• Jews face down new extremism from Hungary's far-right

    Bernadett Szabo / Reuters

    Balint Nogradi holds his son Shalom Doveber before the Sabbath in their home in Budapest November 30, 2012.

    By Reuters

    BUDAPEST - A week after a leader of Hungary's far-right Jobbik party called for lists of prominent Jews to be drawn up to protect national security, Janos Fonagy stepped forward.

    "My mother and father were Jewish, and so am I, whether you like it or not," the state secretary of the Development Ministry told parliament, explaining he did not have dual citizenship with Israel and was not religious.

    "I cannot choose, I was born into this. But you can choose, and you have chosen this path," he said, addressing Jobbik deputies. "Bear history's judgment."

    It is only relatively recently that Hungary's Jews have celebrated their identity as openly as they did when Europe's largest synagogue was built in Budapest in the 1850s.

    Now they are determined not to allow a political climate in which they have to defend that identity or even suppress it.

    More than 500,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust after Hungary sided with the Nazis in World War Two and those left in Budapest were forced into two ghettos.

    When the Soviet Red Army moved in and liberated the ghettos in 1945 about 100,000 Jews remained, living reminders of a collaboration with fascism many Hungarians wanted to forget.

    "Even 15 years ago, using 'Jewish' as a brand required quite some bravery," said Vera Vadas, the director of the Jewish Summer Festival, launched in 1998. "Now the word just describes our culture and it draws artists and audiences alike."

    From an initial crowd of about 3,000, the number of visitors at the festival was around 120,000 this year, filling the cobblestone alleys and courtyards of the city wall to wall.

    The biggest of the two wartime ghettos is now a thriving Jewish quarter, a year-round highlight on Budapest's tourist map with the huge Dohany street synagogue -- the model for New York's Central Synagogue -- at its heart.

    Around it are more synagogues, museums, businesses, schools and restaurants, and sometimes a mix of those things, such as a Talmud class that is taught regularly at one of the famous Budapest "ruin pubs" - run-down buildings converted into bars.

    Rabbi Zoltan Radnoti, the young leader of a small, modern synagogue in southwestern Budapest, said his generation was the first to be confident of its heritage after their traumatized grandparents taught their children to play it down.

    "My parents' generation, the one born immediately after the war, was protected so much they never got to experience their Jewishness," said Radnoti. "They assimilated almost completely."

    "Now, my children take their Jewishness naturally, they have no doubts about their roots. They are kids who live in Hungary, speak Hungarian and follow the Jewish faith. The vast majority of young Jewish parents can and do choose this tradition."

    Bernadett Szabo / Reuters

    Eliezer Nogradi holds challah before the Sabbath in their home in Budapest November 30, 2012.

    Besides religious freedom, the end of Communism in 1989 also brought a freedom of speech and politics that quickly gave birth to openly anti-Semitic political forces.

    The Jobbik party, the third biggest in parliament, has used anti-semitic slurs to boost its standing before elections in 2014, drawing international scorn.

    The strongest yet greeted last month's call by Marton Gyongyosi, who runs Jobbik's foreign policy cabinet, for Jewish members of government and parliament to be listed in the wake of Israel's recent military campaign to stop rocket fire from Gaza.

    "I think such a conflict makes it timely to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national security risk to Hungary," he told parliament.

    Hungary's centre-right government condemned the remarks, for which Gyongyosi later apologized, and the U.S. Embassy in Budapest called them "outrageous".

    Although anti-Semitism has not yet led to serious physical confrontations, hate crimes have included desecration of Jewish cemeteries and a verbal attack in Budapest on 90-year-old former Chief Rabbi Joseph Schweitzer.

    Andras Heisler, a leader of Mazsihisz, the Association of Jewish Communes in Hungary, said Jobbik was a danger to Hungary.

    "I think this is real racism and inciting hatred. A bad economic situation, recession, usually flames tempers and this is the case now as well."

    Laden with debt and hit hard by the wider debt crisis in Europe, the country is struggling to end recession and sort out its finances, and a series of austerity measures have increased tensions on the street.

    Hungary's political elite showed a rare gesture of unity at a big rally on December 2, where ruling and opposition party leaders expressed their disdain for Jobbik's politics.

    So far, polls suggest Jobbik has retained its voter base. Among young voters its support is nearly 20 percent, making it the strongest party in the age group below 30, according to a Republikon Institute poll earlier this year.

    But unlike its hugely successful anti-Roma rhetoric, anti-Semitism may end up working against Jobbik on the long run, Republikon Institute Director Csaba Toth told Reuters, because it will put off potential coalition partners.

    "Anti-Semitism gets far fewer votes," he said. 

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  • Hail to the chief: Americans eyed in search for Britain's top rabbi

    David Karp / AP, file

    Although the official selection committee for a new chief rabbi remains mum, the Jewish press has put Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, the leader of a thriving congregation in the Bronx on the most recent short list. Rosenblatt denies that he is a contender for the position.

