Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, Wrote Asking Me to Help Them 'Preserve the Truth of the Holocaust'.

I Responded by Asking Them Why They Wanted to Commemorate the Holocaust and what ‘Truth’ was it That They Wanted to Preserve? 

I didn’t know that I was on Yad Vashem’s mailing list of donors. Clearly I now walk in exalted company! Perhaps that’s because Yad Vashem now has a copy of my book, given to them in memory of Yehuda Schwarzbaum (1930-2011) and his relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Yad Vashem

Clearly Zohar Neumann, who sent me the begging letter, hadn’t read my book because if he had he would have come across more criticism of Yad Vashem than I expect he is used to.  Founded in 1953 as an Israeli State propaganda institution, Yad Vashem is the main institution charged with developing a Zionist holocaust narrative, distorting holocaust history and creating what is called ‘holocaust awareness’ or consciousness.

Despite its commitment to learning the lessons of the holocaust, Yad Vashem does not include Israel’s numerous racist laws against its own Arab citizens in that lesson. Nor does it consider the vicious anti-Arab discrimination in Israel, the pogroms against Arabs and calls to expel refugees as forming any part of those lessons. The ‘lessons of the Holocaust’ are Zionist not anti-racist ones.

Lenni Brenner - the author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and 51 Documents on Zionist-Nazi Collaboration

In Yad Vashem’s sanitised world we learn nothing about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. Nor do we learn about how the Zionist leaders made every effort to sabotage rescue schemes where the destination was not Palestine. Or how the Zionists undermined the Jewish Boycott of Nazi German and instead did their best to ensure that the Nazi regime was not destabilised.

In his book Zionism and anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Francis Nicosia, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University and himself a Zionist states that:

the police authorities were entirely satisfied by 1938 that Zionism had become the dominant political force among those Jews who remained in Germany (p.123)

Yad Vashem doesn’t ask why no Zionist Congress before 1939 condemned the Nazi attacks on Jews or why the Nazi state viewed the Zionists in Germany as the good, ‘racial’ Jews and why the Zionist Federation of Germany consciously used their favoured status to try and displace the existing non-Zionist leadership.

Still less do we find out why the heads of the Jewish Desks in the Gestapo  were allowed to attend their conferences and use the German Jewish delegation as their proxies?

Eichmann attended the 1937 Zionist Congress  in Zurich and his predecessor, Baron von Mildenstein attended the 1935 Congress in Lucerne. Nor do they ask why Eichmann visited the Zionists in Palestine alongside Haganah and Gestapo double-agent Feivel Polkes before the British expelled them.

What we do know is that there is no more ardent supporters of the traditional Jewish leadership in the ghettos, the Judenrate, than Yad Vashem, even though they were despised by the very Resistance that they purport to support.

Yad Vashem is involved in constructing an utterly false version of Zionism’s role in the holocaust. It doesn’t mention the letter that the Zionist Federation of Germany wrote to Hitler on June 21, (which is published in Lucy Dawidowicz’s Holocaust Reader). The letter spoke about how

On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible’

In Yad Vashem’s version of history Zionists aren’t collaborators but resistance fighters. The fact that two out of every three members of the Judenrate (Jewish Councils) which rounded up Jews for the death camps were Zionists passes them by. Yad Vashem has a very important role.  Rewriting the history of the holocaust in order that the Israeli state can justify its apartheid and  genocidal policies. 

It is no small task and I know that readers of my blog will be sensitive as to how enormous this undertaking is. Because of Yad Vashem's determination to ensure that Holocaust history fits their preconceived ideological framing, Yad Vashem has had to reject a number of books that they might have published which any holocaust institute worthy of the name would have grasped with 2 hands.

The first such was Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews. First published in 1961 and updated since it remains the most comprehensive history of the holocaust. Even Yad Vashem's academic advisor, Professor Yehuda Bauer was forced to admit it is 'unsurpassed'. It is not for nothing that Yad Vashem is incapable of producing a general and comprehensive history of the Holocaust.

Hilberg, who became the Professor of Holocaust History at Vermont University, saw the Judenrate as an instrument of the Nazis who were essential to the implementation of the Final Solution. Yad Vashem didn't appreciate such an analysis since two-thirds of the Judenrate were Zionists!  

