New York, May 20, 2009. Sam Bloch, Roman Kent, Max Liebmann, Menachem Rosensaft and the Executive Committee of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, has called on the Jewish community and the American people as a whole to join the Holocaust survivors and their descendants in contacting the president of MSNBC regarding the news channel’s failure to react to the disclosure that MSNBC political commentator Patrick Buchanan sponsored a Holocaust denial forum on his website.

Writing in the New York Daily News on May 12, Rosensaft, a vice-president of then organization, described the forum, entitled “Disinformation, Deception and Other Tricks: Discussion about ‘The Holocaust.’” Among the comments posted on this forum were: “Most historians believe it was LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GAS 6 MILLION JEWS AND REDUCE THEIR BODIES TO ASHES;” “We have known for some time that the Auschwitz myth is of an exclusively Jewish origin;” “The same blinded people that believe that the Germans intentionally killed Jews – also believe the myth of the Anne Frank Diary;” and “Rightly or wrongly – the Jew was blamed for a lot of the problems that Germany suffered. The Jews were given years of warnings that they were unwelcome in Germany. A lot of Jews fled Germany in the late 1930s. The United States was not very anxious to accept very many. This was when White Christians still had a little control of our Nation.”

Within hours of the publication of Rosensaft’s article, the forum in question disappeared from Buchanan.org, and the link to it was disabled. However, MSNBC’s management has not criticized Buchanan for providing a platform to Holocaust deniers. Buchanan also recently compared Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk to Jesus Christ.

“One might have expected the disclosure of this forum to at least raise some eyebrows at MSNBC,” Rosensaft wrote on The Huffington Post. “After all, two years ago, the news channel summarily fired talk show host Don Imus for making a racially insensitive remark about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. Sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on one’s website strikes me as no less offensive. But not a single member of MSNBC’s management has deigned to publicly address Buchanan’s association with anti-Semites, White supremacists and other assorted bigots.”

Rosensaft is calling on Holocaust survivors, members of their families, and the Jewish community and other people who are opposed to hate speech, Holocaust denial and defense of Nazi war criminals, to write to MSNBC president Phil Griffin at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112, telephone number, 212-664-4444; fax number, 212-664-4426, and ask for an explanation why the hosts of programs on which Buchanan regularly appears such as Morning Joe, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Andrea Mitchell Reports have not asked him a single question about his sponsorship of the Holocaust denial forum on his website.

If MSNBC’s management insists on retaining Buchanan as a fixture on their programs, Rosensaft wrote, “he must be clearly identified as an enabler of Holocaust deniers and a defender of Nazi war criminals whenever he appears on the air.”

One week ago, I outed Patrick Buchanan, the former senior White House official in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, erstwhile reactionary candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and now a highly paid political commentator on MSNBC, for sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on his website. Within hours, the forum in question, entitled “Disinformation, Deception and Other Tricks: Discussion about ‘The Holocaust’” (with The Holocaust in quotes, of course), mysteriously vanished from Buchanan.org, and the link to it was disabled.

The Buchanan website’s forum followed the standard Holocaust deniers’ playbook, complete with such gems as “Most historians believe it was LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GAS 6 MILLION JEWS AND REDUCE THEIR BODIES TO ASHES;” “We have known for some time that the Auschwitz myth is of an exclusively Jewish origin;” “The same blinded people that believe that the Germans intentionally killed Jews — also believe the myth of the Anne Frank Diary;” and “Rightly or wrongly — the Jew was blamed for a lot of the problems that Germany suffered. The Jews were given years of warnings that they were unwelcome in Germany. A lot of Jews fled Germany in the late 1930s. The United States was not very anxious to accept very many. This was when White Christians still had a little control of our Nation.”

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Si Frumkin dies at 78; Dachau survivor worked tirelessly to assist Soviet Jews
Los Angeles Times
Frumkin “acted as an ombudsman to a large degree,” said his son Michael. “He explained American culture to the emigres.”
He founded the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews in 1968 and over the next two decades would not leave the issue alone.

By Jon Thurber

In the late 1960s, as reports of repression of Soviet Jews began to increase, a question began filtering to the West: “Why have you forgotten us?”

Si Frumkin, a survivor of Dachau and a prominent Los Angeles textile manufacturer, heard the question and it reminded him of the days before the Holocaust.

A man of direct action, Frumkin founded the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews in 1968 and over the next two decades would not leave the issue alone. For years his inventive activism could be found in protests at a variety of Soviet cultural events.

When the Bolshoi Ballet came to town, he distributed fake programs outside the Shrine Auditorium telling folks to enjoy the show but added a message about repression. When Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev visited President Nixon at the Western White House in San Clemente, Frumkin released 5,000 balloons with the message “Let My People Go.” He hired a helicopter to fly over the Super Bowl with a banner: “Save Soviet Jewry.”

Frumkin, who did more than anyone else in the United States to focus attention on the struggle of Soviet Jews, died Friday of cancer at Providence Tarzana Medical Center. He was 78.

“Shaming the free world, especially our government, into doing the right thing was Si’s cause,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who as a UCLA student founded the California Students for Soviet Jews at the same time Frumkin founded his group.

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by Stuart Ain
Published: May 15, 2009

FOR years, Allen Rosenberg, a real estate developer from Hewlett Bay Park, has had a nagging thought: What if a first or second cousin survived the Holocaust and he didn’t know it?

“Maybe my cousin was placed in a displaced person’s camp on the other side of Germany or in Poland,” said Mr. Rosenberg, who is 45.

As far as he knows, Mr. Rosenberg said, his father, who went into a hospital in Hamburg, Germany, with tuberculosis right after World War II and died in 1988, was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. Still, he said, “there is that slim chance.”

Until recently, Mr. Rosenberg could do no more than wonder. Then he learned of the DNA Shoah Project, which seeks to reunite families torn apart by the Holocaust. Shoah is the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

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