    By Rachel Elbaum, NBC News

    LONDON — Time consuming, costly and agonizingly difficult: No matter what the scale — from the American presidency to a local youth organization — choosing a new leader is never easy. Throw in a dose of religion, and the process only gets more complicated.

    Britain’s Jewish community is currently in the midst of a once-in-a-generation process to select a new chief rabbi. The candidates are numerous, the process secretive and the role wide-ranging.

    Whoever follows has big shoes to fill. In a country that has become increasingly secular, the current chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, is an internationally recognized spiritual figure. His influence reaches far beyond the boundaries of the rather small community of several hundred thousand Jews he represents.  In his time as chief over the past 21 years, he has earned a reputation as a national treasure due in part to his frequent contributions to U.K. newspapers and radio programs.

    Sacks, who announced he would be stepping down in September 2013, is a widely respected scholar, prolific author, and sought-after speaker. Like his predecessor, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and appointed to the House of Lords, a post that he will hold long after he steps down as chief rabbi.

    Full international coverage from NBC News

    Toby Melville / Reuters, file

    Britain's Jewish community is currently in the midst of a once-in-a-generation process to select a new chief rabbi to replace highly respected Jonathan Sacks.

    When he was appointed, he was widely acknowledged to be the front-running candidate thanks in part to his rabbinic credentials and high-level secular university degrees from Cambridge, Oxford and King’s College London.

    This time around however, there are few obvious candidates and speculation in the U.K. Jewish press has been rife as to who will succeed the well-respected Sacks.

    Will it be one of three London rabbis, each well respected as scholars and leaders of thriving congregations? Or will the powerful selection committee turn to a candidate from abroad — most likely the United States — and opt for a leader with little local experience, but with fresh ideas and little local baggage?

    "We are only looking for the 11th chief rabbi since 1704," says Steve Pack, president of the United Synagogue, the organization spearheading the appointment process. "Out of the 10 who have served, a high proportion was born outside the U.K. While it’s important that the future chief understand Anglo Jewry, being from here or born here isn’t a requirement."

    'No choice but to look abroad'
    Jewish community insiders acknowledge that there is a very small pool of locally educated rabbis with respected religious and secular degrees.

    "Britain has failed to educate a new generation of younger, well qualified rabbis," said Geoffrey Alderman, who writes a weekly column for the U.K. Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle. "The country’s main yeshivot [rabbinical seminaries] that are producing Orthodox rabbis are deemed to be too far to the right. Therefore to find someone who has impeccable Orthodox credentials, who can be relied upon to stand up to the extreme right and who also has a good secular education, you have no choice but to look abroad."

    Although the official selection committee remains mum, the Jewish press has put Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, the leader of a thriving congregation in the Bronx, on the most recent short list. Yet Rosenblatt, who reportedly visited London in August, denies that he is a contender for the position.

    "I am not involved in the CR [chief rabbi] search," wrote Rosenblatt in an email to NBC News. "Like everyone else I will be waiting with interest to learn who will fill the gargantuan shoes of my mentor and friend, Lord Sacks. I hope the next CR will be blessed in his work."

    Other Americans bandied about in the press over the last few months include Rabbi Michael Broyde, a law professor at Atlanta’s Emory University and judge on the rabbinical court of America, as well as Manhattan-based Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, a 35-year-old scholar who has made his mark not only in the Jewish world, but also as a GOP supporter who gave the blessing at the opening of the Republican National Convention in August.

    Secret selection
    Officially, the chief rabbi is the religious head of the United Hebrew Congregations of the U.K. and Commonwealth, made up of about 140 synagogues, along with schools and other community organizations. He is also head of the beit din, the religious court whose responsibilities include granting divorces, issuing conversions and settling disputes. Perhaps most importantly, the chief is an ambassador, attending state functions and taking part in interfaith dialogue. Sacks even got a coveted invitation to the 2011 royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

    A blindfolded child's weighty task: Pick a new pope

    Despite the high-profile nature of the position, the selection process itself is shrouded with secrecy. The eight selection committee members and two rabbinical advisers were required to sign confidentiality agreements - to protect the identity of rabbis that may want to keep their candidacy under-wraps, according to Pack. The committee won’t reveal how many applications it received, or how many candidates it is seriously considering, only saying that there are a "significant number" of applicants from the U.K. and overseas.


    "The idea that through this secret process a leader will be chosen to whom the rest of British Jewry will defer is lunacy," said a skeptical Alderman. "This is a peculiar office that was fashioned in the Victorian era when the Jews were fighting for social and legal recognition and they wanted someone to front for them. Over the years, the office evolved and matured to fulfil a certain function, but we now need to move on. The thought of a chief rabbi in the U.S. is laughable."