Polish fascist Michal Kaminski who justified the murder of Polish Jews in Jedwabne visits Yad Vashem

Likewise Yad Vashem didn't appreciate Hilberg's dismissal of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust as minor as Zionist history consciously magnifies it and on occasion invents it in order to provide itself with a retrospective justification and back story.

When it came to the escape of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler from Auschwitz in April 1944 Yad Vashem decided that the best thing to do was to ignore them. Not only were they not Zionists but they came into conflict with Zionist collaborator, Rudolf Kasztner who, in the words of Israeli Judge  Benjamin Halevi in 1955, 'sold his soul to Satan' when he agreed a deal with Eichmann for a train out of Hungary for 1684 of the Zionist/Jewish elite in return for silence about where the deportation trains were heading.

Kasztner, who was the plaintiff in a libel trial in Israel in 1954 when accused of collaboration, rapidly turned into the de-facto defendant. When Israel's second government led by Moshe Sharrett decided to appeal the verdict of the first trial, that Kasztner was a collaborator, it promptly fell. Kasztner has nonetheless been rehabilitated by Yad Vashem. 

No matter that Kasztner’s deal with Eichmann led to the truth of Auschwitz being kept from Hungary’s 700,000 Jews resulting in nearly 2/3 of them being deported to their deaths. This is a minor matter.  What is important is that his deal with Eichmann saved 1600 Zionist and Jewish leaders. The fact that he went to Nuremberg after the war to provide testimony for major Nazi war criminals is erased from history.

Suffice to say YV wouldn't publish Vrba's memoirs 'I cannot forgive'. In fact they were determined to erase Vrba and Wetzler's very names from Yad Vashem. It is with difficulty that one could find any mention of them until, the late 1990's when Ruth Linn, Professor of Education at Haifa University, began a campaign in their favour. At one point Yehuda Bauer called Linn an 'anti-Zionist'.  There is no worse insult in the Zionist dictionary than that!!

Suffice to say Yad Vashem weren't interested in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt by its last Commander, Marek Edelman. Edelman's misfortune was being a member of the anti-Zionist Bund and a supporter of the Palestinian resistance.

In the words of Daniel Blatman, an Israeli holocaust scholar, Yad Vashem is a 'diplomatic laundromat for every fascist and anti-Semite who darkens its doors.' And there have been a lot of them – Trump,  Brazil’s Bolsonaro, the Philipenes Duterte and assorted neo-Nazis from Germany and Austria.

In 1976 South Africa’s Prime Minister, John Vorster, who had been interned during the war because he was a member of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Broederbond and Ossewa Brandwag, visited Israel as a guest of the Israeli Labor Party government. Naturally he was taken on a tour of Yad Vashem. 

Israel Shahak, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen-Belsen  wrote

Of the Yad Vashem… theatre, I do not wish to speak, at all. It, and its vile exploiting, such as honouring South Africa collaborators with the Nazis, are truly beneath contempt. 

Zohar Neumann of YV wrote to me just before Xmas begging for money in order that they could counter those who deny that the Holocaust occurred. Of course there are a few political flat earthers but they are nothing as compared with Zionist genocidaires.

Zohar told me that ‘the urgency to act has never been greater’. I agree but it’s not the few people who deny what happened between 1939 and 1945 who are the problem but those who deny that there is a holocaust happening barely 20 miles away from where Yad Vashem is based, which itself is built on stolen Palestinian land in Jerusalem.

The problem is, as I explained to Zohar, Yad Vashem is on the side of today’s holocaust deniers – the Keir Starmers and Joe Bidens of this world who not only deny that there is a holocaust happening but actively support it by sending the Israeli state more weapons to kill more Palestinians.

When 50 holocaust researchers asked Yad Vashem to condemn the genocidal statements made by Israeli politicians, military and other public figures, including Israeli government ministers, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli President Herzog, its Chair Dani Dayan refused.

Instead Dayan asserted that the Israeli army was not conducting a genocide but was acting ‘within the constraints Hamas imposes on us to comply with the proper moral standards and the laws of war.’

