Grapevine, May 2, 2024: Heroes and heroines

For years, Tova Teitelbaum, a Haifa-based educator, had been trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade Yad Vashem to recognize her late father, Bratislava-born Jonas Eckstein, as a hero who rescued fellow Jews during the Holocaust. However, despite numerous survivors in Israel who could testify to the risks taken by Eckstein, Yad Vashem’s response was always the same.  Recognition for heroic rescue was reserved for non-Jews, not Jews.

In 2009, Eckstein’s story was published in The Jerusalem Post. It was seen by Alan Schneider, the executive director of the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem. He decided to honor Eckstein’s memory in 2014, at the annual B’nai B’rith – Jewish National Fund ceremony honoring Jews who saved Jews. The event was attended by the ambassador of the Slovak Republic who took great pride in the fact that Eckstein had been one of his countrymen.

Not long afterward, Yad Vashem amended its policy and also began honoring Jewish rescuers. But the fact is that B’nai B’rith has done so for almost quarter of a century, and as a follow-up, in 2019 initiated The Jews Saving Jews Forum within the framework of the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research. There were and are many more such heroes than has been generally realized. Over the centuries, and particularly in regard to the Holocaust, history has depicted Jews as victims. Indeed they were, but among the Jews of Europe and in the allied armies there were  extraordinarily courageous and conscience-driven Jews whose exploits deserve recognition.

This year’s ceremony will take place on Monday, May 6, at 10 a.m., at the Bnai B’rith Martyr’s Forest near Moshav Kesalon. An impressive Scroll of Fire monument to the six million Jews who were murdered or who perished during the Holocaust, stands at the pinnacle of the forest. The sculptor is Nathan Rapoport, who created the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising monuments, on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto and at Yad Vashem’s Warsaw Ghetto Plaza.

Speakers at the ceremony will include Italian ambassador Sergio Barbanti, director of the Education and Community Division of KKL-JNF Sar-Shalom Jerbi, B’nai B’rith World Center chairman Dr. Chaim Katz, Brig.-Gen. Gihad Hasan of the Police Border Guards, and Holocaust survivor Sarah Jackson, who rescued young people at the Supernova Festival on October 7.

During the ceremony, the Jewish Rescuers Citation will be conferred on 13 Jewish rescuers who operated in France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Poland.

Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Eurovision Song Contest

■ AS IT happens, Holocaust Remembrance Day and the opening of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden are within a day of each other. During World War II, Sweden remained neutral and thus was a haven for Jews and others fleeing the terrors and devastation of war. Many Polish Jews stayed in Sweden after the war, and in some cases, their children and grandchildren are still there. The Jewish community of Sweden numbers somewhere in the range of 20,000 and is the largest in Scandinavia.

Since WWII, people from Arab countries have also found it preferable to live in Sweden, and today account for slightly more than 5% of the total population, which means that there are considerably more Arabs than Jews in Sweden.

Malmö is known to be an antisemitic and anti-Israel hotbed, which is why in October, 2021, it was the venue for a global conference titled Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism.

The conference, co-hosted by the World Jewish Congress (WJC), the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, and the Jewish Community of Malmö was attended by the heads of state and government and representatives of some 50 countries.

Attempts were made to implement plans discussed and promises made, but even before October 7, 2023, the situation had become worse instead of better.

In the coming week, there will be many discussions – in the Jewish world in particular – about heroism and resilience during the Holocaust, and during and since October 7.

Another chapter in heroism will be played out in Malmö by Eden Golan, Israel’s representative at Eurovision. Despite threats on her life, she has not backed down, and will proudly carry Israel’s flag. Reports state that she did very well in rehearsals and has not allowed anything to disturb her concentration.

Despite the general ill-will against Israel and the strong political flavor of Eurovision despite denials by the European Broadcasting Union, it’s possible that fair-minded viewers will vote for the song and the singer and will temporarily put aside any negative feelings they harbor against Israel.

