The messages reveal conversations where Black people are called monkeys and "the watermelon people," political opponents face threats of torture and suicide, and white supremacist symbols like "1488" appear alongside praise for Republicans perceived as supporting slavery. Epithets, including variations of racial and homophobic slurs, appeared more than 251 times combined throughout the communications shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans, including Vermont state senator Samuel Douglass. "Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don't fit the Hitler aesthetic," Joe Maligno, who previously identified as general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote in response to Giunta's gas chamber comments, according to POLITICO.

Since POLITICO began inquiries, Hendrix lost his communications position with Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, Walker's job offer managing Republican Peter Oberacker's congressional campaign was rescinded, and prominent Republicans, including Rep. Elise Stefanik and State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, have denounced the chat while calling for resignations. Danedri Herbert, spokesperson for Kobach and Kansas GOP chair, confirmed that Hendrix is "no longer employed" after being shown chat excerpts. A spokesperson for the Oberacker campaign stated Walker won't be brought on in light of the comments.

Giunta claims the release constitutes "a highly-coordinated year-long character assassination led by Gavin Wax and the New York City Young Republican Club" and suggests the logs were obtained through extortion, though he apologized for "insensitive and inexcusable language" while raising concerns that message logs "may have been deceptively doctored." Walker similarly apologized, stating "there is no excuse for the language and tone in messages attributed to me" and suggesting portions "may have been altered, taken out of context, or otherwise manipulated." Michael Bartels, a senior adviser to the Trump administration in the Small Business Administration's general counsel office, who participated in the chat, provided a notarized affidavit obtained by POLITICO. The affidavit claims Wax "demanded" the full chat log and "threatened my professional standing" when he resisted.

Art Jipson, a University of Dayton professor who specializes in white racial extremism, stated the Young Republicans' conversations reminded him of online discussions between neo-Nazi and white supremacist group members after reviewing excerpts provided by POLITICO. "You say it once or twice, it's a joke, but you say it 251 times, it's no longer a joke," Jipson stated. "The more we repeat certain ideas, the more real they become to us." Joe Feagin, a Texas A&M sociology professor who has studied racism for 60 years, warned the participants "will act on these views" and expressed concern the words would be applied to public policy.

Giunta, who serves as chief of staff to New York state assemblymember Mike Reilly, ultimately fell six points short of winning the chairmanship to lead the Young Republican National Federation earlier this year despite earning endorsements from Stefanik and longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Stefanik accepted an award from the New York State Young Republicans earlier this year and lauded Giunta for his "tremendous leadership" in August. Alex deGrasse, a senior adviser for Stefanik, stated the congresswoman "was absolutely appalled to learn about the alleged comments" and called for responsible parties to "step down immediately" if POLITICO's description is accurate. Stone stated he would "denounce any such comments in the strongest possible terms" if the chat is authentic.

While reporting this article, POLITICO was examining separate allegations that Giunta and the Young Republicans mismanaged the New York organization's finances and hadn't paid at least one venue for a holiday party hosted last year. Updated records show the organization is in more than $38,000 of debt. In the chat, Walker joked, "NYSYR will be declaring bankruptcy after this I just know it" and Giunta appeared to joke about draining funds for a vacation to Italy, with Walker replying, "Great. Can't wait to get sued by our venue." Walker had earlier joked about the possibility of exposure, writing, "If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr."

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I am done with antisemitism

— ye (@kanyewest) May 22, 2025

 "God forgive me for the pain I caused," Kanye West wrote in one of his posts. The rapper, who shares four children with ex-wife Kim Kardashian – North West, Saint West, Chicago West, and Psalm West – explained his motivation for the latest apology. "I just got a FaceTime call from my kids, and I want to save the world again," West wrote.

Social media users responded with skepticism to West's declaration, questioning whether he would maintain this new path given his repeated antisemitic expressions in recent years. One user corrected the post, writing "I'm done with antisemitism... for today." Another user named Ricardo replied, "You say this every 4 months and get worse each time."

West has been blocked and suspended multiple times for social media messages, including posting "I am Nazi" in February. During that same month, he called Adolf Hitler "fresh," and his e-commerce website was removed because he sold sweatshirts featuring swastikas.

You have

Denied the holocaust
Praised Hitler
Wore a KKK suit
Posted antisemitic tweets
Had sex with your cousin
Praised Diddy
Followed Diddy on Instagram
Wrote a song praising Hitler

I will never forgive you Kayne you will always be a terrorist.

— The Jewish Warrior (@CoolJew09) May 22, 2025

In 2022, West lost all his fashion sponsors, including Adidas and Balenciaga, following antisemitic tweets in which he threatened to kill Jews. He apologized afterward, but deviated from that path again and continued being antisemitic on social media.

The rapper, who previously declared he is bipolar, said in February that he is actually autistic, despite various psychiatrists indicating he has different disorders. "I haven't taken medication since I discovered that bipolar wasn't the correct diagnosis," West said on "The Download" podcast at that time.

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Approximately 800 new digital recordings and transcripts of Nazi criminals from after World War II were revealed Saturday, including dramatic and disturbing testimonies that shed light both on Nazi methods during the war and Holocaust and on their escape routes.

Among the recordings, published on the Hoover Institution website, is one from SS officer Bruno Streckenbach in which he admits that Adolf Hitler indeed gave explicit instructions for implementing the Final Solution and the mass murder of Jews – a significant revelation, as until now there has been limited concrete evidence of this direct order.

Streckenbach was responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Third Reich – from managing SS death squads that slaughtered thousands across Poland in 1939 to deploying the "Einsatzgruppen," which murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews. Prosecutors attempted to charge him with responsibility for the murder of at least one million people, but Streckenbach evaded all attempts to bring him to trial and didn't spend a single day in a German prison after the war.

For almost 80 years, historians have debated whether the Holocaust stemmed directly from Hitler's explicit orders or evolved through initiatives taken by German subordinates and field commanders implementing broader directives.

According to Streckenbach's account, the first time he heard about the plan was when he received a hint from an old friend named Erwin Schulz, a volunteer officer in the "Einsatzgruppen" who until that point had supervised executions of up to a hundred people in western Ukraine, but apparently felt uncomfortable witnessing the mass murders of Jews.

Streckenbach admitted, "Schulz trembled, trembled like I'm trembling now. He said, 'What are we doing?' and I said, 'We can't do anything, we can't leave everything. There was an order.'"

Streckenbach went directly to his immediate commander, Reinhard Heydrich, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. "Heydrich was very quiet, very businesslike. He sat at the edge of his large conference table and said, 'Be quiet now, Streckenbach. Now listen to me. Shut your mouth, don't interfere. We can't do anything about it. This is the order from the Führer. He chose the SS to carry out this order. Neither the Reichsführer [Heinrich Himmler, SS leader] nor I can do anything about it,'" Streckenbach recounted.

Thomas Weber, Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen, who discovered the recordings, said Streckenbach's claim that the first order came directly from Hitler is of historical significance.

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The executioner behind the violin

Richard Rokita was a prominent German officer at the Tarnopol camp and earlier at Janowska. He had two hobbies – one as a mass murderer, the other as a violinist and musician who organized an orchestra from Jewish prisoners. The orchestra accompanied many of Tarnopol's Jews to execution sites while playing the "Death Tango." Rokita insisted on this. Sometimes he would point his pistol at someone and kill them simply because he felt like it in that moment. But occasionally, one of Poland's greatest violinists, someone Rokita knew from pre-war days, would see the hand with the gun and rush over. He would break into virtuoso playing, enchanting Rokita, and the gun would return to its holster.

When Professor Ram Ben-Shalom was about three years old, around 1962, he disguised himself as a secret agent equipped with a Beretta pistol with the clear mission to hunt down Rokita. This story closes the narrative of one of the best books I've ever read about the Holocaust. That closing chapter brings into action figures like Ilya Ehrenburg, the Beatles, and Rokita himself. Rokita was then in his 60s. He had given up one hobby – the mass murder of Jews – and kept his second hobby, which became his profession – playing violin in jazz bands in Hamburg. Simon Wiesenthal managed to discover the murderer behind the violin. The man who played in one of the clubs near the basement where the Beatles sometimes sang and sometimes screamed their first hits before becoming famous in Liverpool.

When I met Professor Ben-Shalom this week, author of "Salomea's Letter" (Magnes Press), I asked if he could guess what my first question would be. He couldn't say. The question was why he included Chapter 86 in the book. For me, the story called "Report from 1962" confused and troubled me greatly. His character takes the stage and whispers in violinist Rokita's ear, "Rache." Revenge.