Dayan himself illustrates everything I have described above. He was   Secretary-General of the fascist anti-Arab Tehiya party, and a candidate to the Knesset on its list in the Israeli legislative elections in 1988 and 1992. 

Dayan was also on the Executive of the settler Yesha Council, which is a kind of government for West Bank settlers. Unsurprisingly in 2015 Brazil rejected him as Israel’s nomination as its Ambassador because of his fascist credentials. Clearly Dani Dayan is an excellent choice to run Yad Vashem!

One can only assume that support for the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, universities and extermination of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are what passes for high moral standards at Yad Vashem.

Dayan told those who suggested that Yad Vashem say something about the holocaust in Gaza that:

the outrageous statements you cited do not express the moral position of the very large majority of the Israeli public or the IDF and its commanders.

This is the same Israeli army which is busy torturing to death prisoners, raping to death doctors and running over hundreds of Palestinians with tanks. Clearly what Yad Vashem considers a ‘moral position’ is not one shared by most civilised people.

Ironically Dayan is teaching us a lesson, which is how senior Nazis were also able to justify to themselves and live with the holocaust. 

I therefore wrote a letter in response to Zohar which is below the one from Zohar. Despite not contributing a penny farthing to the appeal, Zohar wrote me a gushing thank you letter!!  Clearly these PR merchants don’t care about anything except the bottom line! 

Hitler lover Bolsonaro at Yad Vashem

On Mon, 23 Dec 2024 at 14:03, Zohar Neumann <zohar.neumann@yadvashem.org.il> wrote: 

Dear tony, 

Thanks to compassionate supporters like you, we’ve already reached 25% of our goal! Every donation helps us commemorate, educate, and preserve the truth of the Holocaust.

But we can’t stop here. Every day, falsehoods about the Holocaust—claims that “death camps” were merely “work camps” or that far fewer lives were lost—continue to spread. Imagine the heartbreak of survivors who see their stories obliterated by denial and distortion. History is being rewritten, and the urgency to act has never been greater.

With your support, we can reach more people, counter misinformation, and ensure the light of truth shines even brighter. Every click strengthens the fight against those who twist history for their own ends.

Thank you for standing with us and ensuring the lessons of the Holocaust remain a beacon of truth for generations to come. Together, let’s keep the momentum going! 

Thank you,

Zohar Neumann
Director, Partnerships and Global Campaign Desk, Yad Vashem #TruthShinesBright  

Re: We’re Making Progress Together

15:05 23 Dec. 24 

 

Zohar, 

Thank you for your email asking me to make a financial contribution towards your appeal. 

There is a genocide, or a holocaust if you prefer, taking place in Gaza even as I write. The similarities with the Nazi holocaust of Jews, Roma and the Disabled is all too obvious. There is an exterminationist mentality in Israel today. 

'Finish them off' is Israel's most popular car bumper sticker.  'Two nice Jewish boys' Israel's oldest and most popular podcast broadcast a program saying how hosts Naor Meningher and Eytan Weinstein would press a button and wipe out the Palestinians without a second's thought. In defending their stance, they claimed that their views reflect mainstream Israeli sentiment. 

These nice Jewish boys would also erase the whole population of the West Bank too. 

Yoav Gallant when opening Israel's war on the civilians of Gaza called the Palestinians 'human animals' the very same term that Heinrich Himmler used to SS Generals on 4 October 1943 at Posen when justifying the extermination of the Jews. 

Israeli government ministers, e.g. Netanyahu's comparison of the Palestinians with Amalek, have used genocidal language about the Palestinians. In this case a call to treat the Palestinians as the ancient Hebrew tribes supposedly treated the tribe of Amalek, when they wiped out every man, woman & child. 

Influential Israelis have even justified the wiping out of Palestinian children using the same arguments as Himmler on 6 October 1943, also at Posen (Posnan). E.g. Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, of the Kiryat Moshe Yeshivah, who said on 7 March 2024 that: 

"Today's terrorists are the children of the prior [military] operation that left them alive. The women are essentially the ones who are producing the terrorists," he said, adding that when someone comes to kill you, you should be quick to kill them. "It's not only the 14- or 16-year-old boy, the 20- or 30-year-old man who takes up a weapon against you but also the future generation. There's really no difference,"  

Compare this with Himmler's remarks 

‘I did not assume to have the right to exterminate the men… and have the avengers personified in the children to become adults for our children and grandchildren.’ 