    The notion of having a single leader for all of Britain's Jews is increasingly questioned by a growing proportion of the community. However, the high profile nature of the position forces many to accept that the role does impact their lives, if in no other way than in how British Jews are perceived in the outside world.

    "Although he isn’t the chief rabbi of the whole community, he is perceived as having a central role — if not the central voice — and therefore it matters to have someone who is a good communicator, who relates to contemporary issues and who has a voice of wisdom, compassion and intelligence," said Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, a leader of the left-leaning Masorti Movement and the rabbi of the New North London Synagogue.

    The selection committee hopes to have a candidate in place in the next few months. It is no question that Sacks' successor will face tough challenges in the coming years, from uniting the divided community to battling anti-Semitic currents in Europe, to name but a few.

    "The main challenge of the incoming chief will be to keep up the high standards his predecessor has set," said Pack. "We have good candidates, and it will be up to the individual who takes on this role to command the space and speak on behalf of Anglo Jewry."

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  • Despite dark past, young Israelis seek new lives in German capital

    Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust was planned and executed in Berlin, there has been an influx of young Israelis to the city. "In Israel, you must struggle, you struggle every day," one recent arrival says. NBC News' Carlo Angerer reports.

    By Carlo Angerer, NBC News

    BERLIN, Germany -- Israeli Zeev Avrahami stands in the small kitchen of his restaurant peeling eggs and dripping fresh olive oil on a plate of hummus he is about to serve. The restaurant's name -- 'Sababa,' which is slang for good or fun -- is written proudly in Hebrew letters over its entrance.

    Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust was planned and executed in the German capital and Nazi atrocities nearly extinguished Jewish life on the European continent, Avrahami's eatery is a sign of a new chapter of Jewish life in Germany.

    Avrahami is at the culinary forefront of an influx of Israelis who have moved Berlin in recent years. Officials at the Israeli Embassy estimate that about 15,000 of its citizens now live in the city, thought to be the highest number in decades.

    'They don't know what to say'
    Before the Holocaust about 160,000 Jews called Berlin home. By the time the city was liberated by the Red Army in 1945, only 8,000 remained. 

    And while Avrahami feels safe in Berlin, his interactions with German citizens are often burdened by the past.

    "Once you say you're Israeli, there is silence. They don't know what to say," he told NBC News. "In Germany, it's still hard to be different, a foreigner. It's not an immigration country, it's not America."

    What is attracting young Israelis to the former center of Nazi Germany? Even today, synagogues, Jewish schools, and other buildings linked to the community across Germany are under constant police protection amid fears of attacks by right-wing and Islamist groups.

    Carlo Angerer / NBC News

    The Sababa restaurant in central Berlin is a small sign of a new chapter of Jewish life in Germany.

    Israeli insurance salesman Ilan Weiss, who moved to Berlin in 1990, believes the increasing cost of living and cuts to social services in his homeland -- as well as Berlin's image as a hip and multicultural destination -- is behind the trend.

    Weiss, who runs the the non-profit IsraelisinBerlin.de website, said that some new arrivals "show up with only a suitcase."

    "I get requests from new arrivals or Israelis looking to move to Berlin nearly every week," Weiss added. "It’s hard to live in the country where they come from, so the people come to Germany, where it's better than the rest of Europe, even than the U.S."

    Economic woes
    Among the incomers is Inbal Mayan, who came to Berlin about 4 months ago. The 31-year-old Tel Aviv native says daily life in her homeland has become difficult to afford for many young Israelis, even if they work two or three jobs.

    Mayan says that even though Berlin is famous for its easy-going lifestyle, the economy is a key factor for many Israelis. "It's not about the partying anymore, but it's about life that you can actually live and afford and not to struggle every day to have money, to live a simple life," she said. "In Israel you must struggle, you struggle every day."

    More Germany coverage from NBCNews.com

    She now takes German courses at the local Jewish community's language school and hopes to attend university and get a Master’s degree.


    Fellow language student Bar Ben-Yehuda arrived one-and-a-half years ago from the outskirts of Jerusalem.

    "Here we have the opportunity for a better life, we can build something," he said. "The opportunities are better here than in Israel – I’m very sad to say this, because that's my country, but it’s the truth."

    But sooner or later, Berlin's dark past creeps in as reminders of Jewish life destroyed by the Holocaust are evident throughout the city, from the massive Holocaust memorial to so called 'Stolpersteine' (stumbling blocks), commemorative metal plaques installed in front of former homes of Jews deported to concentration camps.

    'You have to deal with it'
    Restaurant owner Avrahami, who has been living in Berlin for four years, says the German capital becomes a spirital place for many Israelis.

    "A lot of arrivals, because they're so young, they don't see that but there is something that pulls you down," he told NBC News. "At the beginning you don’t pay attention to the signs, but it creeps in you all the time. At some point you have to deal with it."