"In this book, I'm actually in two roles. I'm also the researching historian, looking at this detective story from the outside," he answers. "And as a historian, I operate according to all the known methodologies and possibilities of the profession. At the same time, I also serve in some way as a witness. It's hearsay, not eyewitness testimony, as a second-generation survivor. As such, I'm both one of the story's heroes and examining the plot from the outside with all the facts, documents, and archives. But I'm also reflecting my father's story (Shmuel Ben-Shalom) from fragments, from broken pieces that I heard in my childhood, and had to undertake a long journey into my memory to bring them back. This is how the last chapter was written, which was obviously written after the entire book was finished. I was left with some empty space that I needed to resolve."

About revenge

"You beautifully develop this revenge motif. I read what seems to me a masterpiece. I felt you were in the same territory as Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' but penetrating much deeper, in a more detailed way. And then, with the story at the end, you make me doubt whether everything you wrote until the last chapter is even real."

"I know. I took into account that this could raise doubts. On the other hand, I'm so confident in my work as a historian and in the professionalism of the puzzle of facts, the realistic details. I'm so in command of the methodology and the material that after so many years in the profession, I allow myself to also go in the direction of the detective novel. With the understanding that the skilled reader can make the distinction themselves."

After reading "Salomea's Letter," it seems that the letter event, which is almost unknown in Israel, soars to heights parallel to the "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising," which has lost altitude over time. Salomea Ochs Luft was Ram Ben-Shalom's aunt. She was the sister of his father Shmuel, who survived the Holocaust. Her cousin is the artist Willy Ochs, known by his Hebrew name Ze'ev Porat, who immortalized German sadism in his amazing illustrations and later became known as an architect. Only about a decade ago, Ben-Shalom discovered that the letter Salomea left before she too was led to the killing pits in the Tarnopol region of Galicia had become legendary in Germany. We're talking in a café in Ramat Aviv, Ben-Shalom's childhood district, as descendants of Polish ancestors. My father would say about the miraculous twists and turns that accompanied Salomea's letter that it's "a lange mayseh" (a long story). The letter documents over about 12 pages the acts of slaughter from the German occupation in summer 1941 until April 1943.

"I am still alive and want to describe to you everything that happened from April 7 until today," Salomea wrote in her letter, and Ben-Shalom describes how a German aristocrat reads the letter years later, in days when German editors and politicians tried to clean up their past and destroy evidence. "The prevailing opinion is that now it's time for 'everything.' Galicia must be free of Jews ('Judenrein')... We, in the camp, could look from our room windows and see everything. Oh, these scenes, these images. How to describe them? We ceased to be human... One sees the square filling up with an increasing number of those condemned to death. This time, the graves in Petrikow were prepared in advance... The men were stripped to their shirts and led like sheep to the slaughter on foot. It was very close. Why waste fuel for cars, why bother with the train? It's a shame. It's simpler to get rid of this harmful material on the spot."

Salomea ended her letter with a call for "revenge." The fact is that the letter fell into the hands of officers in the Red Army when they captured Tarnopol from the Germans in 1944. It was a powerful, living, and moving testimony of an eyewitness who was later murdered, and the Soviets worked constantly to instill a fighting spirit in the troops, and that fighting spirit also contained the motif of revenge. Ben-Shalom describes in detail the role of writer Ilya Ehrenburg in propaganda directed at Red Army soldiers. The slogan was "Kill a German." Salomea's letter brought to life the hate slogans against the Germans.

Action against terror

Meanwhile, the Soviets decided to send the letter by mail to the Lichtblau family living at 3 Geula Street in Tel Aviv – the address Salomea had written. But Ben-Shalom's discovery that excited him so much was that already in 1954, author Erich Kästner organized a public event in Munich intended to mark a decade since the assassination attempt on Hitler. The atmosphere in 1954 in West Germany was that the July 20, 1944, conspiracy was an act of treason. Not to mention, in the background, the major victory in the World Cup in Switzerland. At that evening organized by Kästner, Salomea's letter was read aloud. How did it get there? How, in 2005, was an exhibition presented by a Berlin artist featuring an item called "The Jewish Woman's Letter"?

The letter came to the artist from the daughter of Wehrmacht General Otto Körps. She found it in her father's estate. The Germans deleted the "revenge" from the letter, and that text served them for purposes completely opposite to the use the Red Army made of the letter during the actual days of battles. Ben-Shalom determines that "the artist" developed a fetishistic relationship toward the letter. She was unwilling to give him the copy of the letter called the "Abel-Körps version." "From this moment, the roles were reversed, and in the relationship between us, I (Ram Ben-Shalom) became the aggressor... while she again filled the role of victim. The reversal of images and roles – 'the upside-down world,' where the victim becomes the aggressor, and the victimizer takes the place of the victim – is what allowed the artist to ignore all my requests to receive the letter. Salomea's letter became her exclusive property(...) She refuses to transfer it to the victimizing, strong 'Jew,' the Jew who extracted from her the 'secret,' intimate information about Gunhild Körps" (the general's daughter).

Ram's wife is curator Yael Katz Ben-Shalom. He quotes her in his book, "The letter that survived time and place reveals Salomea's act of writing as an action fighting against terror and silencing. She does not remain silent even though her body is already mute, and she is on her way to her death. In the video work, there is a role reversal. The poetic gaze destroys the victim's words, Salomea's voice, and focuses on the German's bodily performance... presented as suffering in the face of the erased words."

Ben-Shalom's discovery is that General Körps, who kept the letter until he returned from Russian captivity, was supposedly anti-Nazi but was very excited by the storm of battles in the war. So were the senior German administrators in Tarnopol. They too were anti-Nazis; they even wanted to evade their role in organizing life in the city, in the ghetto, in the camp, in various factories. Yet they were very instrumental in the exemplary organization of Jews, masses of Jews, on the route that led them to death pits or to the gas chambers in Belzec. One of them was Franz Josef Schöning. On days when he knew that such actions were going to be carried out, after completing his bureaucratic work, he would go on vacation, on hunting trips in the mountains. Schöning was the founding editor of the important West German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

How did you get the letter?

Dora, Ben-Shalom's aunt from 3 Geula Street, received the original letter. Dora never opened the envelope. One of the mysteries that Ben-Shalom tries to crack throughout his years of research as a detective historian is how the letter reached its destination in Tel Aviv. Was it his father who brought the letter in 1946, immediately after the war, or did an envelope simply arrive by mail as an initiated operation of the Soviet Army? The one who provided him with vital information on the subject is Russian historian Ilya Altman, a man from the Red Army archive.

"Since she writes the letter in 1943 and addresses it to Geula Street in Tel Aviv, I had to find out what was happening at the time she was writing at 'Geula Street' in '43," says Ben-Shalom. "And I have a chapter where I describe the Habima Theater on the day she was writing, the theater was performing the play 'People of Russia.' Both at Moghrabi, where Habima was operating in those days, and at Edison Hall in Jerusalem, performances dealing with the war, dealing with questions of revenge, and the Soviet soldier were being shown. But not about Jews. About Soviets, not Jews! And this was within walking distance of 3 Geula Street, where it was happening."

I told Ram Ben-Shalom that I wasn't surprised that the archivist at Yad Vashem was asked to locate Salomea's letter and couldn't find it. "That was when Ilya Altman was looking for it. I remember my father's immortal sentence, 'I don't want to bury the letter in Yad Vashem's drawers.'"

"For Ilya Altman, in the Red Army archive, the letter is the crown jewel," I say to Ben-Shalom. He replies, "True."

At Yad Vashem, it's an item that someone pushed into some drawer. "My father thought something needed to be done so this letter would be recognized, would be read, would serve as testimony. That was very important to him. And luckily, I came upon the discovery that allowed me to fulfill this spiritual testament. Previously, it echoed in me that I had not succeeded. My father asked me to make something of it, and I didn't do it, I tried and didn't succeed. And this discovery in 2016, that this letter had a life of its own, allowed me to embark on this path, to expose the mystery, and ultimately to fulfill the testament.

"The initial impulse didn't come from the desire to fulfill the testament but from my curiosity as a historian. But during the journey, the testament was fulfilled. Although even now, not everything is resolved."