Perhaps you can spot a difference between the two? Naturally the Israeli Police recommended that no charges be brought against Mali but if he had been an Israeli Palestinian they would have been arrested, beaten up and charged months ago. 

You say in your begging letter that you want to:

commemorate, educate, and preserve the truth of the Holocaust (thus)...  ensuring the lessons of the Holocaust remain a beacon of truth for generations to come  

Perhaps Yad Vashem or you can tell me what these lessons of the Holocaust are?  Are they universal or do they only apply to Jews? Is opposition to genocide and the extermination of whole peoples a principle or does it only relate to Jews?  What are you preserving the truth and commemorating the Holocaust for? Is it only to preserve Jewish racial supremacy? 

Surely one of the lessons of the Holocaust is that all peoples, be they German, Jewish or Arab can, if the circumstances are right, become genocidaires. There is nothing special about which ethnicity/religion one belongs to.  Racism is not something that we inherit biologically. It is a product of the societies we live in and Israel is, as many of us have argued, an apartheid, Jewish Supremacist State in exactly the same way that Nazi Germany or South Africa was. 

The reality is that Yad Vashem, throughout its 71 years existence, has set its face against drawing any universal lessons from the Holocaust.  You have remembered the Holocaust in order that others can repeat it, as is now happening with Israel. You were even established next to the village of Deir Yassin which Zionist militias wiped out yet you fired a guide, Itamar Shapira, for pointing out this fact to visitors. 

The fact that an exterminationist and racist mentality pervades in Israel is proof in itself that you have failed.  You commemorate the holocaust, not in order to warn against the dangers of racism but in order to justify them. 

Not once have you condemned or protested against Israel's many anti-Arab laws. Nor have you protested against the genocide in Gaza that has led to a quarter of a million Palestinians at least being killed. Genocide is only wrong when Jews are the victims. This is the Zionist mentality that you propagate. 

You remind me of when Ha'aretz journalist Nir Gontarz rang Yad Vashem and asked them to publicly condemn Netanyahu’s attempt to deport 60,000 African refugees from Israel because they were threatening its racial identity. The 'crime' of these refugees was being neither White nor Jewish. Gontarz described what happened next: 

One after the other of the senior staff there, including Mr. Avner Shalev [the director], slammed the phone down on me when I asked to speak to them... I asked them this morning to remove from their database the details I gave them in the past about my family. (Ha'aretz 24.1.18)

Yad Vashem serves no useful purpose. As Professor Yehuda Elkana, himself an Auschwitz survivor, wrote in March 1988 in Ha'aretz, it is better to forget the Holocaust than allow its memory to be used to justify further racism and genocide.

You will not be surprised to learn that I will not be contributing a penny farthing to your appeal. Whatever spare money I have is going to relief in Gaza. 

Yours sincerely, 

Tony Greenstein

I was even more surprised to receive an email on New Year’s day from Zohar thanking me for the donation I didn’t make! I give up!

Dear tony,

We did it—because of you! 

Thanks to your incredible generosity, Yad Vashem reached an astounding $180,000 in our end of year campaign, and we are equipped better than ever to preserve the truth and honor the memory of the Holocaust. 

Your support enables us to:

• Safeguard Holocaust history by preserving irreplaceable testimonies, artifacts, and documents for future generations.
• Combat the rise of Holocaust distortion by providing accessible, fact-based resources that make the truth undeniable.
• Empower educators and students worldwide, ensuring the Holocaust’s lessons are passed down and understood across borders.
• Honor the memory of the six million victims, the survivors, and the courageous Righteous Among the Nations who stood up against evil.

This victory is as much yours as it is ours. Together, we’re keeping the light of truth burning bright. We are deeply grateful for your commitment to Yad Vashem’s mission. 

From all of us at Yad Vashem, thank you for standing with us. We look forward to the important work we will continue to do together in the coming year! 

Thank you!

Zohar Neumann
Director, Partnerships and Global Campaign Desk, Yad Vashem
#truthshinesbright