    More Israel coverage from NBCNews.com

    Israeli Nirit Bialer, 34, moved to Berlin six years ago and helped to start the group Habait, 'home' in Hebrew, hopes to bring Germans and Israelis together through cultural events and creating a place for enhanced dialogue between the two groups.

    Young Germans tend to be not as preoccupied with the burden of the country's dark past as their parents' generation.

    "Berlin is a very cosmopolitan city," Bialer says. "It's not necessarily this gray dark place that we are taught from history." 

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  • Swedish minister: Put annual Raoul Wallenberg day on calendar

    Scanpix Sweden / Reuters

    People attend the centennial commemoration of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg in Sigtuna, Sweden, on Saturday.

    By NBC News

    The 100th anniversary of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg’s birthday was celebrated Saturday with a call for a day on the Swedish calendar to honor the man who saved thousands of Jews during World War II but whose own fate remains a mystery.

    “Wallenberg is an excellent symbol for a Sweden and Europe with solidarity, openness and tolerance,”  Democracy Minister Birgitta Ohlsson wrote in an opinion piece in Dagens Nyheter.

    Wallenberg, born Aug. 4, 1912, has been remembered throughout the year thanks to efforts of a Swedish national committee established to draw attention to his life and deeds, Ohlsson wrote. However, she argued, his work “deserves an annual Swedish remembrance.”

    Attila Kisbenedek / AFP - Getty Images file

    A Hungarian woman touches the memorial stone of late Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in St. Istvan park of Budapest, Hungary, on Wednesday.

     Several memorial celebrations were planned in Stockholm on Saturday, with guests including Crown Princess Victoria attending a memorial for Wallenberg.

    In May, Sweden issued a postage stamp honoring Wallenberg.

    But Ohlsson wrote that she is worried the memory of Wallenberg could fade.

    “In a country where anti-immigrant parties are gaining ground, right-wing movements are formed and populist groups become more visible, it is increasingly important that each nation talks about the individuals who make a difference for humanity,” she wrote.

    International memorials
    Wallenberg was remembered internationally.

    President Obama recently signed into law a bill bestowing the Congressional Gold Medal upon Raoul Wallenberg.

    President Barack Obama on July 27 signed the Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Celebration Act, passed by Congress to honor the diplomat with the Congressional Gold Medal. The U.S. mint is now authorized to design and print the medal, which will be presented in the Congress, according to a White House statement.

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    On Friday in Moscow, about 50 people -- including members of the Jewish community, historians, and rights workers -- gathered for a somber commemorative ceremony in Moscow's Memorial Synagogue at the Holocaust and Jewish Heritage Museum, according to Radio Free Europe. Diplomats from Sweden, Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany and Israel were among those who spoke. A new documentary film on the secret services was shown.

    Other events were held in Israel and Hungary.

    Fate unclear
    As Sweden's envoy to Hungary during the war, Wallenberg, then age 32, prevented the deportation of 20,000 to as many as 100,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps by issuing them protective Swedish government passports.

    Wallenberg also talked occupying German officers out of a plan to obliterate Budapest's Jewish ghetto.

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    Wallenberg was last seen on Jan. 17, 1945, in Budapest, when he drove off to meet Soviet authorities to discuss protection for Jews once the Red Army drove out the Nazis. Soviet intelligence agents abducted the Swedish diplomat.

    Reports of his death are inconsistent.

    The Soviet Union claimed that Wallenberg, incarcerated at Moscow's Lefortovo prison, died on July 17, 1947, of a heart attack, the New York Times wrote in 2000. However, he reportedly was interrogated six days after the date Russia claims Wallenberg died, according to others studying his case. A special commission investigating victims of Russian leader Joseph Stalin's political terror said he was executed at Lubyanka prison at KGB headquarters.

    "The family wants now to get the truth," says Cecilia Ahlberg, Wallenberg's great-niece, said Friday in a BBC interview in which Wallenberg's half-sister, Nin Lagergren, 91, agreed.

    "We want all the facts about his whereabouts in the Soviet Union, what happened and when it happened," Ahlberg said.

    This article includes reporting by NBC News' Jim Gold.

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  • 'False Zionist alleged tragedy': Hamas slams Palestinian official for visiting Holocaust site

    Bartek Wrzesniowsk / AFP - Getty Images

    Ziad Al-Bandak, the Palestinian president's adviser for religious affairs, places flowers at the Auschwitz death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, on July 27.

    By Reuters

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The Hamas Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday denounced a Palestinian official's visit to the site of a Nazi death camp in Poland, and called the Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews perished an "alleged tragedy."

    Ziad al-Bandak, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who governs in the occupied West Bank, had made a rare visit by a Palestinian official to the site of the Auschwitz death camp late last month.

    "It was an unjustified and unhelpful visit that served only the Zionist occupation," said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas. Hamas rejects Israel's existence and interim peace accords reached by Abbas' more moderate Fatah group with Israel.

