Francis Levy, head of the North Alsacian Jewish community, inspects desecrated tombstone in the Jewish Cemetery of Cronenbourg near Strasbourg, France (Reuters/Courtesy ibtimes.co.uk)
Jack Cohen – What is the Jewish Interest in Europe? & Warsaw, Poland
What is the Jewish Interest in Europe?
I am a Zionist who realized my life-long ambition to become an Israeli. But, I grew up in the UK and I have an interest in Europe, and even as an American citizen I want to see Europe prosper and be a stable democratic region. However, I have to recognize that the EU is politically liberal-leftist dominated and is not only anti-Israel, but also tends to be anti-Semitic. The long-term interest of European Jews, Israel and America is that the EU not remain dominated by this leftist agenda. Also, that it not be swamped by a liberal-inspired wave of Muslim-dominated immigration, that has already begun with the immigration of more than a million migrants into Germany and Sweden and elsewhere in Europe. The primary interest of the Jews, Israel and America is to ensure that Europe not be overcome by a tsunami of Muslim immigration.
Jews tend to be liberal and tend to identify with immigrants, because after-all weren’t we immigrants once. But, it is very important to emphasize the differences between then and now. First of all, the vast majority of the current immigrants are economic migrants, not because of war or persecution, while the Jews of the past were definitely driven to migrate because of constant and extreme persecution. Secondly, over 90% of the migrants entering Europe are not Syrian or Iraqi refugees fleeing war. They are mainly Afghanis, Libyans, Nigerians, Somalis and so on. Yes, among them there is a minority of legitimate refugees seeking asylum (estimates are about 5%). There are international protocols for processing all migrants to exclude economic migrants which no country is obliged to accept. Why were these protocols not followed??
Turkey was the primary country of entry for most of the migrants in the 2015 wave that swept into Europe. Why were these refugees not registered there as the first country entered, as required by law? The answer to this is clearly political, in fact Pres. Erdogan of Turkey used the migrants to blackmail Europe. Also, at first Greece failed to register them, no country wanted to be their hosts. Seeing the flood of migrants arriving at their borders, several countries, including Serbia and Hungary set up border fences to keep them out, contrary to EU (Schengen Agreement) policy. Hungary allowed ca. 450,000 migrants to pass through its territory in trains as long as they were only in transit to Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel accepted them.
Note that Merkel accepted a million refugees into Germany without consulting anyone, not any other country, not the EU, nor even her own government! She felt it was necessary to avoid a humanitarian crisis, to show liberal concern, perhaps in an over-compensation of guilt for what Germany had done to the Jews. A cynic might argue that Germany exchanged the Jews (who they murdered) for the Muslims (that they welcomed). But, this is having major repercussions for Germany and all of Europe. Since these migrants are not easily assimilable, they have a high reproduction rate, they are not easily educated (many don’t speak German), and they are mainly young unemployed males and crime and rape statistics have sky-rocketed. This is not merely a biased opinion, look at the rape statistics for Sweden, that went from one of the lowest in the West to one of the highest in a few years, look at the rape-fest that occurred at Cologne train station in 2016, look at what is happening in Northern England (Rotherham and elsewhere).
But, beyond these concerns is a far more dangerous one, the presence of a large and growing Muslim minority in Europe. There are now ca. 5-10 times the number of Muslims compared to former Jews in some of these European countries. Altogether there are an estimated 19 million Muslims in Europe (not counting those in Bosnia and elsewhere). Further, Jews not only assimilated but contributed mightily to European culture and civilization, think of Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, Karl Marx, Paul Ehrlich, Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Fritz Haber, Heinrich Heine, Max Born, Walter Rathenau and the list goes on. Does anyone foresee the Muslims making similar contributions? It is in fact a tenet of Islam, one of the famous “Ten pillars” that it is incumbent on all Muslims to ensure that the country/place he lives in is governed by Islamic (Sharia) law. Note this is not the same as a group being governed by its own religious laws (such as even the Jews had), this is the government/law of the country! And this is not only extremists, but any believing Muslim (ask any Muslim you know if they want Sharia law in your country?)
The increase in anti-Semitism in Europe can be related directly to the increase in Muslim migration. Most of the terrible anti-Semitic acts in France for example have been perpetrated by Muslims, including the murders of Ilan Halimi, Lucie Attal, Mireille Knoll, Sarah Halimi (no relative) and 7 others murdered. However,most of the perpetrators in these cases have been released (the judge in charge of these cases may be Muslim).
