January 19, 2020

BERLIN (JTA) – Photos have surfaced of convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanuk in the Sobibor Nazi death camp, where he denied ever having been a guard.

The recently discovered images come from the estate of a deputy commandant at the camp, Johann Niemann, one of ten SS-men killed by prisoners in the famous October 1943 uprising. Parts of his collection will be made public on Jan. 28, at the Topography of Terror archive in Berlin, and in a new book to be released that day.

It reportedly is the first time that Demjanuk has been identified in photos of Sobibor.

Demjanuk, whose U.S. citizenship was revoked in 2002 for lying on his citizenship application about his Nazi service, and who was deported to Germany in 2009, was convicted in Munich in 2011 as an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews at the death camp. Sentenced to five years in prison, he died in a nursing home at the age of 91 in March 2012, while awaiting a decision on his appeal.

The Topography of Terror archive said that the photos – part of a series of more than 350 images – provide unprecedented insight into the “Action Reinhardt” phase of the mass extermination of European Jewry in the death camps Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka.

Sobibor was constructed in German-occupied Poland in 1942. By the time it was shut down in November 1943, at least 167,000 Jews had been gassed there with carbon monoxide, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Topography of Terror archive is working on the project together with the Stanislaw Hantz Educational Center and the Ludwigsburg Research Center on National Socialism at the University of Stuttgart.

Demjanjuk’s conviction set a legal precedent under which those who served where crimes against humanity were committed can be prosecuted as accessories.

(JTA) — The son of the founder of a bagel dynasty in London admitted to killing his mother and sister.

Joshua Cohen, 29, entered a plea of guilty to two counts of manslaughter by diminished responsibility, though he has continued to deny their murders, The Guardian reported on Friday.

In 2018, he was sent to a high-security psychiatric hospital where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, after being found mentally unfit to enter pleas in the murders.

Cohen had worked at his family’s Beigel Bake bakery in Brick Lane, in the east end of London, but stopped after he could not get along with customers, according to The Guardian.

He lived in a small apartment behind the family’s home in Golders Green in north London and was only allowed in the house if one of his brothers was there.

He attacked his sister and mother, who had let him into the house, in August 2017, weeks after learning that he had been excluded from his father’s will and that his older brothers were named directors of the company, the Daily Telegraph reported. He was arrested the next day.

He was ordered to remain hospitalized indefinitely.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Alberto Nisman, the federal prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, was remembered on the fifth anniversary of his death.

Thousands attended a rally held Saturday in the center of Buenos Aires under the motto: “Justice You Shall Pursue: It was not suicide, it was an assassination.” Nisman’s mother, Sara Garfunkel, spoke to the crowd, as did politicians sitting in the opposition of the current government.

Nisman was found dead on Jan. 18, 2015 in his apartment, just days after he accused then-president Cristina Fernández de of a cover-up in the bombing and hours before he was to present evidence to Argentine lawmakers that the government covered up Iran’s role in the bombing. Kirchner is currently Argentina’s vice president.

Other rallies were held around the country and abroad, near Argentine embassies and consulates. In all of them, protesters asserted that Nisman was murdered and blamed the Kirchner government for his death.

The Jewish political umbrella DAIA organized a separate moment of remembrance for Sunday at the Jewish cemetery where Nisman’s body is buried. His widows and his daughters were scheduled to participate in the religious ceremony.

In 2017, an official judiciary investigative report found that Nisman’s death was murder, not suicide.

A recently released Netflix documentary, “Nisman: The Prosecutor, The President, and the Spy,” has reignited the debate about his death. The documentary includes supporters of the competing suicide and assassination theories.

(JTA) — Three more men alleged to be members of a white supremacist and neo-Nazi hate group known as The Base were charged with conspiring to kill a married couple who are anti-fascist protesters.

The three men were arrested on Friday in Georgia after an undercover FBI agent infiltrated the group, The Associated Press reported.

The undercover agent participated in shooting drills with the men. The drills were to prepare for the collapse of the United States and a race war, the AP reported citing a police affidavit.

The Base believes in an extreme form of survivalism and preparation, in order to prevent the “extinction” of the Caucasian race, the FBI has said.

The men were identified as Luke Austin Lane, Michael Helterbrand, and Jacob Kaderli.

Their arrest came a day after three other members were arrested on federal charges in Maryland and Delaware. They had planned to travel with firearms to a pro-gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia, scheduled to be held on Monday. Gov. Ralph Northam signed an executive order to temporarily ban weapons from the state Capitol grounds before and during the rally.

Authorities said the men arrested in Georgia planned to kill a married couple who were part of the Antifa movement, and believed that killing the couple would send a message to enemies of The Base, according to the AP. One of the men told the undercover FBI agent that he wanted to burn their house down after killing them.

(JTA) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will lead the U.S. delegation to Poland for the ceremonies surrounding the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The events on the grounds of the former Nazi camp that will be held on Jan. 27, 2020, the anniversary of the Soviet army’s liberation of the camp in 1945, are hosted by the Republic of Poland and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

In addition to Mnuchin, who is Jewish, the delegation includes U.S. Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft; U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Cherrie Daniels; Bonnie Glick, the deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development; U.S. Consul General in Krakow, Poland Patrick T. Slowinski; Thomas Rose, senior advisor to Vice President Michael R. Pence; and Ellie Cohanim, deputy special envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti- Semitism in the U.S. Department of State.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israeli man was moderately injured after he was stabbed by a Palestinian teen near the West Bank city in Hebron, hours after a Palestinian woman approached soldiers brandishing a knife in the Old City of Jerusalem.

A 17-year-old Palestinian assailant stabbed a 22-year-old Israeli man in Kiryat Arba, the settlement adjacent to Hebron, on Saturday afternoon. He was said to be praying at the time of the attack. A civilian at the scene helped soldiers to detain the Palestinian suspect, the Israel Defense Forces reported.

The Israeli man was injured in his shoulder and was taken to a Jerusalem hospital for treatment.

Earlier on Saturday, a Palestinian woman in her 50s brandished a knife and threatened soldiers near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. She was taken in for interrogation by Israeli Border Police officers.

The incidents came a day after hundreds of Muslims chanted about killing Jews outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem following morning prayers. Israel Police broke up the gathering.

In footage from the march, many men can be heard shouting in Arabic, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.”

The cry relates to an event in the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia.

They also shouted: “With spirit and blood, we will salvage Al-Aqsa” and “Jews, the army of Al-Aqsa is returning.”