a basement, Malvin Grunfeld, as she was then known, fled to Budapest in 1942 and hid under a false identity.



'A Jew could exist in Hungary at that time,' she told The Washington Post in 1981. 'I had illegal papers and no visa, but I got along. You had to keep well-dressed, look clean and neat, with nail polish and everything.'

She said that every day she saw Jews being beaten and knocked to the pavement. Bodies were strewn in the street.

Knowing it was dangerous, she yearned for company and met other Jews weekly at a local park. She said one man in the group came up with the idea to protect other Jews in hiding by phoning the Hungarian national printing office for 500 identification cards that would allow the Jews to pass as gentile.

The man called the printing office claiming to be a factory owner in need of work papers and Mrs. Burstein pretended to be the assistant going to pick them up.

In The Post interview, she said no one questioned her. She said she made two more trips, obtaining 1,000 more cards, and gave them to others to distribute.



After the war, she found no one she knew back in Trebisov. She managed to find her way to New York, where a brother had been living for years.

She moved to the Washington region in 1951 and not long after met her future husband, Max Burstein. He died in 1988 after 36 years of marriage. Survivors include two daughters and three grandchildren.

She was a longtime Silver Spring resident. Her memberships included the old Temple Israel in Silver Spring, Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women.

In 1981, with the help of the American Jewish Congress, Mrs. Burstein and her family flew to Israel hoping to find some of the 1,500 Jews she tried to save in Hungary.

'My friends say most of those people, the 1,500, got out of Hungary and came to Israel,' she told The Post. 'I didn't see them when I was there, but you can imagine how I felt to know that they are alive.'" (source)

(BLOG) British Scientists Resign From "Anti-Semitic" Union

"Denis Noble is an Oxford University biologist with a global reputation in the scientific community. He resigned from England’s University and College Union, saying the organization was either anti-Semitic or tolerated it.

Since 2002, there have been various attempts to boycott Israeli academic institutions and scholars in several Western countries, including England, where Noble lives. Israeli scholars have been ostracized, organizations have refused to publish or review Israeli academic papers, etc. The first major academic boycott campaign was started in England by two Jewish professors who argued that a moratorium on all cultural and research links with Israel at European or national levels was the only way to pressure the Israeli government to change its policies toward Palestinians.

Noble held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University from 1984-2004 and is now professor emeritus and co-director of Computational Physiology. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960. Here is Noble’s open resignation letter, addressed to Sally Hunt, general secretary of the union, and published in the Oxford magazine:

Dear Sally,

I joined the AUT [Association of University Teachers] nearly 50 years ago as a young assistant lecturer at University College London. When I retired from my Oxford professorship in 2004 I chose to retain my membership – although I no longer stood to gain from the union’s negotiating any improvements in salary or conditions of service – because I believe in trade unions and thought that by remaining a member I would, in some small measure, help colleagues. But the behavior of UCU [the University and College Union, which succeeded the AUT] over the past several years has made it impossible for me to continue, and I now resign my membership.

In a letter I wrote to you over a year ago, which has remained unanswered and unacknowledged, I said that UCU’s repeated conference decisions to discriminate against certain colleagues (Israelis) on the grounds of their nationality were unacceptable. Such discrimination is contrary to the universally recognised norms of academic practice, as set out (for example) in the Statutes of the International Council of Science (ICSU).

I also sent a letter as President of IUPS, which adheres to ICSU. Nobody in the world of learning can take seriously a professional organisation that purports to represent academic staff but which entertains proposals to discriminate whether it be on grounds of sex, race, national origin or other characteristics that are irrelevant to academic excellence.

Nonetheless our union has voted repeatedly in favour of such discrimination, and those who have been discriminated against are always Israelis. The wording of the discriminatory resolutions has sometimes been contorted for legal reasons, but the intention has been transparent: to hold Israeli colleagues responsible for, and punish them for, the actions of their government via a type of reasoning (guilt by association) that is never applied to the academics of any other country.

Of course, I accept that the Israeli government is guilty of human-rights violations, and I accept that the union is entitled to criticise it. But many other governments in the world are also guilty of human-rights violations, often far more egregious than those committed by Israel, and yet Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) have never been endorsed by the Annual Congress of UCU against any other country.

It is instructive to compare the motion about China adopted by Congress at its 2010 meeting with one of those about Israel. (I choose these examples because both countries have been in occupation of the territories of a different ethnic group for many years and both have encouraged their citizens to settle in the territories thus occupied).