The existence of Dr. Altman became known to Ben-Shalom from an article by Alex Doron in Maariv. Ilya Altman explained in a meeting with Ben-Shalom in Moscow that if on the copy of the letter it says "sent," there is no doubt that the army sent the letter to Tel Aviv. The reason is simple – in Stalin's days, if you wrote such a thing and it turned out you hadn't sent it, it would end with a bullet in the back of your neck. But Altman was disappointed that Ben-Shalom hadn't brought the original copy with him; he so wanted to touch the paper and see Salomea's handwriting. Such an intimate relationship was also expressed by the German chaplain of one of the divisions of the 6th Army that fell into Russian captivity at Stalingrad, when he returned from Russian captivity in the 1950s. "Imagine, he takes sheets of makhorka (for rolling cigarettes), writes on them word for word the contents of the letter, and sews them inside his coat – knowing that this way it doesn't rustle and when leaving the USSR, they won't find it."

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A brief video circulating widely on social media has highlighted the concerning normalization of overt antisemitism on European streets, demonstrating how the ongoing conflict has emboldened public displays of anti-Jewish sentiment across the continent.

The footage, captured by an Israeli attendee at a vegan food festival in Rome, documents a charged confrontation at a vendor's stall. "You are the disgrace of humanity. How dare you walk these streets? Get your hands off my counter. Leave immediately," the vendor can be heard saying.

Video: X

The Israeli patron, continuing to record the interaction, responds calmly: "I merely mentioned that I'm Israeli, and suddenly you're blaming me for all the world's problems." The vendor's response escalates sharply: "Yes, precisely – I blame you, all Israelis, all Jews. Hitler was right. It's a shame he didn't complete his mission."

Leading Italian newspaper La Repubblica shared the footage on its Instagram platform, reporting that festival organizers promptly removed the vendor from the event. The post garnered hundreds of thousands of views and generated extensive commentary. One user, identified as Daniel, observed: "This perfectly illustrates why anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism are indistinguishable." Another commenter, Valerio, countered: "While no form of racism or hatred is acceptable, Israel's treatment of Palestinians amounts to pure Nazism."

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"In my new book, I quote a good friend from Israel, Dr. Eddy Cohen, who was born in Lebanon," says Dr. Matthias Küntzel, a researcher of Muslim antisemitism, speaking to me from his home in Hamburg, Germany. "Eddy has about half a million followers on Twitter, from across the Arab world. Once, I asked him to post a question in Arabic: 'What do you think about Adolf Hitler?' Within minutes, the post received hundreds of responses. He translated the first forty for me, and about half of them expressed very positive sentiments: 'Hero,' 'the bravest man in the world,' 'his only mistake was not killing all the Jews,' and other such statements.

"Imagine a Western country, like France, conducting a public opinion poll where masses of people express strong support for Hitler and what he represents. It would be a global scandal; everyone would talk about it. But because it's the Arab world, it passes without criticism. The immense popularity of Hitler in the Arab street is well-known to anyone familiar with the Middle East."

President Herzog revealed in a BBC interview that IDF soldiers found copies of Mein Kampf in homes in Gaza.

"Unfortunately, the popularity of Mein Kampf is not limited to Gaza. Even in a country like Egypt, which has a peace agreement with Israel, many people have read Mein Kampf. To understand how this happened, we need to recognize that after 1945, there was a double division in the world. On one hand, the world was split by the Cold War, into the Soviet and American blocs. On the other hand, the world was divided over the legacy of Nazism: in most parts of humanity, Nazism became the ultimate symbol of evil, and the name Hitler provoked universal condemnation. In the Arab world, however, he remained an admired and beloved figure. But because the Cold War 'dominated the headlines,' no one noticed that significant parts of the Arab world were still infatuated with Hitler."

Nazis against Zionism

Dr. Matthias Küntzel (69) is often regarded as the foremost scholar on contemporary antisemitism in the Muslim world, particularly the influence of Nazi ideology on Muslim antisemitism in the Middle East and the radical currents of political Islam, including the Muslim Brotherhood. His first book on the subject, written in German in 2002, amidst the global shock of the September 11th attacks, is also the only one translated into Hebrew: Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Nazism, Islamism, and the Roots of 9/11 (Toby Press, 2008). Over the years, Küntzel has published additional books focusing on Germany's responsibility for the development of Iran's nuclear project, German policy towards the Muslim world and Israel, and over a hundred articles exploring the Nazi roots of Muslim antisemitism, all of which can be found on his blog.

His latest book, published this year and currently available in German and English, serves as a kind of summation of thirty years of research: Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism, and the Middle East: The Arab War Against Israel in 1948 and the Responses to World War II.

Many in Israel, especially after October 7th, draw parallels between Hamas and the Nazis. However, there are also those who oppose this comparison, arguing that it is historically unfounded.

"The massacre by Hamas on October 7th, which was an act of ecstatic killing, proves to me that quasi-Nazi antisemitism, which seeks to kill Jews wherever they are, is still flourishing in our world. That being said, you're correct that this connection is not self-evident. The central role of Nazi antisemitism in planning and executing the Holocaust is well known, while its influence on the Middle East remains under-researched. My new book aims to fill this gap. I argue that the Arab armies' assault on the young Jewish state in 1948 can be understood in a new light against the backdrop of the methods the Nazi regime used a decade earlier to successfully spread its unique brand of antisemitism throughout the Middle East, through the Arabic language and culture."

To understand this story, Küntzel explains, one must go back to the 1930s. "In the early years after the Nazis came to power, their foreign policy showed little interest in the Middle East. Their prevailing perception was that the region was deeply rooted under the influence of the British, French, and Italians, and they had no interest in becoming involved. When, in the spring of 1933, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, wanted to collaborate with the Nazis against the Jews, they rejected him.

"In 1937, however, a turning point occurred: the Peel Commission in Britain proposed for the first time the plan to partition the land into two states. The commission recommended the establishment of a very small Jewish state in Palestine, on only 17% of the territory, and a very large Arab-Muslim state. The Jews, of course, were not thrilled with this idea, but they accepted it. The Nazis sought to prevent even this tiny Jewish state at all costs. They believed it might become a kind of 'Jewish Vatican' and interfere with Nazi foreign policy. That same year, they launched a campaign throughout the Arab world to bury the nascent Jewish state plan before it could take root.

"It's important to remember that before the Nazis' intervention, there were still various solutions to the conflict. For example, Abdullah I, King of Jordan, favored the two-state solution. There were significant and influential Arab families in Palestine, such as the Nashashibi family, many of whom supported this solution. It may surprise some readers, but quite a few Arabs in Palestine didn't want the 1948 war. A decade earlier, in 1937, there were even more of them. Many Arabs believed that the two-state solution would be the best option for them and for the region in general."

What were the arguments of the Arabs who supported the establishment of a Jewish state?

"This division was primarily around the question of the relationship to modernity: Arabs who sided with modernity generally supported the Jewish presence in Palestine, believing it would help them close the gap with Europe and enjoy a more advanced way of life. The Israeli historian Hillel Cohen wrote an entire book on Arab collaborators with Israel in '48 (Good Arabs, Keter). There were, of course, collaborators who just wanted to get some money from the Jews, but there were also others who did so out of a desire for good neighborliness and a belief that the Jewish presence was good for the region.

"But by that time, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who opposed modernity in the name of Islam, had already cooperated with the Nazis and attacked anyone who did not oppose the two-state solution. He even murdered friends and families within the Arab population to scare them away from any positive contact with Jews. The Mufti's actions, which combined an Islamist dimension with Nazi influence, were essentially the beginning of the Arab terrorism that continues in the Land of Israel to this day." In this context, it should be noted that the person who assassinated King Abdullah of Jordan during his visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1951 was a member of the Husseini family. The assassination was carried out due to Abdullah's moderate attitude toward Israel.

Khomeini listened to Radio Berlin

You mentioned that the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Palestinian branch is Hamas, is steeped in Nazi antisemitism. Can you explain?

"Well, you only need to read Hamas's 1988 charter, and you'll find exactly the same slogans that the Nazis spread during World War II through their Arabic-language radio broadcasts. This is a crucial point," emphasizes Küntzel, describing a historical perspective that is not well-known. "When the Nazi Arabic-language radio station began broadcasting, radio was a very important medium. Since 80% of the population in Arab countries was illiterate, radio was the best way to influence people. The Nazis produced very good radio programs, and it was attractive. Every broadcast began with a verse from the Quran, there were news broadcasts, interviews with well-known figures in the Arab world, and also popular Arabic music, such as songs by Umm Kulthum.

"Millions of Arabs listened every evening, for six years, to Nazi messages wrapped in a pseudo-religious Muslim guise, using the most advanced technology of the time. There is no doubt that this deeply influenced people; it changed something in their consciousness. In my view, the division is very clear: the Middle East before the Nazis' broadcasts to the Arab world, and the Middle East after them."

You note in your book that even the young Khomeini listened to Nazi radio in Iran.

