More than 600 residents gather to discuss modern anti-Semitism.
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE Sixty years after the end of the Holocaust, the specter of anti-Semitism is once again on the rise in Europe and the United States.
That was the message underlying a town hall meeting held at Monroe High School Monday night.
More than 600 township residents among them Mayor Richard Pucci and councilmen Irwin Nalitt, Henry Miller and John Riggs showed up at the high school’s Richard P. Marasco Center for Performing Arts to hear speeches about modern anti-Semitism by Donald Braum, deputy director of Holocaust Affairs for the U.S. State Department, and U.S. Rep. Rush Holt.
The event, titled "Combating the new anti-Semitism in Europe today … What can the U.S. do?" was presented by the Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee and sponsored by a half-dozen local and national Jewish groups.
Before the event began, attendees were asked to sign a petition created by the World Jewish Congress calling on the United Nations to take action against anti-Semitism around the world.
Jay Ellis Brown, treasurer and former president of the Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee, said that nearly everyone who attended had signed.
Mr. Brown said he thought it was important both to raise awareness of anti-Semitism and to try to make progress in fighting it.
"Look at the impact we’ve made in the Middle East," Mr. Brown said. "If we can do that, the U.S. can make a difference with anti-Semitism in Europe.
"It’s also about the importance of remembering that the Holocaust is not just about Judaism," he added. "Look at what’s happening in Sudan. The message should be that anytime there is a planned genocide taking place, it’s our responsibility to do something about it."
The event’s speakers expressed similar sentiments, though they largely focused on the existence of the problem and had few concrete examples of how Americans could address it.
David Rothman, co-chair of the memorial committee, argued that anti-Semitism in Europe was increasing in part due to an influx of Muslims with anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli feelings at a time when many Europeans have begun to forget about the Holocaust.
He observed that a translation of "Mein Kampf," Adolf Hitler’s notoriously anti-Semitic autobiography, had become a bestseller in Turkey, the country of origin for a large number of Europe’s Muslim immigrants.
Mr. Braum, a career foreign-service agent, agreed, saying that pro-Palestinian sentiment has in many cases crossed the line into anti-Semitism and not only among Europe’s Muslim immigrants, but also among what has traditionally been viewed as the tolerant and multiculuralist political left.
"What might be a legitimate criticism of Israel has in many cases crossed the line into anti-Semitism," he said.
This is a troubling development Mr. Braum said, because it means that European leaders concerned with fighting anti-Semitism now have to contend not only with "the traditional, far-right, ultra-nationalist" camp, but the "far-left cognoscenti and elites" as well.
But Mr. Braum said the United States and other governments were now more aware of the problem of anti-Semitism and far more proactive in trying to combat it than they were in the 1930s, when the long-smoldering flame of anti-Semitism in Europe burst into the flames of the Holocaust.
The United States is one of 20 nations comprising the Holocaust Education Task Force, created in 2000 with the goal of stemming the tide of discrimination of all types in Europe and abroad, he said.
"We now recognize the warning signs that were not fully recognized back in the 1930s," Mr. Braum said.
Rep. Holt said recognizing the problem, both abroad and at home, was an important step in preventing future genocides. He said America should lead the world by example by enacting more hate crimes legislation in an attempt to overcome its shameful history in dealing with the kind of ethnic hatred that led to the Holocaust and other genocides.
"The United States has been standing on the sidelines of every genocide for the past 100 years," Rep. Holt said. "From the pogroms in Eastern Europe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust to Rwanda to the present crisis in Darfur we have learned, but until we can internalize the lessons of the Holocaust to our daily lives, we won’t truly be able to assure that this will never happen again."