The motion on China, while asserting that UCU “will continue to condemn abuses of human rights of trade unionists and others”, recognised “the need to encourage collegial dialogue” with Chinese institutions. By contrast, a motion on Israel approved in the same session of Congress reaffirmed its support for BDS, sought to establish an annual international conference on BDS and a BDS website, and severed all relations with the Histadrut, the Israeli counterpart to the TUC. There are many countries in the world whose governments are guilty of atrocities: there is no other country in the world whose national trade union organisation is boycotted by UCU.

I find it impossible not to ask myself why UCU exhibits this obsession with Israel. The obvious explanation – that the union is institutionally anti-semitic – is so unpleasant that I have till recently been unwilling to accept it, but I changed my mind after witnessing the fate at the 2010 Congress of the motion of my local branch (University of Oxford) about Bongani Masuku.

As you know, Masuku was invited to a meeting on BDS hosted by the union in London last December. Some months earlier, he had made a speech during a rally at the University of the Witwatersrand. This speech has been described by the South African Human Rights Commission (the body set up by the Constitution to promote inter-racial harmony after the end of apartheid) as including “numerous anti-semitic remarks which were seen to have incited violence and hatred”.

The Oxford motion debated at Congress did not allege that the union invited Masuku despite knowing his views; instead it merely invited Congress to dissociate itself from Masuku’s views. This was the minimum that UCU could be expected to do to reassure members like me that we still belong.

That this motion was rejected by a large majority makes it clear to me that the union either regards anti-semitic views as acceptable or, at least, has no objection to their being expressed in public by the national official of a fraternal trade union organisation. I do not wish to remain a member of such a union.

Yours sincerely
Denis Noble CBE, FRS

Michael Yudkin and David Smith, also Oxford scientists with global reputations, have joined their colleague in resignation, with a letter in the Oxford magazine:

Sir – Like Denis Noble, we have been a member of UCU and its predecessor AUT, for more than 40 years. Like him, we remained a member after retiring a few years ago from our University posts.

The facts set out in Denis’s letter to Sally Hunt show beyond dispute that UCU is now institutionally anti-semitic. We too have resigned our membership of the union.

Yours Sincerely
Michael Yudkin, Kellogg College
David Smith, Department of Pharmacology

Sally Hunt’s reply is also published in the Oxford magazine, as follows:

Sir - UCU has always encouraged robust debate amongst members and will continue to do so. As defenders of academic freedom all members’ opinions are welcome and their views are always treated fairly and with respect.

With regards to motions debated at our conference, it is members who propose motions and delegates who debate them and pass policy. It is the job of the union to deliver the policy members decide.

A resignation is always a cause of concern for any organisation, even in a union like UCU which is among the fastest growing in the UK. Our growth is a result of the current uncertain times, and it is vital that all academic and related staff have the protection of their union. As would be expected of an academic union, members have a broad range of views on many issues including of course Israel/Palestine.

However for the avoidance of doubt let me use this opportunity to confirm that UCU does not endorse an academic boycott of Israel and that our position of opposition to the occupation is, far from being extreme, in line with that of the TUC and most other UK trade unions.

Yours Sincerely
Sally Hunt, UCU

(source) (h/t: Elder Of Ziyon)

(NEWS) Israeli Official: Hamas Rockets Can Reach Tel Aviv

"A senior Israeli intelligence official says Hamas has rockets with a range of 80 kilometers (50 miles), putting the coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv within range of its launchers.

The official blames Egypt, saying it is not doing enough to stem smuggling through a network of tunnels along the relatively short border between its Sinai desert and the Gaza Strip. The official said most of the tunnels were concentrated in an area no longer than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers).

'Egypt can stop all this smuggling of weapons within 24 hours if they want to do it,' the official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity under Israeli security regulations.

The official said, however, that intelligence cooperation with Egypt was otherwise effective." (source)

(BLOG) A 'Breakthrough' In Fighting Anti-Semitism On Campus

"After a six-year Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) campaign, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced an important policy benefiting Jewish students in elementary, secondary and post-secondary schools. In a letter issued on October 26, 2010, OCR declared that it will enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) to protect Jewish students from harassment, intimidation and discrimination at federally funded schools.

