Please don’t miss this report from Kate Riga about some disturbing events in the New York City area. We heard about this over the weekend. A notorious anti-Semite who we’ve somewhat awkwardly referred to as a ‘holocaust distorter’ was scheduled to speak at a number of Catholic churches in the greater New York area this week. We refer to Ewa Kurek as a ‘distorter’ because, in a twist, she does not so much deny the Holocaust happened as she claims the Jews were complicit in the Holocaust and even its organizers. Kurek is a bonafide credentialed historian. An April article in Tablet referred to her as “maybe the only legitimate Holocaust scholar to have become an alleged Holocaust revisionist or distorter during a later phase of her career.” Two of the events were canceled today after a group of concerned citizens wrote to the Bishop of Brooklyn asking him to cancel the events.
This is part of a larger story I touched on back in early April. Back then I wrote a series of posts about an anti-Semitic Polish nationalist rally in New York City. The focus was on a new US law aimed at restitution for Holocaust victims. It’s become a lightning rod for Polish nationalists both in Poland and the US, spawning protests which range from vaguely anti-Semitic to extremely anti-Semitic. Kurek’s tour is part of that same agitation. The whole upsurge is at one level triggered by this controversy. But watching it it’s clear it’s dredged up attitudes and hostilities that seem unbroken going back 70 or 80 years. Here’s Kate’s report.