"Yes. The radio broadcasts were indeed in various dialects of Arabic, but they also had versions in Persian, Turkish, and even Hindi. So Khomeini could listen to it in 1938 when he was 40 years old. Every evening, he gathered friends around him to listen to the Nazi radio broadcasts. Khomeini might not have been a fan of Nazi Germany, but he certainly enjoyed the antisemitic content. I believe he later used what he learned through this radio station."

I think this is where we should mention one of the most important figures in the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology, Sayyid Qutb.

"Definitely. Qutb was a senior activist and important thinker in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. His book Our Struggle with the Jews, published in 1951, was a significant step towards establishing Nazi antisemitism in the Arab world. The title of the book, of course, echoes Hitler's famous Mein Kampf (My Struggle in German). After the Six-Day War, the book, with generous Saudi funding, reached every corner of the Arab world. It is a foundational text in the history of the Brotherhood and certainly behind the murderous ideology of Hamas."

The Saudi shift

After the attacks on the Twin Towers, you wrote that Saudi Arabia was the primary producer of antisemitism in the Sunni Muslim world. Twenty-two years later, are you surprised by its shift towards Israel?

"No doubt, I was surprised. This is a hopeful change. It shows that perhaps antisemitism in the Arab world is not so deeply rooted in the culture that we cannot see a shift in other places soon."

In this context, Küntzel points to an important difference between Egypt and Saudi Arabia: "With Egypt, Israel has a peace agreement with the government, but the Egyptian people are still largely hostile to Jews. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, they have begun to introduce changes in the education system, including towards Judaism. This is a very important development. If you ask me, antisemitism in Christian societies is probably more deeply rooted."

In fact, your argument has an optimistic aspect. If we can moderate the Islamist influences among Arabs, peace relations with Israel could be possible.

"I certainly think so. That's why the Abraham Accords make sense."

Yasmine Mohammed, a former Muslim and international speaker, told me in an interview that one of the mistakes liberals and progressives in the West make about Islam is thinking that all the bad things in Muslim civilization happen because of Western influences. On the contrary, one can definitely quote harsh antisemitic messages from the Quran and Hadith about how Muhammad's army slaughtered Jews, who are described as 'sons of apes and pigs,' long before any Western influence. So maybe the Nazis aren't the only ones to blame here.

"Well, that's certainly a tough question. It's true that the Nazis didn't need to invent anything from scratch, but they did manage to refuel the antisemitism that had existed in Islam for ages, in the same way they did in the Christian world. They built an additional layer of extreme demonization of Jews, presenting them as a dangerous force controlling all negative movements in the world. There are also passages in the Quran that are sympathetic to Jews, which the Nazis did not highlight in their propaganda broadcasts to the Arab world."

Western historians and scholars make a distinction between Islam and radical Islam. Do you accept this division?

"Look, in Islamic history, there were also many currents that called for not taking the Quran's words literally and believed that the Quran's interpretation could and should be adapted to changing times. On the other hand, radical Islamists say that we must adapt modern times to the Quran, not the other way around. This is where the difference between the currents lies. However, radical Islam, Islamism, is deeply rooted in global Islam, and many Muslims see it as a legitimate stream within Islam.

"For example, when ISIS carried out their horrific terrorist attacks, a large conference was held at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most important Sunni Muslim institution in the world, addressing the question 'Should we denounce ISIS and excommunicate them from Islam?' In the end, it was decided that they could not be excommunicated from 'Islam' because they still followed the commandments of the Quran and Islamic law. This is the main problem – you can't fight Islamism as long as such crimes can receive broad religious legitimacy in the Muslim world. For us in the West to fight Islamism, we need to forge an alliance with moderate Muslims and hope that change comes from within. I don't think outsiders can bring about significant change in this religion.

"It's important to understand that Islamism is actually the largest global mass movement that has grown and thrived since the fall of communism. When the Iron Curtain fell, they claimed that they are now the new force rising against the West. They are driven by this consciousness, which still gives them great power today."

Do you see sufficient determination in the West to fight these currents of Islam?

"Right now, I'm not satisfied with the situation. People in the West often don't recognize that mainstream Islam often provides support and cover for Islamist activities. The danger with Islamist movements stems from the fact that, first, they have a very clear common agenda – the Quran as a plan of action. Second, they have a lot of money, and they are well-organized. Third, they are spread all over the world. This is an international movement with immense power, which opposes the free market, liberalism, and all the values that the West supports. That's why we must fight them in every possible way. Unfortunately, Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood have a lot of influence over young Muslims living in the West, and we in the West must not ignore this. They are gaining strength not only in Europe but also in the United States."

New York as a Jewish center

Küntzel's worldview regarding political Islam and its dangers is surprising when you consider that he was once firmly aligned with the left wing of German politics. During the 1980s, he served as an advisor to the German Green Party in the Bundestag, was a member of the Communist League, and identified with the "anti-German movement," a fringe group on the German left characterized by its anti-fascism, but also pro-Israel stance and opposition to antisemitism.

"When I wrote a book about the Kosovo War in 2000," Küntzel recalls, "I deliberately avoided any discussion of radical Islam or jihad. As a leftist, I wanted to avoid what could be perceived as racism against Muslims."

The 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers also shattered Küntzel's worldview. "They changed everything for me. I wanted to know why the terrorists did it," he describes. Küntzel was further shocked by reports that the attack was actually planned on German soil, in his own city, Hamburg. Mohamed Atta, the 31-year-old Egyptian who hijacked the Boeing aircraft and crashed it into the North Tower of the Twin Towers, had lived in Germany since 1992 and established the "Hamburg cell" of al-Qaeda, which carried out the attacks in New York.

"The weekend after the Twin Towers fell, I already had on my desk at the University of Hamburg library research books on subjects that had previously been distant from me: the roots of Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, the history of the Middle East, Hamas, and Hezbollah. I immersed myself in this field for a year, and then published my first book on the subject."

Küntzel realized then that many chose to ignore one of the central motifs that motivated the attacks: antisemitism. "During my research, a trial was taking place in Hamburg against one of the aides of the 'Hamburg cell,' Mounir al-Motassadeq. Witnesses in the trial testified that the cell members' mindset was 'like Nazis,' in the sense that the terrorists believed that 'the Jews are responsible for everything bad that happens in the world.' This was the first sign for me that behind the attacks there was a deep antisemitic background that needed to be investigated. What amazes me is that researchers completely ignored this perspective. I am essentially the first scholar to recognize that antisemitism was a primary motivation for the attacks."

Your book on 9/11 begins with a startling anecdote: the first person to conceive of suicide planes crashing into buildings in New York was not Osama bin Laden, but Adolf Hitler.

"This idea was documented in the diaries of Albert Speer, Hitler's personal architect and one of the people closest to him. He describes how Hitler was enthusiastic about the idea of suicide planes crashing into skyscrapers in New York, which the Nazis referred to as the 'world Jewish center.' I thought it was a good opening for the book to show the mindset behind this kind of thinking that originated in Nazism. It's not just about killing another person or winning a battle, but 'cleansing the world of evil.' The Nazis even began building a plane called the 'America bomber' to implement this idea.

"In hindsight, I learned that in the minds of al-Qaeda members, New York was also seen as the 'center of world Jewry.' The terrorists even wanted to target the Jewish neighborhood in New York before deciding to hit the World Trade Center, but this aspect was completely forgotten. Even in the official U.S. report on the motive behind the attacks, Osama bin Laden's worldview was not mentioned. In this context, it's crucial to mention bin Laden's Letter to America, in which he clearly wrote that the Jews are behind every evil in the United States."

This text has recently gained bizarre popularity among progressive youth in the U.S., who praised bin Laden's letter on TikTok as a "spiritual journey" that brought them closer to the Quran.

"It was unbelievable to me because bin Laden explicitly wrote that the problem is not what America does or doesn't do in the Middle East, but the essence of America: the fact that people can vote and choose candidates to manage their political lives. Bin Laden wrote that Americans, along with the entire world, must submit to Sharia law. This is also why Iranian leaders refer to the West as the 'arrogant world' – we are so arrogant that we think we can manage our lives without 'Allah's will.'

"In other al-Qaeda statements, bin Laden clarified that the Muslim nation must punish America for its support of Israel, so the 9/11 attack was also a form of anti-Israelism. The reverse is also true. For them, 'if you destroy Israel, you destroy the West's front post.' We in the West were comfortable ignoring the suicide bombings that happened in Israel, and so we got 9/11 in New York and the terrorist attacks in Western capitals since. Therefore, October 7th should serve as a huge warning for us."