This is a breakthrough. Until this announcement, OCR wouldn't enforce Title VI to protect Jewish students, leaving them without the same civil rights protections that have been afforded to other ethnic and racial groups since Title VI's enactment in 1964.



It was OCR's policy denying Jews the protection of Title VI that largely accounted for the agency's decision to dismiss the complaint that the (ZOA) filed in 2004 on behalf of Jewish students at the University of California at Irvine (UCI). UCI students had been subjected to years of anti-Semitic harassment and intimidation, described in detail in the ZOA's 11-page complaint to OCR. Campus programs -- with titles such as 'A World Without Israel' and 'Israel: The 4th Reich' -- routinely demonized Jews and Israel. Campus speakers condoned and even advocated terrorism against Israeli Jews. One frequently-invited speaker compared Jews to Satan, called them baby-killers, and referred to them as 'the new Nazis.' The verbal bigotry escalated into violence. Students were physically threatened and assaulted. A Holocaust memorial was destroyed, and swastikas defaced campus property.

UCI students repeatedly complained to administrators about feeling harassed and intimidated. Some were afraid to wear a Star of David or a pro-Israel tee shirt. Some even feared for their physical safety. At least two students left UCI and went to study elsewhere, because they couldn't endure the anti-Semitic hostility anymore. Yet the administration either ignored students' concerns or made superficial efforts to address them. The ZOA's complaint sought to compel the administration to finally rectify the unrelenting campus anti-Semitism. OCR agreed to investigate the case -- a landmark development. But after three years of OCR dragging its feet, the agency eventually dismissed the ZOA's case. An article in September's Commentary magazine confirmed that the agency's dismissal was due primarily to its determination not to protect Jewish students under Title VI. The article also revealed that OCR investigators had actually concluded that the 'ZOA was right that Irvine students faced levels of discrimination that were so severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive as to limit their educational opportunities.'

In clarifying that it will now protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment under Title VI, OCR has made several crucial points. First, while disciplining the perpetrators of the harassment is important, OCR says that it's not enough. A school must take other remedial steps, such as counseling the perpetrators about their hurtful conduct, reaffirming the school's anti-discrimination policy, publicizing how students may report harassment, training teachers to recognize and address anti-Semitic incidents, and creating age-appropriate programs to educate students about the history and dangers of anti-Semitism.

In addition, OCR recommends that schools publicly label specific incidents as anti-Semitic. This is critical. We know firsthand from students that a school's failure to publicly identify and condemn an incident as anti-Semitic is almost as hurtful as the incident itself. Intentionally or not, silence, or beating around the bush about an anti-Semitic incident, sends the message to the school community that anti-Semitism is acceptable and tolerable. It isn't, and as OCR has recognized, school leaders should clearly and publicly condemn an incident as anti-Semitic when it occurs. OCR says that schools not only must take steps to end the harassment; they must also prevent its recurrence. Speaking out will help reach that goal.



OCR's new policy for enforcing Title VI is a much needed development. UCI is just one example of campus anti-Semitism; Jewish college students have had problems from Columbia, to the University of North Dakota, to UC Berkeley and elsewhere. Anti-Semitic incidents have also occurred at elementary and secondary schools.

In Naples, Florida, middle schoolers held 'kick a Jew' day in November 2009. Two students came to school that day wearing Adolph Hitler moustaches. The superintendent's response was as offensive as the event itself. Shockingly, he said, 'These kids kicked a bunch of kids. What's the real crime here?' All schools will now feel a greater imperative to respond to these horrific incidents if they know that they could face consequences from OCR, including a loss of federal funding.

OCR should be praised for its new Title VI policy, but more work needs to be done. It's critical that Title VI be amended so that the law explicitly protects Jewish students from harassment, intimidation and discrimination, thereby preventing an agency from undoing or diminishing that protection.

The ZOA has been working closely with federal lawmakers to amend Title VI; in September, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman introduced a bill to fill the legal loophole so that religious discrimination is explicitly prohibited under Title VI, in the same way that racial and national origin discrimination is already forbidden. All of us should urge our Senators and Representatives to support this bill if we care about the ability of our children and grandchildren to get their education in an environment that's physically and emotionally safe and conducive to learning." (source)

(NEWS) Only 2 Jewish Survivors Remain From Nazi Camp Treblinka

"BAT YAM, Israel -- They are believed to be the last two survivors of the most chillingly efficient killing machine of the Nazi Holocaust: the Treblinka extermination camp in occupied Poland.

Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, 87-year-old Israelis, are devoting their final years to trying to preserve the memory of the 875,000 people systematically murdered in a one-year killing spree at the height of World War II. Almost all of them were Jews.



Only 67 people are known to have survived the camp, fleeing in a brazen revolt shortly before Treblinka was destroyed. Following the recent death of a prominent chronicler, Israel's national Holocaust memorial says the two Israeli men are now the final living link to one of the most notorious death camps in human history.

'The world cannot forget Treblinka,' said Willenberg.

'Soon there will be no one left to tell,' added Taigman.

Treblinka holds a notorious place in history as perhaps the most vivid example of the 'Final Solution,' the Nazi plot to rid Europe of Jews.

Along with the lesser known Belzec and Sobibor camps, it was designed with the sole intention of exterminating Jews, and Treblinka was by far the deadliest. Victims, transported there in cattle cars, were gassed to death almost immediately upon arrival.

Only a select few - mostly young, strong men like Willenberg and Taigman, who were both 20 at the time- were spared an immediate trip to the gas chambers and assigned to maintenance work instead.

On Aug. 2, 1943, a group of Jews stole some weapons, set fire to the camp and headed to the woods. Hundreds fled, but most were shot and killed by Nazi troops in the surrounding mine fields or captured by Polish villagers who returned them to Treblinka.

The survivors became the only source of knowledge about Treblinka, because the Nazis all but destroyed it in a frantic bid to cover their tracks.

Willenberg said he was shot in the leg as he climbed over bodies piled at the barbed wire fence and catapulted over. He kept running, ignoring dead friends in his path. He said his blue eyes and 'non-Jewish' look allowed him to survive in the countryside before arriving in Warsaw and joining the Polish underground.

Later in life, he took to sculpturing to describe his experiences. His bronze statues reflect what he saw - Jews standing on a train platform, a father removing his son's shoes before entering the gas chambers, a young girl having her head shaved, prisoners removing bodies.

'I live two lives, one is here and now and the other is what happened there,' Willenberg said in an interview at his Tel Aviv apartment. 'It never leaves me. It stays in my head. It goes with me always.'

His two sisters were murdered there. He described his survival as 'chance, sheer chance,' choking back tears. 'It wasn't because of God. He wasn't there. He was on vacation.'

In all, the Nazis and their collaborators killed about 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. The death toll at Treblinka was second only to Auschwitz - a prison camp where more than a million people died in gas chambers or from starvation, disease and forced labor.

Taigman said he recalls the uprising vividly, and that resisting the Germans was a 'dream' for the prisoners.

He entered Treblinka holding the hand of his mother, who was quickly pulled away from him and murdered. He left watching a Nazi flag burning in the distance from a blaze they had set - a small piece of revenge after nearly a year of torment.



'It was hell, absolutely hell,' said Taigman, who lives in a retirement home south of Tel Aviv.

'A normal man cannot imagine how a living person could have lived through it - killers, natural-born killers, who without a trace of remorse just murdered every little thing.'

Taigman, who wandered in the Polish countryside for nearly a year after his escape, said his most lasting memory of Treblinka is fellow prisoners who had to remove bodies - often their own relatives - from gas chambers.

Treblinka holds such a powerful grip on the Jewish psyche that the will of a recently deceased Holocaust survivor in Israel instructed her children to cremate her body and sprinkle her ashes at the Polish memorial site - so that she could finally be reunited with her relatives who perished there.

After the war, Willenberg and Taigman made their ways to Israel, where they pursued careers and raised families. Willenberg became a surveyor in Israel's Housing Ministry, while Taigman was an importer. The survivors have maintained their special connection, meeting each other often over the years.

David Silberklang, a senior historian at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, said that in contrast to other camps where Jews were also used for industrial labor, Treblinka truly represented the essence of the Nazi Final Solution.

'Treblinka had nothing, just killing, and they almost finished the job. These camps left us almost nothing,' he said.

Without the survivors, he said 'it would just be a black hole, we would know nothing. With them, we know quite a lot,' he said.

One of the men most responsible for documenting the atrocities was Eliahu Rosenberg, who was tasked with removing bodies from gas chambers and dumping them into giant pits. He passed away in September, but before his death recounted his experiences in a video testimony to Yad Vashem.