    Barhoum further called Bandak's visit to Auschwitz, a camp where the Nazis killed 1.5 million people, most of them Jews but also other Polish citizens, during World War Two, as "a marketing of a false Zionist alleged tragedy."

    'Hitler, thank you': Anti-Zionist slogans daubed in Hebrew at Holocaust memorial

    He said he saw this as coming "at the expense of a real Palestinian tragedy," alluding to Israel's control over territory where Palestinians live and seek to establish a state.

    PhotoBlog: Israelis stand in silent remembrance of Holocaust victims

    Israel was founded as a Jewish state in 1948, several years after the wartime genocide occurred.

    Islamist extremists have taken to denying the Holocaust happened as part of a narrative rejecting Israel's existence, often at the encouragement of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the genocide "a myth."


    Fears grow of Israel-Iran missile shootout

    Israel and Iran have been locked in a dispute over an Iranian nuclear program the West fears is intended to produce atomic weapons. The West has imposed sanctions on Tehran to try and force it to rein in the project. Iran insists its atomic work is intended solely for peaceful purposes.

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    Iran is an ally of Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Abbas' Fatah group. Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, many refugees or descendants of those who fled or were driven away when Israel was founded, is separate and isolated from the other Palestinian territory of the West Bank.

    In Poland, unburying a nation's Jewish past

    Israel tightly monitors Gaza's frontiers, and cross-border violence is frequent with militants often firing rockets at Israel and Israel staging deadly bombing raids against militant targets in the coastal territory.

    Bandak's visit to Auschwitz, where he laid a wreath at the invitation of a group working for tolerance in Poland, was a rare one by a Palestinian to the death camp site. Muslim officials from other countries have also paid respects there.

    US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says, "all options," including military force, are on the table to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. Watch his entire speech in Israel.

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  • Report: Hitler ordered his Jewish World War I commander protected

    jewish-voice-from-germany.de

    The Jewish Voice From Germany website displays the story about the discovery of a letter saying Adolf Hitler wanted to protect Ernst Hess, a Jew who briefly was Hitler's commander during World War I.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    Adolf Hitler personally intervened to protect a Jewish man who had been his commanding officer during World War I, according to a letter unearthed by the Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper.


    The letter, written in Aug. 27, 1940, by Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazis' feared paramilitary SS, said Ernst Hess, a judge, should be spared persecution or deportation and receive “relief and protection as per the Fuhrer's wishes.”

    Historian Susanne Mauss discovered the letter.

    "It was a wonderful chance find," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. "There had always been rumors, but this was the first written reference to a protection by Hitler."

    The letter was found in official archives containing files that the Nazi secret police, or Gestapo, kept on Jewish lawyers and judges. Mauss said its authenticity is corroborated by other documents, including one owned by Hess' surviving daughter, Ursula Hess, 86.

    Hess, a decorated World War I hero who briefly commanded Hitler's company in Flanders, worked as a judge until Nazi racial laws forced him to resign in 1936. The same year he was beaten up by Nazi thugs outside his house, the paper said.

    Hitler had ordered the genocide of all Europe’s Jews. His orders led to the deaths of 6 million Jews.

    In a petition to Hitler at that time, Hess wrote: "For us it is a kind of spiritual death to now be branded as Jews and exposed to general contempt."

    Hess and his family moved for a time to a German-speaking area of northern Italy but were then forced to return to Germany, where he discovered Hitler's protection order had been revoked.

    Watch World News videos on msnbc.com

    He spent the rest of World War II doing slave labor but he escaped death partly thanks to the fact that his wife was a gentile. Hess' sister died in the Auschwitz death camp, but his mother managed to escape to Switzerland.

    Hess remained in Germany after the war, becoming head of the Federal Railway Authority based in Frankfurt. He died in 1983.

    Ursula Hess, still living in Germany, told the paper in an interview that her father had benefited from a chance encounter with another World War I comrade, Fritz Wiedemann. He became Hitler's adjutant and used his influence to win concessions for Hess, she was quoted as saying.

    Ursula Hess also recalled her father saying that as a young corporal in World War I, Hitler had no friends in their regiment and had kept himself very much to himself.

    The paper's publisher, Rafael Seligmann, said that whether Hitler had helped protect Hess or not didn't change the Nazi leader's genocidal record.

    "History won't need to be rewritten because of this," he said.

    This article includes reporting by Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com's Jim Gold. Follow him on Facebook here.

     

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  • Descendants of Holocaust victims reclaim German citizenship

    Courtesy Suzanne Houchin

    Suzanne Houchin, when she was 8 years old, with her grandfather, Bruno Gumpert. Suzanne now has a German passport, even though her grandfather was stripped of his German citizenship under the Nuremberg laws during the Nazi era.

    By Don Snyder, Special to NBC News

    Tens of thousands of Jews are choosing to become German citizens.

    Unreal?

    It’s happening.

    A study at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University study found 100,000 Israelis have German passports.