In this regard, your research echoes a message we in Israel have been trying to convey to the West since October 7th: "We are fighting your war."

"That's right. I see the war in Gaza within the framework of the global struggle between Muslim terrorist organizations, supported by Iran, along with the axis of Russia, China, and North Korea, and liberal democracies. That's why it's so important that you win in Gaza."

Ideology over facts

Following Küntzel's conclusions about the dangers of Islam, his friends on the German left expelled him from their ranks. "They reacted to 9/11 in two ways: some were outright gloating over America's downfall, or they saw the attacks as a just response, even if excessive, to what they called 'American imperialism.' In essence, they justified al-Qaeda's actions.

"The left-wing crowd is steeped in ideology, which will always take precedence over facts on the ground. They never bothered to study the foundational texts of al-Qaeda, the Hamas charter, or the thinkers of the Muslim Brotherhood, who repeatedly emphasize that they are not interested in fighting against one American administration or another, but against the West as a whole. The left wants to bury all of this, so they had to ostracize me. The left's thinking in this regard is narrow-minded and one-dimensional, almost primitive, I would say. They don't want to acknowledge the facts, even if they are harsh."

Perhaps this is related to the fact that since Marx, the left has placed great importance on economic solutions over religious ideas.

"I think this is not only a mistake of the left but of Western culture as a whole. The last time the West witnessed a war with a clear religious background was the Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants in the first half of the 17th century. Since then, much water has flowed under the bridge. Therefore, we in the West don't know how to deal with wars that have a clear religious background. Even the German government does not take Hamas's religious background seriously, even though the Quran is quoted no less than 32 times in Hamas's charter.

"People in the West find it difficult to grasp that when the Nukhba operatives launched their attack on the morning of October 7th, from their perspective, it was the fulfillment of a deep divine mission. That's why they appeared so proud and enthusiastic in the videos. When your enemy thinks in terms of a religious mission, no kind of peace can be made with him. He must be utterly defeated, and there is no possibility of compromise with him. Understanding this religious dimension is crucial, and denying it is destructive."

Küntzel experienced the academic establishment's suppression firsthand, under the guise of political correctness. In March 2007, he was supposed to give a lecture at the University of Leeds in England, titled "Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East." The Muslim Students Association at the university complained about the "provocative" title, and the university caved to their demands, agreeing to remove the words "Hitler" and "Islamic," but it was to no avail: aggressive emails received from Muslim students at the university led to the event's cancellation due to "security concerns." At the time, Küntzel said that "my feeling was that this was a form of censorship," and that "the claims that my lectures contain something intentionally against Islam are ridiculous, as I also talk about Christian antisemitism."

The shadow of the father

What initially led you to study antisemitism?

"I am trained as a political scientist, and I always thought that as a German, it is very natural to want to understand what made Auschwitz possible. My understanding of the central role of antisemitism in Nazi ideology was strengthened when I came across Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's famous book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. It was a turning point for me, a kind of eye-opener." Through research and documentation of a German reserve battalion that participated in the murder of Jews in Eastern Europe, Goldhagen argued that a unique form of antisemitism inherent in the German people enabled the Holocaust. The book caused a stir at the time, extending beyond Holocaust research, and predictably, parts of German society did not like its conclusions.

Around the time he was exposed to Goldhagen's book, Küntzel also mustered the courage to confront his family's history anew: "After my father's death in 1996," he writes in his book, "I was able, for the first time in my life, to read the letters he sent from the Western Front in 1945, the letters of a family… that remained loyal to the Nazi regime until the bitter end."

Küntzel and several other German scholars published a book about the German left's reactions to Goldhagen's thesis. "Surprisingly, we found that the left's rejection of the book was identical to that of the German right, where such a reaction might be more expected. In general, it's fair to say that Germans don't like this book, but for me, it allowed the beginning of a difficult but honest confrontation with our history."

After October 7th, we saw a clear display of support from the public and government in Germany. How would you characterize German public opinion regarding the war now?

"After the attack on October 7th, there were expressions of solidarity with Israel among the German public and pro-Israel statements from German politicians, much more so than in the Scandinavian countries, for example. But unfortunately, as the war progressed, the German public's attention has increasingly focused on the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza."

Küntzel shows me a cover of Die Zeit – Germany's most widely circulated weekly newspaper, associated with centrist political views – featuring a photo of a Palestinian family near a destroyed house. "This is typical coverage," he says. "Our TV channels show around-the-clock suffering in the Gaza Strip. Of course, they won't show pictures of the Israeli refugees from the north. Unfortunately, the coverage of the war in Germany is completely one-sided.

"As for the German government, it acts in a self-contradictory manner: ostensibly, it supports Israel, which is reflected in hesitant statements of support from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, but on the other hand, it does everything to tie Israel's hands in the war, for example, when it joined the U.S. administration's demands that Israel not enter Rafah. They are essentially blackmailing Israel: 'If you dare to do what needs to be done seriously to defeat and eliminate Hamas, we will stop supporting you.' How can the German government make such demands of Israel without showing them how to get rid of Hamas without entering Rafah, Khan Younis, or other areas in the Strip? Israel has no real alternative. The unspoken conclusion from Israel's 'friends' is that Hamas must be accepted as a reality in the day after, rather than defeated. This is a very mistaken position."

Küntzel is critical of Germany's Middle East policy in general. "To me, it was a real scandal when German President Steinmeier traveled to Ankara to strengthen ties with Turkey without mentioning Erdogan's support for Hamas. Erdogan himself emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood movement. When Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member who managed to become Egypt's president, died during his trial in Egypt, symbolic gestures of solidarity with the 'oppressed' Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were made in Turkey. So, when a country like Germany meets with Erdogan to strengthen ties and economy, it's another victory for Islamism in Europe."

Some in Israel believe we should be more open to the possibility of ties with right-wing parties in Europe, particularly in Germany, given the shared opposition to Islamist movements. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is often mentioned in this context.

"I disagree. Today, the AfD is a genuinely fascist party. In the first two or three years of its existence, there were also standard conservative right-wingers in it, but that's over; the fascist wing has taken over this party. Even Le Pen in France distances herself from the AfD in Germany because there are people there with a clearly fascist ideology. Their immigration policy is extremely radical: they seek to get rid of anyone who is not a 'typical German,' for example, any German citizen of Turkish origin. In the Jewish-Israeli context, it's important to know that they deny the necessity of remembering what happened in Germany during the Nazi period, instead calling for emphasis only on the positive sides of German history. These are two major points of failure in my view."

Deterrence won't work

Küntzel is a member of the advisory board of UANI, "United Against Nuclear Iran," an American organization that enjoys bipartisan support in the U.S. and focuses on research and public relations around the Iranian nuclear threat.

Assuming there won't be a significant Israeli attack with U.S. support in the near future, Israel might have to live alongside a nuclear Iran.

"In my view, this situation is nothing short of terrible. We've already seen a Cold War where both superpowers had nuclear weapons. Ultimately, neither attacked the other because despite the ideological struggle, what the Soviets and Americans had in common was a love of life, allowing for mutual deterrence. However, the slogan of the Islamists is 'You love life, we love death.' So this kind of mutual deterrence simply won't work this time.

"When Iran says seriously and persistently that they want to 'wipe Israel off the map,' we in the West need to take it seriously, not just as a form of verbal bluster or 'anti-Israel rhetoric.' The main lesson from October 7th is that we must take the Islamists' declarations seriously. If we in the West again display laziness in analyzing their ideological goals, another catastrophe could occur in Israel. Therefore, I think you need to use military means to prevent this bomb from being realized."

Do you see an American administration attacking nuclear facilities on Iranian soil together with us?

"I wouldn't rule it out. Don't forget that no nuclear power wants there to be more nuclear powers in the world. Even China and Russia, despite their cooperation with Iran, are not enthusiastic about the possibility of Iran getting the bomb. So we must fight until the last second to prevent this situation. I believe it's still possible."

The post Between Gaza and Berlin appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The world is witnessing a deeply disturbing resurgence of antisemitism on a scale unparalleled since the Nazi atrocities of World War II. Holocaust deniers, once relegated to the fringes of society, are reemerging and propagating falsehoods.

While the historical record unequivocally establishes Adolf Hitler's direct, personal orchestration of the Final Solution and the genocide of European Jewry, a longstanding point of contention has centered on the absence of any document explicitly bearing Hitler's signature, instruction, or recorded admission linking him to the logistical planning of the mass murder campaign.