Aviv Geffen performs for soldiers

■ FROM BEING the bad boy of Israel’s entertainment community, who refused to serve in the IDF and tried to persuade others of his generation to do likewise, singer and composer Aviv Geffen has changed his attitude and developed into a responsible adult who made his peace with Yitzhak Rabin when the latter was prime minister. Geffen was among the performers at the peace rally in Tel Aviv, immediately after which Rabin was assassinated.

Since then, Geffen has performed in Judea and the West Bank and more recently has given a number of pro-bono performances for wounded soldiers, especially those hospitalized after October 7.

Next month, in recognition of his contribution to Israeli society, Geffen will receive an honorary doctorate from Bar Ilan University (BIU).

In the letter sent to him by BIU President Prof. Arie Zaban, Gefen was informed that the award “acknowledges the honorable values that have guided you on your creative and moral artistic and cultural path, and the work you do for the betterment of Israeli society.”

Zaban added: “During this particularly complex year, Bar-Ilan University wishes to recognize the extraordinary ability and courage to invite all of us and our country to rise up and love one another, and to lead and influence through actions impacting upon our people and our nation both in the present and in the future.”

The honorary doctorate conferment ceremony will take place on June 3, in the framework of BIU’s annual meetings of its Board of Trustees.

Demonstrations on American campuses

■ PRIZES TO Israelis and other outstanding achievers who happen to be Jewish are not quite as newsworthy as antisemitic and anti-Israel riots on university campuses across America and therefore receive less attention.  

Unfortunately, major Israeli media outlets are now giving more coverage to Israeli students and faculty staff at American universities than to burning local issues such as the return of the hostages.

From an emotional perspective, this implies a gradual loss of interest, but in the absence of concrete developments, it’s difficult to keep the story going, whereas physical and verbal attacks against Israeli professors, lecturers, and students are considered newsworthy. This is especially true for well-known figures in American society, such as Tel Aviv-born prize-winning computer scientist and philosopher Prof. Judea Pearl (who has held senior positions at UCLA) who came to global attention in January 2002, when his journalist son Daniel, who worked for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Karachi in Pakistan, and murdered by terrorists on February 1.

During this past week, in an interview with Yediot Aharonot, Judea Pearl attributed the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at UCLA to the many huge donations that the university receives from Qatar. The university management thought that by allowing pro-Hamas students to vent their rage, they would get it out of their systems and quiet would prevail afterward.  But last Sunday, there was an opposing demonstration by pro-Israel students, and since then there has been an exchange of physical and verbal violence. Popular opinion has it that the university does not want to annoy Qatar, which inter alia finances university projects and provides numerous scholarships.

If this is indeed the reason, it might appear that Arab philanthropy to American institutes of higher learning is far in excess of the billions of dollars collectively donated by Jewish billionaires.

Jewish day school reunion rescheduled

■ ALUMNI OF Mount Scopus College, the oldest communal Jewish Day School in Australia, who were looking forward to a reunion in Tel Aviv on May 20, will have to wait another six months. The event has been rescheduled for November 11, coinciding with the date of the armistice at the end of World War I, declared at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. The Australian Mount Scopus College is this year celebrating its 75th anniversary. It started out as a kindergarten and a few elementary school classes and has mushroomed into a huge tri-campus educational facility. Thousands of Jewish children have honed their Jewish identities thanks to Mount Scopus, and hundreds of them live in Israel, including graduates of the first two or three matriculation classes. Some of these are Louise Israeli (nee Goulburn), Daniel Lew, Susan Yellin (nee Friedman), Pinchas (Peter) Medding, and many other alumni, some of whom graduated as recently as two or three years ago and attended university in Israel.

In some cases, 10 or more alumni from the same Mount Scopus class who live in Israel meet several times a year, but all-encompassing reunions have been rare. The most recent was in January 2023 when 400 alumni living in Israel came together with hundreds of current students and alumni living in Australia. The get-together, replete with a sumptuous dinner, was the biggest-ever gathering of Australians in Israel, including the large number of Jewish and non-Jewish Australians who came in 2017 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Beersheba which was won by Australian and New Zealand forces, and which led to the Balfour Declaration a few days later.

Mount Scopus pioneered more than a dozen other Jewish day schools in five of Australia’s six states.