    During the Nazi era, the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws stripped Jews of German citizenship. But since May 1949, German law gives Jews who fled Nazi Germany the right to German citizenship, including all their descendants. 

    “This is the largest group of German passport holders in the world outside Germany,” said Emmanuel Nachshon, Deputy Ambassador at the Israeli embassy in Berlin.

    There are an estimated 15,000 Israelis in Berlin, drawn there to work, study and enjoy Berlin’s intellectual life and cheap rents. “It’s the single most interesting and dynamic city certainly in Europe and perhaps in the world,” said Nachshon.

    Israelis comfortable in Germany
    Maya Nathan agrees. The 33-year-old Israeli student with a German passport said “I fell in love with Berlin, its freedom, its great space.”

    Nathan is not uncomfortable about living in the country responsible for the Holocaust. “Our family was never anti-German,” she said, adding that she knows Israelis who won’t come to Germany.

    Courtesy Nadav Gablinger / Courtesy Nadav Gablinger

    Nadav Gablinger, an Israeli tour guide who lives and works in Berlin.

    Nathan, who has been in Germany for two and a half years, is getting a neuropsychology degree at the University of Magdeburg. She plans to remain in Germany.

    Nadav Gablinger, 39, is a tour guide who has lived in Berlin for 11 years. An Israeli with German citizenship, he and his Israeli wife have two children in German schools.

    Noting that Holocaust history is everywhere in Berlin, Gablinger says that present-day Germany is a very safe place for Jews.

    “Today I can say as a Jew, Germany is the safest place in the world,” he says, “Safer than in Israel.”

    Nachshon speculated that many Israelis hold second passports in case things go wrong in Israel. 

    American granddaughter of Holocaust victims: ‘We made it back’
    Increasing numbers of American Jews are also seeking German citizenship.

    According to German government figures, 3,663 Americans, mostly Jews, acquired German citizenship between 2003 and 2010.

    German citizenship allows American Jews not only to live and work in Europe, but also access to a free university education. So it could be that some seek German citizenship so they can live and work elsewhere in Europe.

    “Berlin is becoming one of the most exciting capital cities in Europe, and it exerts a pull,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin. “Many of the new Jewish citizens say they have some history in Germany and they want to discover it.” 

    Suzanne Houchin, a 50-year-old photographer from Los Angeles, is one of them. She and 10 other family members received German passports two years ago.  

    Courtesy Of Suzanne Houchin

    Bruno and Hedwig Gumpert, Suzanne Houchin's grandparents, seen in 1939 shortly before they fled Nazi Germany.

    Houchin’s grandparents, Bruno and Hedwig Gumpert, who owned a department store in the city center, fled Berlin in 1939.

    “My grandparents would talk about their wonderful childhood in Berlin and how much they loved Germany,” she said in a telephone interview. “They were our bedrock and they meant the world to us.”

    Explaining her feelings about becoming a naturalized German, Houchin said: “It felt like this was a way of honoring them, getting back something that was stolen from them.” She tearfully added, “Mein opa (my grandfather), we made it back to the land that you loved so much. This makes my heart happy.”

    Dr. Ruth: ‘Hitler did not want me to have children’… now they can become citizens
    Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the 83-year-old renowned sex therapist, born in Frankfurt, is also proud of her German citizenship, acquired in September 2007.

    When she was 10 years old, Westheimer’s parents put her on one of the last trains to a children’s sanctuary in Switzerland. After the war, she learned her family had been killed.

    “Hitler did not want me to have children, or grandchildren,” she said in a telephone interview. “Now that I have a German passport, my grandchildren can study anywhere in Europe.”

    But Edward Levy, 30, a naturalized German from Chicago, is wary. “Sometimes I wonder what the older generation [of Germans] really thinks,” he said. “If they knew I was Jewish and my grandparents were Jewish.”

    Seattle-born Jordan Selig, 25, relishes her new life in the gritty Kreutzberg district of Berlin. A Columbia University graduate, she buys apartments to renovate as rentals. Her grandparents fled the Nazis on the trans-Siberian railroad to China. She said they boarded the last passenger ship to leave for the United States before war broke out.

    “It’s so much more comfortable and international to live here than in most big cities,” she observed.

    As time passes, gets easier
    “Berlin is the place to be for young people,” said Nirit Bialer, a 33-year-old Israeli and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. “There’s a lot of space here, and there is freedom and acceptance of artistic innovation. Individuality is strong here. In Israel, the collective is much stronger.”

    Bialer runs Projekt Habait, a German-Israeli social program to inform Germans about Israeli culture. “Many of the Israelis here are engaged in the art scene and some are known here. However, there is a big hunger among Germans to learn about us.”

    The Holocaust remains an open wound for many Jews. But Berger, from the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, believes the wound will heal.

    “I think it’s getting easier for third and fourth generation Americans with German roots to look at Germany in a more open-minded way as the distance from the Holocaust grows.” 