A collaboration between renowned Holocaust scholar Professor Gideon Greif and former senior Mossad agent Oded Eilam has now uncovered a crucial piece of evidence that forges a more direct connection between Hitler and the Final Solution's implementation.

Calculated obfuscation

Though Hitler's rhetoric was peppered with menacing foreshadowings of violence against Jews over the years, the documented evidence of his direct involvement and awareness of the genocidal atrocities being perpetrated in the extermination camps remains largely circumstantial. The Nazi dictator meticulously distanced himself from any official record that could directly incriminate him in these monstrous crimes against humanity.

Hitler clearly grasped the grave criminal and historical implications of his policy of industrialized mass murder. He therefore left the grisly logistical details to subordinates like Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and others.

For decades, historians and researchers have debated the extent of Hitler's personal oversight and interest in the minutiae of implementing the Final Solution. The prevailing view has been that while fully cognizant of the genocide, he was not particularly invested in the operational specifics, which he delegated to his underlings.

In their meticulous examination of Hitler's extensive speeches and addresses, Greif and Eilam found that even as the dictator issued thinly veiled threats of genocide should war erupt, he conspicuously avoided any admission that such an unconscionable policy was actively underway.

The damning testimony

That remained the case until their landmark discovery of Hitler's long-overlooked Nov. 8, 1942 speech. In a departure from his typical inflammatory rhetoric, Hitler deviated from comments about the eastern front situation to make an extraordinary reference comparing the implementation of his earlier "prophecies" about the Jews to what was then transpiring:

"They always ridiculed me as a prophet. Today, many of those who laughed at that time are no longer laughing. Those who are still laughing now may also not laugh after some time... International Jewry will be recognized for all its demonic danger in all of Europe and throughout the world. We, the National Socialists, will take care of that."

"This danger is recognized in Europe, and one country after another is adopting our legislation. We see today in this great struggle only one possible and sole result – that of absolute success, and now the only question that remains is whether there are any reasons to doubt this success."

This chilling statement came in late 1942, by which time the industrialized genocide against Jews had entered its most horrific phase following the construction of the six dedicated extermination camps in occupied Poland. At the time, Hitler still delusionally believed total victory was inevitable.

By linking the "prophecies" he claims to have made about the Jews to their systematic extermination then underway, Hitler effectively directly incriminated himself for the possibly first and only time in orchestrating the unprecedented genocide. This marked a startling departure from his customary practice of maintaining arm's length separation from any implicating documentation.

The persistence of denial

Hitler's obvious determination to avoid leaving an incriminating paper trail has, perversely, provided ample fuel for Holocaust denial and revisionism by those seeking to minimize or absolve his direct culpability. Many deniers have seized on this absence of documentation to cast doubt on the extent of Hitler's involvement or even exculpate him entirely.

More insidiously, some fringe assertions even go so far as to claim the genocide was simply a Himmler- or SS-led initiative in which Hitler played no operational role, or to ludicrously allege that the death tolls were vastly inflated.

Chillingly, these pernicious denial efforts have seen a disturbing renaissance in the modern era, particularly amplified across social media following the Oct. 7 onslaught by the Hamas terror organization. A concerted disinformation campaign has sought to rewrite the narrative by denying the massacres entirely or portraying them as isolated incidents by rogue actors rather than a coordinated policy.

This makes Hitler's extraordinary November 1942 statement acknowledging the ongoing extermination of Jews as the realization of his "prophecy" all the more vital.

The post Have Israeli Holocaust historians found the elusive smoking gun on Hitler? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

According to the dry statistics in the last elections in Germany, one in five people voted for a right-wing party, similar to the resounding success of other right-wing parties in Europe. The public itself is still trying to come to terms with what exactly occurred here. There are various reasons, but it is still quite clear that even in enlightened and liberal modern-day Berlin, it is currently very difficult to be a Jew or an Israeli. Something has changed – antisemitism has become more violent and the attacks more frequent.

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Last Sunday, an ostensibly run-of-the-mill soccer match took place in Germany. The first round of the cup, in mid-August, is generally an event that draws the attention of only the most fervent supporters. Most are on vacation in any case and the league only begins in September (and the decisive stages in the cup take place only in May). But the gods of soccer have their own strange ways of reminding us why this sport is called the 'Beautiful Game'.

In a historic and probably a one-off occasion as far as it is concerned, Makkabi Berlin, the Jewish club of both the city and of Germany itself, met VfL Wolfsburg from Germany's top flight, the Bundesliga. The last time that a Jewish soccer club reached the heights of German football was, way back when, in the early 1930s, when other Jewish clubs also played in Europe.

Some more history. Immediately after the "Muskeljudentum" ("Muscular Judaism") speech given by Max Nordau at the Second Zionist Congress held in Basel in August 1898, Jewish sports clubs began to sprout in central Europe, initially focusing on gymnastics, athletics, swimming, and boxing, later to be followed by ball sports. They were given names combining the spirit of Zionism with strength and heroism: "HaKoach" ("The Force"), "Bar-Kochba", "Gideon" and also "Makkabi". Bar-Kochba was founded in Berlin as early as October 22, 1898. It started out as a gymnastics club and then expanded to take in additional sports, by 48 Zionist Jews. The establishment of the clubs in Germany fitted in well with the "Zeitgeist", the spirit of the times. Already at the time, the Prussians attributed great importance to sport as a means of forging better soldiers, who would be able to fight Napoleon's army – and the Jews, for their part, adopted this approach to give a lesson in Zionism to the young generation.

In 1911, Bar-Kochba also had a soccer team and shortly afterward this was followed by the establishment of "HaKoach Berlin", in a similar manner to the club with the same name that became famous in Vienna. Here, soccer was the main sport. The Bar-Kochba association incorporated tens of thousands of sportsmen in 24 countries, most of which were located in central Europe; though, Germany was an exception to the rule in that its sports clubs regarded themselves, first and foremost, as part of local society. This was also true for the Jews – Germans of the religion of Moses who did not choose to separate themselves from the gentiles via the sport in which they took part.

In 1929, Berlin's two Jewish clubs joined forces under the joint name "Bar-Kochba/HaKoach", with a soccer team in the regional league. In 1933, following the rise to power of the Nazis, it was quite clear just where this entire episode was heading. Jews were obviously forbidden to engage in sports, and in practice, the now-amalgamated club managed to visit the Holy Land in 1937 for a tour including various games, prior to disappearing from the map only one year later.

Video: The siren is heard in Uman, Ukraine.

Immediately after the War, the HaKoach Berlin soccer club was reestablished, but in 1953 it merged with another local club, losing both its name and its Jewish identity. On November 26, 1970, a Jewish sports association was re-established in Berlin, which was in essence a combination of all the old clubs – and it operates to this very day under the name Makkabi Berlin.

The association has a sports club in the city's most affluent neighborhoods, which includes soccer clubs (the senior team plays in the fifth league, alongside which youth and kids' teams also operate), tennis, basketball, volleyball, swimming, apparatus gymnastics, artistic gymnastics, shooting, table-tennis, and of course – chess. Today, as might be expected, the club takes in non-Jews too, emphasizing the fact that the club has always been open to everybody without regard to race, sex, color, or religion.

Becoming a global story

"This is my dad's mania, he is spending my inheritance money on Makkabi," explains to me in English and with a broad smile, Michael, the son of Yitzhak Koblenz, who together with Roy Friedling, a religious Jew who wears a Makkabi shirt together with tzitzit, took upon themselves the enjoyable, though somewhat expensive task (700 euros a year) of keeping the dream of Makkabi Berlin alive.

"Yes, we are mad,", Roy explains to me half in Hebrew and half in English, "but for us, this is also a way of showing to the Germans that we are here to stay. We have come back not only to reside here, to lead our lives here, and to raise our children, but also to establish a soccer team. Do you think that if I were to invest the money in politics the outcome would be the same? Absolutely not. Politics in Germany doesn't change anything. In contrast, via soccer, you can actually change things."

Wolfsburg – a club playing in the Bundesliga, Germany's premier league, which won the championship 13 years ago – has a budget of more than two hundred million euros, and the encounter with it, for the amateur club on a shoestring budget, is another dream come true on the way to achieving its professional objectives: in Germany, professional soccer begins only in the third league, and this is Makkabi Berlin's true aspiration – "To be the first professional Jewish club in Europe."

A special conference organized by the World Jewish Congress was held 48 hours prior to the game, to which I was invited as a researcher of Jewish sport and a journalist. My meeting with the members of Wolfsburg and Makkabi Berlin came as more of a surprise to them than to me. "I have to say that as a German, I was unaware of many of the things you mentioned regarding the history. This just shows how important a tool soccer can be in the war against racism and antisemitism," tells me with an embarrassed smile, Thorsten Grunow, the spokesperson and media director of the "Wolves" – the very club that was founded by the employees of the Volkswagen automobile company, way back when in those dark years.