In 2005, Bat Ye’or wrote “Eurabia: The Europe-Arab Axis, ” foreseeing the problem. The only way to avoid this problem is that there develops in Europe a series of conservative parties that are both anti-migration and yet civilized and committed to protecting European democratic culture and minority rights. Some of the central and eastern European countries could hardly be said to have a long history of democracy. But, that is the most important value they must protect against the kind of violent authoritarian control that one finds in all Arab and Muslim states (with few exceptions). Under Arab/Muslim culture an opponent is considered an enemy and the only way to oppose him is to kill him (look what happened to the so-called “Arab Spring,” currently Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia are failed states). So finally it comes down to this. It is in the Judeo-Christian interest to ensure that Muslims do not take over Europe. I will discuss how this might be achieved in future blogs, based on the recent MEF trip I attended run by Daniel Pipes, with the primary theme of Muslim immigration into Europe.
Warsaw, Poland
The recent MEF trip to the three central European capitals, Warsaw, Budapest and Vienna, was arranged with days of sight-seeing alternating with days of lectures. During the lectures I took extensive notes, but even with them the lectures and speakers tend to become a blur. What I propose to do now is to describe my viewpoint of the three capitals, each in separate blogs, particularly relating to their Jewish history, and then in the following blogs describe selected lectures and my analysis of them.
I was reluctant to visit Warsaw, but my trepidation was unnecessary. It proved to be a thoroughly modern and seemingly affluent city with superficially little or no evidence of its terrible past. Warsaw was the most destroyed city in the world after WWII. Not only did the Germans raze the Warsaw Ghetto area in 1943, literally to the ground, but after the Warsaw uprising of 1944 and the appearance of the Red Army across the Vistula River it became clear that the Germans could not hold Warsaw, so they set about deliberately destroying it building by building. About 80% of Warsaw was destroyed, as shown in the movie “The Pianist,” and in the Old City it was more than 90% destroyed. The population of Warsaw that was ca. 1.3 million people in 1939, including about 30% Jews, was reduced to a mere 1,000 people after the war.
Poles will tell you that they were the first to actually fight the Germans and their country effectively did not exist, but was divided into three regions during WWII. Part in the north, that had been close to Prussia, was incorporated into the Reich, part was occupied initially by the Russian Red Army (under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) and part was incorporated as “The General Government,” an area that comprised the greater part of central and southern Poland.
While the Poles were occupied they did generally oppose the Germans, except in one notorious respect. They collaborated with the Germans in exposing and murdering Jews. They were paid a small fee for each Jew turned in and they were often happy to do it for nothing. I have several sources of information on this, including two books written by friends “Saved by my Face” by Jerzy Lando and “Invisible Jews: surviving the Holocaust in Poland” by Eddie Bielawski (which I edited). However, there is precious little evidence of any formerly Jewish presence in Warsaw. The Poles obviously blame the Germans for that.
After the War under Soviet occupation the Poles began to rebuild Warsaw. Most of the work was done for free. The Soviets paid for the materials, partly because it made them popular with the Poles and partly because it kept the Poles busy. Everything you see in the Old City, the huge brick Palace, the medieval buildings, were all reconstructed, nothing is original. Although it was nice to see, we were told that Krakow and some other southern cities have far more extensive old cities and they are mostly original. Incongruously Soviet era apartment blocks stand dominated by glass and concrete high rises of modern capitalist Poland.
The most important place to see in Warsaw is the Polin museum that is constructed adjacent to the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, that is well known to most people.
Polin is the Hebrew name for Poland, and this museum presents the history of the Jews in Poland over 1,000 years, including a section on the Holocaust. It is a rectangular box but more interesting architecturally on the inside. We spent about 3 hrs touring the exhibits, which was barely enough time to see a superficial part. The area around the museum is a large open space, that before the War was a vibrant crowded Jewish city. Inside the Museum there is an original piece of an actual street with make-ups of shops along it. But, of course it is very sad.
The Warsaw Ghetto monument stands isolated and alone in front of the Museum, and alongside it is a circular low memorial that was built by locals immediately after the destruction.
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
