Fascism, white supremacy – Suzanne Berliner Weiss

Lessons From the Holocaust with Suzanne Weiss, Holocaust Survivor

Workshop Opportunity: Lessons From the Holocaust with Suzanne Weiss, Holocaust Survivor

Independent Jewish Voices is offering this powerful and moving talk featuring Jewish Holocaust survivor, author, and longtime social justice activist Suzanne Weiss. If you would like to have Suzanne present this talk for your school, student association, faith group, community organization or union, get in touch with us. We’d be happy to work with you. Contact lessons@ijvcanada.org

Suzanne’s talk draws on her experiences surviving the Holocaust as a child in Vichy France and lessons from her lifetime of social justice activism to explore how we can fight racism in our present time. In relating her powerful story, she provides listeners with both a history which we must remember and the inspiration to make a difference in our world.

Lessons from the Holocaust

Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorates the Jewish martyrs of massive and murderous ethnic cleansing.
Today I speak as a survivor of this genocide. We lost six million Jews, a great calamity for all the world’s peoples. It was the time of the Second World War, in which tens of millions perished (40 million). Now, we analyze and try to make sense of that horrific experience and seek guidance for today’s challenges.
This is a story of survival against Nazi racism, nationalism, and colonialism which holds many lessons for humanity. It is a story of resistance! It is a struggle for unity and solidarity by individuals and entire communities to counter disaster and destruction.

My Story
I come from the Nazi Holocaust in France. Back in 1942, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler marked me down for death because I am Jewish. Hitler feared that if I lived, I could give birth to Jewish children who would seek vengeance.
Hitler and his movement didn’t merely hate Jews; they saw Jewish annihilation as a central historic goal.
When I was one year old, and still with my mother, the Nazis organized a massive raid in Paris which arrested thousands of Jews and imprisoning them in a sports arena called the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vel d’Hiv).
The French authorities, in league with the German Nazis, had campaigned against Jewish immigrants and refugees, blaming them for the war that began in 1939, and its mounting hardships. The pro-Fascist government of Vichy passed harsh laws against Jews, even worse than the ones in Poland, from which my mother had fled.
In Poland, Jews such as my mother lived in ghettos, denied higher education and entry into professions. My mother belonged to the socialist Bund and worked for a socialist world. She escaped to France, which held the reputation of the 1789 revolution, with its promise of brotherhood, liberty, and equality. She found work in Paris and married. She joined the Jewish Union for Resistance and Mutual Aid. (The organization still exists and is sister to the United Jewish Peoples Order in Canada – UJPO). Continue reading Lessons from the Holocaust

The Impact of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the French Resistance

Commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto, 2020

I come from the Nazi Holocaust in France born under Nazi occupation. There, an anti-Jewish French regime, called “Vichy,” was allied with the Nazi invaders. The Nazis considered the Jews, Roma, people of colour, anyone not of German origin, “untermenshen” lower than human.

The French authorities campaigned against immigrants and refugees, blaming them for unemployment. Vichy passed harsh laws against Jews, including my parents.

In July 1942, a massive police raid in Paris imprisoned 13,000 men, women and children in the sports arena, Vel D’hiver. Among them were 4,000 children. Disoriented and stunned, they were all transported to concentration camps. They knew not what was in store for them.

The fact is that up to that point, the Jewish people believed the transports were taking men to Germany as slave labour. There was much discussion on the separate transport of women and children. Where were they going? Would their families reunite? How would they live? They did not know.

Down with white supremacy!

There was a wonderful rally of several thousands in Toronto on Sun., Oct. 15, 2017 at which many leaders of the community called for unity against white supremacists and racism.

Below is the speech I gave.

Down with white supremacy!

The Nazis killed my mother, Fajga Berliner, in Auschwitz because she was Jewish and therefore subhuman. That’s Nazi white supremacy in action. My mother was among its tens of millions of victims.

We join today against this poisonous doctrine. White supremacy was expressed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in a violent racist rally two months ago. Imagine! That rally got encouragement from the U.S. presidency. Shame!