It was the German media, rather than its colleagues from Israel, that was quick to understand the enormity of the story unfolding here. Der Spiegel dedicated five pages to Makkabi Berlin, while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – arguably the most important of all of Germany's daily newspapers – attributed the following title to the game: "Does the coach of Makkabi Berlin need to know what a bar-mitzvah is?" The local Sky network accompanied the club recently as did ZDF, the parallel local network.

"We never believed that this would become a global story," says Roy, "But now we want to recruit the Jewish world to stand behind us, and so we will be playing in the match with World Jewish Congress emblazoned on our shirts. As I mentioned, our dream is to become the first professional Jewish soccer team in history, but I also want people in German to see right now that Jews can play at the top level, and we don't need favors from anyone."

Closure on the touchline

When we come to the team's final training session, a short time before the onset of Shabbat, the true story of the club at this specific juncture comes to light. The team has French and African players, a player of Irish extraction who was born in Germany to expatriate parents, and the captain is Doron Bruck. Bruck is the son of a German mother and an Israeli father, who has already made aliyah to Israel, he completed a degree in Israel in Hebrew and then decided to return to Germany. "Why? That is a genuinely good question," he says in Hebrew. "I ask myself that question all the time."

For the majority of players, the Star of David emblem on the shirts they wear doesn't really mean very much. They play for Makkabi Berlin because the team was promoted to the fifth league, and comparatively, it pays decent wages for amateur players. When we explain to them about the club's history, they slowly begin to grasp the fact that there might, after all, be something special here.

"You came from Israel, especially for the game?", the 69-year-old club manager, Wolfgang Sandhowe, an aging figure who appears to have stepped right out of a 1980's German soccer game, asks me. Despite the stifling heat on the pitch, he wears a long sweatsuit with a healthy portion of mud smeared over it and a whistle hanging around his neck. He carries the cones and all the training drill equipment himself, as there are only eight volunteers at the club, and they all do everything.

"You really heard about this game? I was sure that only people in Germany are interested in it," he says. He has spent most of his coaching career in the lower leagues, and his peak came in the 90s when two young Croatian brothers by the name of Kovač came to the local league in Berlin. He immediately identified the potential and explained to all and sundry in German soccer that they simply did not belong to local league football. It is that same destiny that has created so many stories surrounding this match, which also brought the Kovač brothers here as the managers of Makkabi's rivals, and the three managers hug each other and shake hands with great emotions both before and after the match.

Sandhowe and the players try to display optimism, but just for the sake of comparison – Wolfsburg's TikTok manager earns more than most of the Makkabi players. Wolfsburg's spokesperson, Thorsten, adheres to a strong sense of German diplomacy when I ask him to gamble on the result: "We are not currently at the peak of our physical fitness."

The objective: This is more than a mere gimmick

For a moment it seemed as though a considerable part of the community had come to share in the volunteering spirit surrounding the organization of the match. Everybody is playing a part in the logistics – the owners, the sons and daughters, and the spouses take part in the entire operation, only in order to ensure that they comply with the meticulous conditions required for hosting a soccer empire from Germany's top league. On a daily basis these are leading global businessmen, but today they are handing out water to the players and selling shirts at the stall.

Wolfsburg's team members who have come to the small country-club pitch on the outskirts of Berlin, voice their appreciation in typical German politeness for the hospitality and say that it reminds them of the Bundesliga. Roy smiles and says in Hebrew: "Give us five years and then come back and look in on us. That's all we need."

The atmosphere in the VIP tent is quite festive. The original Jewish community mixes in with the Russian Jewish community that came here after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The languages here are intermingled. This is the mosaic that makes up the Jewish-Israeli community here in Germany. Some have draped the Israeli flag over their shoulders, others are attending a soccer match for the very first time. Germany's former Minister of Defense, Christine Lambrecht, a Makkabi Berlin supporter, also came to the match, but she endeavors to keep away from the prying eyes of the media. In a highly publicized move, Lambrecht was forced to resign in January this year after she used a government helicopter for private purposes and a number of subsequent politically embarrassing incidents. She shouts "M-a-k-k-a-b-i" at the top of her voice from the terraces, and when a helicopter suddenly hovers over the stadium, many people in the crowd joke that it is probably hers.

When the game's female referee – of Palestinian origin – blows the whistle for the kick-off, everybody just wants to get through the first ten minutes without conceding or without any embarrassing incidents. Dr. Riem Hussein is a pharmacist by profession and is considered to be one of Germany's most promising football referees. Somebody in the crowd asks, "How will they find additional ways of screwing us over today?". The truth is that the match is basically decided in the first ten minutes with the score already standing at 2:0. The Makkabi players manage to pull back a goal but the refereeing team is quick to disallow it and the hosts are livid. "What do you expect, they are Germans," says a German Israeli in the crowd with a local accent. At half-time, in the improvised changing room in the stadium's shelter, the two managers are shouting. The manager of the favorites, Wolfsburg, shouts to his players that a half-time score of only 2:0 is inconceivable. On the other side, the Makkabi manager tries to instill a sense of belief in his players, telling them that everything is still possible. In the background, you can hear the rapper Solomon singing out loud the hit he wrote for the match, "Makkabi Lives". Solomon is a relatively well-known rapper in Berlin, and his song rouses those at the stadium as it deals with Jewish pride. Afterward, the playlist changes to include top Israeli singers, Omer Adam and Moshe Peretz.

The Wolfsburg fans eat pizza and light flares and do not really fully comprehend what is actually taking place in the stadium. This old soccer pitch, located in the heart of the affluent Jewish neighborhood, experienced some extremely somber history during the 1930s, while now, here in 2023, everybody is singing, "Moshiach, Moshiach, Moshiach" in Hebrew to the players on the turf. Indeed, this might truly b a sign of the Messianic era in which we live.

The final score is 6:0 to Wolfsburg, and indeed the referees have done an injustice to the players wearing the blue and white shirts. Not that it really matters, as the gap between the two clubs is colossal, but in the changing room, Doron Bruck explains that the objective is to become a legitimate soccer club and not merely "the Jewish club", and it is a genuine shame that the referees disallowed their goal.

This is only the beginning

After the match, in the VIP tent, people are already talking business. Real estate and soccer. When the manager and the players enter, everybody stands up and applauds them. Michael asks for permission to speak and duly thanks everyone for coming, including the wives of the players and the owners, some of whom have no idea in which league the team plays.

Following this match, the soccer bug has clearly bitten the owners even harder, and indeed it now seems that the inheritance money is about to be frittered away. The only question now is how they will be able to return to former anonymity and gray matches on remote, unplayable pitches, where the players have to endure antisemitic jibes from time to time, both from their colleagues and from the scant crowds that come to the matches.

For most of the players, this match was a unique experience that will not repeat itself ever again. This week, they have been the talk of the entire European soccer scene, and it is most doubtful that Makkabi Berlin, a team from Germany's fifth tier of soccer, will ever again grab such a portion of the media highlights.

But for the directors, Roy and Michael, this is only the beginning. "We have shown the Germans that we are here and we mean business, we are not going anywhere. Although for us, just taking part in the match is a sort of victory, we also want to win on the pitch," they say, and they understand that despite the heavy defeat, somehow, everybody has come out a winner from this encounter.

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The post Makkabi Berlin's incredible journey: How the historically Jewish group almost won the German cup appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

February marks the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Director Leon Prudovsky, who was born in St. Petersburg, does not doubt that the war that has been raging ever since should end in the complete defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

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"Russia needs to be divided into small states, just like the US and India," he suggested. "Its territory is enormous, and the millions of citizens who do not live in the central region pretty much live in garbage. Entire villages are without electricity; the state has simply abandoned them.

"In my opinion, control in Russia should not only be conducted from one place that only cares about itself. Changing this can save Russia, otherwise, it might become a fascist and totalitarian state."

Prudovsky, 44, who has been living in France in recent years, said that the Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine completely shocked him and prompted introspection. As someone who grew up in Russia and immigrated to Israel as a teenager, he said he only realized in retrospect how Russian education deceived him.

"Looking back, I analyzed my years in Russia, and it deeply unsettled me. There are many things that I grew up with, and today I understand that they are lies that were planted in my head, as a form of manipulation and propaganda."

Q: Like what? 

"It really bothers me that talented people gave up their freedom to live in Russia, the ability of the citizen to speak his or her mind. This warrants serious criticism. It's very hard."

