Blood Libel History

For thousands of years Jews have been accused of blood libels. Blood libels are false accusation against Jews use human blood in certain aspect of their religious rituals and holidays.

In General, the libel alleged something like this:
A child, normally a boy who had not yet reached puberty was kidnapped or sometimes bought and taken to a hidden place (the house of a prominent member of the Jewish community, a synagogue, a cellar, etc.) where he would be kept hidden until the time of his death.

The description of torture and human sacrifice in the antisemitic blood libels run contrary to many of the teaching of Judaism.

* The Ten Commandments in the Torah forbid murder!!!

* The use of blood (human or otherwise) in cooking is prohibited by the kosher dietary law.

* Blood from slaughtered animals may not be consumed, and must be drained out of the animal and covered with earth. (Lev 17:12-13)

* Blood from sacrificed animals may only be placed on the altar of the Great Temple in Jerusalem.(which no longer existed)

* Furthermore, consumption of human flesh violate kashrut.

While animals sucrifice was part of the practice of ancient Judaism, the Tanakh (old testament) and Jewish teaching portray human sacrifice as one of the most evils that separated the pagans of Canaan from the Hebrews. ( Deut' 12:31, 2 Kings 16:3)

Jews were prohibited from engaging in these rituals and were punished for doing so. (Ex' 34:15, Lev' 20:2, Deut' 18:12, Jer' 7:31)

* The first recorded blood libel against Jews was by the Graeco-Egyptian author Apion, who claimed that Jews sacrificed Greek victim in their temple. This blood libel from ancient Greek time pre dates Christianity and is usually thought of as an act of antisemitism.

This resulted in an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews were did.

* The last recorded blood libel against Jews was on August 2009, a Swedish Newspaper, "Aftonbladet" published an editorial:

"They plunder the organs of our sons".

Claiming that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians to steal their organs prompting furious condemnation and accusation of an anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival Swedish publication.

The Silent Partners of Hitler

A journalist for Toronto's Globe and Mail details the continuing, wretched story of Swiss collusion, as financiers and dealers in stolen goods, with Nazi Germany. The story isn't simple, and the culpability extends far beyond Swiss bankers.

For instance, Vincent notes that a US intelligence report from 1945 suggested that even the International Committee of the Red Cross, with headquarters in Switzerland, smuggled ""Nazi assets and valuables across Europe in diplomatic pouches.

A number of Swiss firms may also have worked closely (and profitably) with the Nazis. While it was known in official circles that Switzerland flagrantly abused its neutrality, its complicity was only lightly considered by the Allied victors, largely because of pragmatic realpolitik. Although Swiss banks, throughout the war, paid Germany needed foreign currency for gold bullion usurped from the central banks of conquered countries and for bars refined from the gold gathered from the ring fingers and teeth of millions of slaughtered Jews, they were not pursued by any international courts. Secret accounts established by beleaguered Jews before they disappeared were ignored, too.

An amount approaching $6 billion (in current dollars) may have been involved. Only under intense international pressure, generated at first by the World Jewish Congress, have the Swiss begun, reluctantly, truculently, to open their bank records for review. Vincent provides a thorough summary of what is known about Swiss actions during and since the war, and to humanize the issue, draws on a number of interviews with individuals attempting to find out about family accounts, and especially on the efforts of the surviving descendants of Abraham Hammersmith, a Viennese textile exporter, to reclaim their past. The history of the Hammersmith family, many of whom died in the Holocaust, is a kind of record in miniature of Jewish suffering and Swiss mendacity. A clear, angry, important (though interim) work that treats significant matters with clarity and intelligence.

Holocaust Denial

One of the most notable anti-Semitic propaganda movements to develop over the past two decades has been the organized effort to deny or minimize the established history of Nazi genocide against the Jews. In the United States, the movement has been known in recent years primarily through the publication of editorial-style advertisements in college campus newspapers. The first of these ads claimed to call for "open debate on the Holocaust"; it purported to question not the fact of Nazi anti-Semitism, but merely whether this hatred resulted in an organized killing program. A more recent ad has questioned the authenticity of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. These ads have been published in several dozen student newspapers on campuses across the country.

Similar propaganda has established a beachhead on the computer Internet. In addition to creating their own home pages, Holocaust deniers have sometimes "crashed" the sites of legitimate Holocaust and Jewish discussion groups in a blatant effort at anti, Jewish provocation and self-promotion. Additionally, Holocaust deniers have advertised their Web sites by purchasing innocuous-sounding, inconspicuous classified ads in college and community newspapers.

These paid advertisements and Internet activities have been a national phenomenon since 1991. Though there is no evidence that they have persuaded large numbers of students to doubt the settled record of events which comprise the Holocaust, their appearance has generated acrimony and has frequently caused friction between Jewish and non-Jewish students.

This is precisely the intent of the Holocaust deniers: by attacking the facts of the Holocaust, and by framing this attack as merely an unorthodox point of view, their propaganda insinuates subtle but hateful anti-Semitic beliefs of Jews as exploiters of non-Jewish guilt and Jews as controllers of academia or the media. These beliefs, in fact, bear comparison to the preachings which brought Hitler to power in prewar Germany.

This pamphlet has been designed to provide a brief summary of the propaganda campaign known as Holocaust "revisionism," or Holocaust denial. What follows is (1) a "Q&A" description of the movement, its history, and its leading activists, as well as a review of legal and scholarly responses to this propaganda; (2) a summary of the movement's most common allegations, with brief factual responses, and (3) a selection of quotes by the leading propagandists, demonstrating their anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi agendas.

It is highly unlikely that this report will dissuade the Holocaust deniers from their mendacious and hateful campaign. But this information should provide students and educators with the facts to make informed decisions and vigorous responses to these bigoted lies.

(For further details concerning the Holocaust denial movement, see also the Anti-Defamation League publication, Hitler's Apologists: The Anti-Semitic Propaganda of 'Holocaust Revisionism')