  • In Israel, tears and defiance at French shooting victims' burial

    Paul Goldman / NBC News

    Mourners at the Jerusalem funeral for the four Jews killed by a gunman in Toulouse, France on Wednesday.

    By Paul Goldman, NBC News producer

    JERUSALEM – The Har Menuchot Cemetery looked like it was painted in black Wednesday. Hundreds of mourners, many of them men dressed in the black suits and broad-brimmed hats worn by orthodox Jews, came to pay their respects for the four Jews killed by a gunman in Toulouse, France, on Monday.

    The bodies of 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons, Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 4, and 8-year-old Myriam Monsenego were laid on stretchers after being flown to Israel from France.

    Small white cards were placed on each body indicating their names.

    The announcer asked dignitaries to limit their speeches to five minutes due to the heat and out of respect for the bereaved families.    

    In tears, Shlomo Amar, the Chief Sephardi Rabbi of Israel, was defiant. "We will keep on fighting and teaching our youth with our heads high up,” he said. “Our enemy will not defeat us.”

    Paul Goldman / NBC News

    Mourners at the Jerusalem funeral for the four Jews killed by a gunman in Toulouse, France on Wednesday.

    A woman started shouting and other weeping women soon followed. Someone brought a large cotton cloth to cover the victims’ families from the sun.

    French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe sat still with a somber face throughout the speeches; eventually, he spoke in French, which was translated into Hebrew. "The French nation is in shock,” he said. “I came here today to show the French nation's respect. We will do our out most to protect the Jewish community in France. We will not tolerate terror."

    Monsenego's grandfather was asked to say a few words, but he couldn’t find the strength to stand up and talk.

    Photo Blog: Jerusalem funeral for victims of French school shooting 

    But Myriam's eldest brother, Avishai, offered some words. He wailed and had one last plea for his dead sister” "Please give strength to father and mother to overcome this tragedy.”

    Then the slain rabbi’s father, Shmuel Sandler, spoke about his son, "You were a magnificent person killed by a barbaric person," he said. Unfortunately, the middle of his speech was interrupted by police using a megaphone asking the owner of a Daihatsu car to move the vehicle because it was blocking the road.

    Paul Goldman / NBC News

    The caskets for the four Jews killed by a gunman in Toulouse, France at their funeral in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

    While the bodies were taken to be buried, I spoke to David Naor, a relative of the Sandler familyr. I asked him about the news coming out of Toulouse that the suspected gunman had been found.

    “Finding the killer won’t help the dead children,” he replied. “But it helps to know that he won’t kill again.”

  • Nazi hunters boost drive to find aging war criminals before they die

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    Gero Breloer / AP

    Efraim Zuroff, chief-Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the Center's Jerusalem Office, announces on Wednesday the launching of "Operation Last Chance II" during a news conference in Berlin, Germany.

    The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Wednesday launched a new race against time to prosecute Nazi war criminals still alive 66 years after the end of World War II.

    Efraim Zuroff, the center's top Nazi-hunter, told reporters in Berlin that "Operation Last Chance II" would provide up to 25,000 euros ($32,900) in reward money for information that leads to the investigation and prosecution of war criminals.

     

    "Whatever can be done has to be done very promptly and as quickly as possible because time is running out," Zuroff said, claiming the passage of time does not diminish the guilt of the killers.

    The effort comes after German prosecutors said in October that the successful conviction of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk had set a precedent that allowed them to reopen hundreds of dormant investigations.

    Demjanjuk, 91, was convicted in May of thousands of counts of accessory to murder after a Munich court found he served as a death camp guard — the first time a suspect had been found guilty without evidence of a specific crime. The court ruled that any guard at a Nazi camp whose sole purpose was to kill people could be convicted of accessory to murder.

    John Demjanjuk emerges from a Munich, Germany, court on May 12, 2011, after a judge sentenced him to 5 years in prison for charges related to 28,060 counts of accessory to murder.

    Demjanjuk denies having ever served as a guard and is appealing the verdict.

    "What this conviction does is set a legal precedent that should pave the way for the prosecution of many people who were on a daily basis over a prolonged period of time involved in mass murder but who had been ignored," Zuroff said.

    About 4,000 people were either guards at the four Nazi camps used only for killings — Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno and Treblinka — or members of the Einsatzgruppen death squads responsible for mass killings, particularly early in the war before the death camps were established.

    Zuroff said that he did not know how many were still alive — the youngest would now be in their 80s — but that he guessed conservatively there could be 80 or more.

    "I think it's not a gross exaggeration to assume that 2 percent are still probably alive," he said.

    Zuroff said a high-ranking living Nazi is in sights but he cannot reveal his name because of an ongoing criminal investigation, the Jerusalem Post reported.

    "I am not saying who because he’s a flight risk," Zuroff said. "This person was a commander and involved in very serious actions against Jews."