Whether aware of it or not, Prudovsky's feelings regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine greatly affected his new film "My Neighbor Adolf," which premiered in January. 

It was screened at prestigious film festivals in Israel and Switzerland and was written in collaboration with screenwriter Dmitry Malinsky. It takes place in a remote town in 1960 South America, where Holocaust survivor Mr. Polsky, launches an investigation after he is convinced that the person who moved in next to him is none other than Adolf Hitler. 

Mr. Polsky is portrayed by Scottish actor David Hayman ("Taboo,"  "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas") and Mr. Herzog – who is suspected of being Hitler – by German actor Udo Kier ("Breaking the Waves," "Melancholia").

The film follows the complex – and sometimes surprising – relationship that the two neighbors develop slowly and centers on the subjects of memory, revenge, and moral responsibility as well as empathy, forgiveness, and willingness to reconcile in the face of shared tragedies.

Q: Your film is also relevant to modern times, with millions of Ukrainians have become refugees. What would you say about Israel's approach to the conflict? 

"It's complicated. Israel does not have a clear immigration policy alongside the Law of Return. I believe that we have not done enough on the issue of Ukrainian refugees, but there is also conflict. There is a feeling that Israel is between the East and the West, a type of European country located in the Middle East – and therefore we are more inclined to fear Putin and think that he has real political power. Such belief strengthens him."

Q: Fear is a central motive in human behavior, and in your film as well. 

"Absolutely. My film talks about something that will always remain – enmity between people. We exploit it for conflicts. After all, it would be difficult to shoot someone we know and love, but not someone we think is threatening us.

"Unfortunately, hatred of the other will always remain. You can say that this is exactly what happened with Polsky. He is motivated by hatred, demonization, and pain, and also by a desire to take revenge for what the Germans did to him and his family."

Q: In your film, Polsky begins to connect with his neighbor precisely as a result of trying to prove he was Hitler. What were you trying to say here?

"It's an accurate allegory about what happens when you get to know the enemy and find out that he's not necessarily what you imagined him to be. He is a human being with feelings and disappointments. 

"It's awfully hard to hate someone you know, and once people get to know each other, the hatred might disappear. Polsky wondered if he was wrong about his neighbor, and he realized that there is also the possibility that he is not a bad person at all."

Usually when thinking about a Holocaust movie, one imagines a long, heavy, horror-filed piece depicting what Jews went through during the war. In this sense, "My neighbor Adolf" breaks away from tradition, and has quite a few comical touches to it. 

One cannot help but immediately think of  Roberto Benigni's 1997 masterpiece "Life Is Beautiful" which tells the story of a father who employs his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. 

"I guess humor is part of my self-defense mechanism. Unlike handling things dramatically, when you laugh – it's more challenging and complex," Prudovsky said. "You have to feel the strings of the instrument you're playing, feel the viewer. When you tell someone something serious and important, if you do not smile or laugh, and don't decrease the pressure, it will be more difficult for him to connect.

"Laughing brings down all my defenses. I and the viewers enter into a kind of dance of laughter, and that's how an understanding of a specific moment is created between us. It's an amazing feeling, which in a way gives you wings. I always try to expand the viewers' minds to talk about something serious while laughing. It's something that connects."

Q: Aren't you afraid that some might think that bringing humor into the subject of the Holocaust might be improper? 

"For sure there will be those who say that but I didn't mean to offend anyone, and anything can offend someone looking to be offended."

Q: It's hard to miss your criticism of Israel in the film, for example, how dismissive the Israeli representatives who met with Polsky were. 

"I don't have a problem with stinging, but I don't think this film does that, it is more of a hug. The representative [portrayed by Kineret Peled] shows this Israeliness, but the film had to have comedic moments, something a little crazy because it talks about something very important – which is a part of all of us. The hostility, the friendship, the love, the hatred, and the post-trauma are things that always exist in us. I think it's good that it exists, this satire."

Prudovsky got the idea for the movie 12 years ago when he returned to Israel from a film festival in Brazil. He later shared his experience with Malinsky, who suggested Prudovsky write an alternative story, where Hitler survives the war and escapes to South America. 

Initially, Prudovsky was not thrilled with the idea but said it stayed with him. Among other things, he wondered how his grandmother –  a Holocaust survivor – would have reacted had the person who moved in next to her been Hitler.

"It just grabbed me, how she, with all her hatred for the Germans and everything related to them, would behave and experience the matter. We wanted to write about a man who demonized his neighbor very strongly, and then see what happens when he suddenly gets to know him. When he suddenly realizes that maybe actually, the demon is not that bad."

Q: On the set, there were six languages spoken, including English, Yiddish, and Hebrew. How did that go? 

"It was an amazing experience, with great people from all over the world. When I arrived on the first day at the set in Colombia, I started crying and was in tears. After so many years of writing and preparation, suddenly this thing, which I dreamed about for so long, came to be."

Q: And how did you get along with the main actors? They all come from different cultures and speak different languages. 

"They are both over 70 years old, but they are so different from one another. David is a great actor. The role of Polsky was very important to him, but he was nervous and wasn't sure if I knew what I was doing. It was very difficult for him.

"Udo, on the other hand, was not nervous at all. He had already done hundreds of roles in his life, and worked with some of the most respected directors in the world – including Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, and the Oscar winner Alexander Payne – but he was also difficult to work with because he is a Hollywood star. It creates all kinds of very challenging situations."

Q: Like what? 

"As a director, I expected both of them to come and fight by my side for the film, but it was difficult. With each of them, there were different moments. David told me that at first, he did not tolerate me at all! With Udo, there was a very interesting situation: we shot a scene that was very important to him, and then he went to the corner. Suddenly David came to me angrily and said Udo is upset with me because I didn't support him enough.

"I talked to Udo, and then he said to me, 'I'll do what you say, but you know that either you're completely crazy, and the film will be a crazy flop, or you're a genius that I can't understand.'"

Like the entire world, and the film industry in particular, the production of "My neighbor Adolf" was also greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Although filming in South America ended shortly before the outbreak of the epidemic, Prudovsky, who has been living in Paris for the past four years, suddenly found himself editing the film alone.

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"We finished filming shortly before the first lockdown, and I was actually stuck in France. My daughter had just been born. I used to come to Israel at least once a month, but then the lockdown started – and the connection between me and the editor was cut off. For several months, I edited the film at night, by myself, and it was very difficult. I'm one of those who believe that you always need another point of view and another pair of eyes. The whole editing process took a year and a half. The producer was also stuck in Israel, with a disconnection that caused many difficulties. In short, everything took a lot of time."

Q: Did it affect the final result? 

"No, the opposite actually. I think in the end, it actually benefitted. The film turned out to be more complex and challenging than I imagined, with the right amount of laughter and tragedy. I'm usually a person who is not satisfied with anything, but I came away very satisfied with this thing."

Q: The film received, among other things, a budget from the state. In your opinion, if it were produced today, would the new government support it?

"Definitely. I think the state should support Israeli culture, even if it doesn't appeal to the general public. In general, there is very little desire to silence people in Israel, in contrast to the situation I see in Russia, which is turning into a dictatorship. Creators are silenced there, and this is something that is unacceptable in my opinion. It is impossible to silence people, because the more you silence them, the more it will eventually explode. We must speak up."

The post What if Hitler lived next to a Holocaust survivor? Ask this director what would happen appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Former MK Rachel Azaria shared with his followers on social media that her great-grandmother, Frieda Friedman, received a handwritten letter from Adolf Hitler in response to a letter she had sent German President Paul von Hindenburg, who had appointed the Nazi leader as the head of the government in 1933.  

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Azaria's post was in commemoration of her great-grandmother on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, which was observed Wednesday night and Thursday. Azaria said that her grandmother that upon his rise to power, she wrote the German president about the new attitude toward Jews despite their contribution to the country.

She went on to explain that her fiance was killed in World War I, as were two of her brothers, while fighting for Germany. Her only surviving brother was blinded due to his injuries. All three brothers received medals for their sacrifice, she said, "but now there are open calls to take violent action against Jews. Is the incitement against Jews a sign of courage or cowardness, considering that Jews comprise just 1% of Germans." 

The president said he took her complaints seriously and gave it to Hitler for comment. The newly appointed German chancellor wrote back, in handwriting, that she was making baseless accusations and that there were no calls for violence against Jews. The handwritten letter was later seized by the British as it is considered the first time Hitler publicly showed his handwriting as chancellor. It is now at an archive in Koblenz.

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The post Why did Hitler write a letter to a Jew? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.