The racists in Charlottesville brandished the symbols of Nazism: swastikas and hatred of Jews. What does this mean? Continue reading Down with white supremacy!

Resisting Fascism: A lesson from Auvergne

A talk to Ideas Left Outside, August 5, 2017

suzanne-berliner and mother — Suzanne and her mother, Fajga Berliner (1943)

In the winter of 2017, I received an invitation to spend a week giving media interviews and talks to high-school students in Clermont-Ferrand, the main city in Auvergne, a rural area in Central France. My topic was how I had been hidden in Auvergne during the Nazi occupation almost 75 years ago. The initiative came from the main Jewish organization there. They had heard of me during a previous visit to Auvergne, when reporters tracked me down for interviews. Continue reading Resisting Fascism: A lesson from Auvergne

Hassan Diab: France’s new Dreyfus Affair*

Introduction:

On Oct. 3 1980 at 6:38 p.m. a Paris synagogue on Copernic Street in Paris was bombed during prayer services which resulted in four dead and 46 injured. It was reported as the first deadly attack against Jewish people in France since the end of the Second World War. It wasn’t until 2011 that France requested the extradition of Prof. Hassan Diab for his alleged involvement in the 1980 Paris synagogue bombing.

Sign letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for justice!

On April 4, 2012, the Canadian Conservative Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, ordered Diab extradited to France. On November 14, 2014, Hassan was extradited from Canada to France where he is languishing in prison while the investigation into the 36-year old crime continues. Continue reading Hassan Diab: France’s new Dreyfus Affair*

Six three-minute speeches …

I’ve learned to make concise and cogent speeches in the three minutes appropriate for rallies and meetings. Of the several dozen “three-minute” talks I have on file, here are six examples.

Against Islamophobia and white supremacy

The video version of this speech made a rally against Islamophobia and white supremacy went viral and received over 26,000 views as of this posting.

I speak today as a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust. Nazism took the lives of most of my family and six million my Jewish community. I and so many other Holocaust survivors are here only because of people united to protect us.

What is anti Semitism? It is simply the hatred of Jewish people. Amazingly, Donald Trump honoured the Holocaust by omitting, and in essence denying history. He forgot to mention that that six million Jews were murdered in the attempt to eliminate the whole Jewish people. It’s amazing that we heard no one object to this omission, and we especially did not hear a peep from Israel who prides itself on building a Jewish state. Continue reading Six three-minute speeches …

Against Islamophobia and white supremacy

The video version of this speech made a rally against Islamophobia and white supremacy went viral and received over 26,000 views as of this posting.

My personal historical research finds current resonance

9 October 2015 – In September I accompanied Suzanne Weiss on a research trip concerning the work of anti-Nazi resistance in France 1940-45 to save Jewish children. Suzanne’s work took an unexpected turn, becoming part of present debate on attitudes to refugees. Here is her report. For the French text, see Europe Solidaire. — John Riddell

Toronto, 1 October 2015 – Last month I visited Auvergne, a farming region in central France where, as a Jewish child of two, I was protected from the Nazis by a peasant family. It was the third time I had gone there with John Riddell, my husband, to find out where and how I had been saved from the Holocaust.

To my surprise, this time reporters sought me out for interviews to learn my story. How am I connected to Auvergne? Why was I interviewing villagers? Why did I seek the place where I had been hidden? Continue reading My personal historical research finds current resonance

Solidarity saved me from the Nazis; that’s why I fight Israeli apartheid

“Never again for humankind” means supporting Palestinian resistance to Israel’s Prawer Plan.

26 November 2013 – We hear disturbing reports this year from southern Israel. The Israeli government proposes to relocate some 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins from their present homes to government-approved townships. This is called the Prawer Plan, and Israel’s parliament approved it by a three-vote majority in June.

The Prawer Plan would destroy 35 Bedouin villages in the Naqab (Negev) region and extinguish Bedouin claims to land seized from them after the foundation of Israel. The government denies basic services to these villages. Right beside them, in many cases, are new, modern, fully serviced communities for Jewish settlers. Continue reading Solidarity saved me from the Nazis; that’s why I fight Israeli apartheid