    Zuroff also said Klaas Farber, an alleged SS hitman in Holland, was the most senior Nazi known to be alive today. Faber lives in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt, Germany. He was sentenced in a Dutch court in 1947 was convicted of murdering 22 Jews in the occupied Netherlands during WWII, but he escaped prison in 1952.

    Prosecutors in Dortmund also are currently investigating six former members of an SS armored division that was responsible for the largest massacre in Nazi-occupied France under the same theory that led to Demjanjuk’s prosecution.

    The Wiesenthal Center is asking for tips to a new hotline in Germany. Though the focus of the investigation is Germany, Zuroff said suspects could live anywhere in the world.

    A reward of 5,000 euros will be paid for the information upon the indictment of a suspect, another 5,000 euros upon conviction, and a further 100 euros per day spent in prison — up to 150 days — for a total of 25,000 euros, Zuroff said.

    The center's original "Operation Last Chance" was launched in 2002 and targeted primarily eastern European countries. It ended up with 102 suspects' names being turned over to prosecutors. Of those, only a handful were ever indicted or tried, Zuroff said.

    Zuroff said that at this late stage, with few witnesses left and suspects' health often preventing them from being brought to trial, he measures success in six stages: exposure; official investigation; indictment; trial; conviction; and punishment.

    "It's very hard today to get to stage six," he said.

    "The answer is very simple," Zuroff said. "One, the passage in time does not diminish guilt of killers. Two, old age does not afford protection to murderers. Three, all the victims deserve efforts to find their killers. Four, it sends an important message to those today that they are being brought to justice."

    Former Ohio resident John Demjanjuk is found guilty for his involvement in thousands of deaths at a Nazi death camp during World War II.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

     

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  • Religious slaughtering practices under fire in the Netherlands

    Peter Dejong / AP

    A ritually-slaughtered lamb is delivered at a halal butcher shop on the market in The Hague, Netherlands, Tuesday Dec. 13.

    By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press

    AMSTERDAM -- Political support for a proposed ban on slaughtering animals without stunning them first appeared to crumble Tuesday as the Dutch senate debated legislation that Muslim and Jewish groups say violates their religious rights.

    The ban — proposed by an animal rights party and widely supported by Dutch voters — passed Parliament's lower house by a 116-30 margin in June, raising an international outcry from religious groups.

    Although senators will not vote until Dec. 20, it appeared from Tuesday's debate that several parties that initially backed the ban in parliament — including the Netherlands' two largest — have changed their mind.

    If the Netherlands does outlaw the slaughtering practices that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims, it will be the second country after New Zealand to do so in recent years. It would join Switzerland, the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism.

    Speaking first, Labor senator Nico Schrijver said his party now has "many questions" about the bill, including asking why it "so specifically aims its arrows at the rather small number of ritual slaughterers and why not large-scale industrial slaughter, which involves 500 million animals per year?"

    "It seems to me that there may be much more effective, and less far-reaching methods that achieve the same goal" of improving animal welfare, Schrijver said, citing better education for slaughterers and better conditions in slaughterhouses.

    Muslims, mostly immigrants from Turkey and Morocco, represent about a million of the 16 million Dutch population. The once-strong Jewish community numbers around 50,000 after most were deported and killed by the Nazis during World War II.

    In both religions, tradition prescribes that animals' throats be cut swiftly with a razor-sharp knife while they are still conscious, so that they bleed to death quickly.

    Support for the ban comes both from left-leaning voters who see this technique as inhumane, and from social conservatives who see it as foreign and barbaric.

    Outside the debate, Esther Ouwehand of the tiny Party for the Animals, which proposed the ban, said it was unjust to inflict "extra suffering on animals to satisfy religious opinion."

    The ban's most influential backer has been the Netherlands' anti-Islam Freedom Party.

    "Do we want such practices in a civilized country as ours?" asked Freedom senator Marjolein Faber, after describing a worst-case scenario of a panicked animal taking six minutes to lose consciousness after a botched ritual slaughter.

    The Royal Dutch Veterinary Association says it believes slaughtering cattle in particular while still conscious inflicts unnecessary suffering.

    But Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, said there is "no scientific evidence" that religious slaughter, performed properly, is more painful for animals than stunning.

    He said the law should be voted down in the name of freedom of religion.

    "If this law is passed in a country known for its tolerant and open society, it could result in a very dangerous domino effect that could spread to other parts of Europe," he said.

    Among the two parties in the Netherlands' governing coalition, the Christian Democrats opposed the ban from the beginning out of concern for the rights of religious minorities.

    The pro-business VVD party, the country's largest, also now appears unlikely to support the ban.

    VVD senator Sybe Schaap slammed the bill for "ethical absolutism" and said offering incentives for slaughterhouses to improve their practices would have a more positive effect than a ban.

    The Dutch undersecretary for Economic Affairs Henk Blekers has said the Cabinet will only take a position on the bill after the Senate vote.