'It poisoned, choked people within 25 minutes, all would suffocate. It was terrible to hear the screaming of the women and the children. They cried: 'Mama!' 'Tata! (Dad)' but in a few minutes they choked to death,' he said.

'The crematoriums were train rails which lay on a concrete base. On them were wood planks, we called it 'grills.' We threw the body parts onto those 'grills,' and with a match everything burnt. And we stood there ... and it burned all night, all night long.'

After the revolt, the Nazis attempted to destroy all evidence of their atrocities. The camp structures were destroyed, the ground plowed and planted over. Today, all the remains at the site are a series of concrete slabs representing the train tracks, and mounds of gravel with a memorial of stone tablets representing lost communities.

The two remaining survivors have returned to lead tours of the site. Taigman made the trip just one time, saying it was too painful to go back again, while Willenberg has gone on several occasions, most recently last week.

'There are only two of us left. After we go, there will be nothing,' said Willenberg. 'All I will leave behind are my sculptures and most importantly, my daughter and my grandchildren.'" (source)

(BLOG) Program Joins Palestinians & Israelis As Interns In The District

"Two interns, Israeli and Palestinian. For six weeks, they would live together in the District, courtesy of a nascent, shoestring operation called New Story Leadership for the Middle East. New Story, an offshoot of a group that brought together Protestant and Catholic youths during the conflict in Northern Ireland, sent 10 Israeli and Palestinian interns to Washington to see whether the idea of pairing youths from opposing sides could be replicated.

Rabinovich, an Israeli, would work for a Palestinian advocacy group. Ashour, a Palestinian, would work for a pro-Israel peace group. As four-day-a-week interns, they would do research, meet foreign-policy experts and do typical internship grunt work. And, together, they also would develop a plan for the organizations to contain increasing Jewish-Arab tensions on U.S. college campuses."

(4 pages)

(BLOG) Washington Post Cartoonist Confuses Abbas With Netanyahu

"Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles gets the Palestinian-Israeli conflict backwards in his featured August 2, 2010 drawing. Toles portrays Israel, this time in the person of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as the obstacle to direct Israeli-Palestinian talks and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as the proponent.

Astonished Post readers called CAMERA's Washington office to ask if an editing or computer error had switched the speech balloons over cartoon versions of Netanyahu and Abbas. The answer is no — Toles has consistently blamed Israel for problems caused by the Palestinian Arabs.

Cartoons — though obviously devices for expressing opinion — are intended to crystalize satirically, in image form the essence of events, facts and realities."

(BLOG) Hamas Is A Threat To The Palestinian Cause

"It's a pity that Israel, while substantially loosening its grip on Gaza, will continue to enforce a blockade when, with just a little imagination, it could insist on a deal with the activists once again steaming its way: You can proceed to Gaza if, once you get there, you demand that Hamas cease the persecution of women, institute freedom of religion, halt the continuing rocketing of Israel, release an Israeli hostage, ban torture and rescind an official charter that could have made soothing bedtime reading for Adolf Hitler. This may take some time.

In fact, these demands would never be met. Gaza is a mean and brutal place with a totalitarian government steeped in a cult of violence and death. This hardly means that the government does not have a measure of popular support and did not, as some of the activists naively point out, come to power by democratic means. So did the Nazis."

(NEWS) Israeli National Security Adviser: Palestinians Are "Major Actors In The Delegitimization Of Israel,"

"Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's national security adviser said Tuesday that the push for Palestinian statehood has weakened Israel's standing in the world and suggested that the outlook is bleak for U.S.-mediated negotiations in the region.

Uzi Arad, a central figure in the crafting of Israel's stance on the Palestinians and on Iran's nuclear program, also argued that new U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran are inadequate to thwart its nuclear progress. A preemptive military strike might eventually be necessary, he said."

(NEWS) Israel Gives Its Account Of Raid On Aid Ship Headed For Gaza

"This is the Israeli version of the deadly raid on an aid ship bound for Gaza"

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(NEWS) Turkey's Erdogan Bears Responsibility In Flotilla Fiasco

"WESTERN GOVERNMENTS have been right to be concerned about Israel's poor judgment and botched execution in the raid against the Free Gaza flotilla. But they ought to be at least as worried about the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which since Monday has shown a sympathy toward Islamic militants and a penchant for grotesque demagoguery toward Israel that ought to be unacceptable for a member of NATO."

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(NEWS) Krauthammer: Those Troublesome Jews

"The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers."

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