Skip to content

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • JI@88! video
Scribe Quarterly arrives - big box

Search

Follow @JewishIndie

Recent Posts

  • Jews support Filipinos
  • Chim’s photos at the Zack
  • Get involved to change
  • Shattering city’s rosy views
  • Jewish MPs headed to Parliament
  • A childhood spent on the run
  • Honouring Israel’s fallen
  • Deep belief in Courage
  • Emergency medicine at work
  • Join Jewish culture festival
  • A funny look at death
  • OrSh open house
  • Theatre from a Jewish lens
  • Ancient as modern
  • Finding hope through science
  • Mastering menopause
  • Don’t miss Jewish film fest
  • A wordless language
  • It’s important to vote
  • Flying camels still don’t exist
  • Productive collaboration
  • Candidates share views
  • Art Vancouver underway
  • Guns & Moses to thrill at VJFF 
  • Spark honours Siegels
  • An almost great movie 
  • 20 years on Willow Street
  • Students are resilient
  • Reinvigorating Peretz
  • Different kind of seder
  • Beckman gets his third FU
  • הדמוקרטיה בישראל נחלשת בזמן שהציבור אדיש
  • Healing from trauma of Oct. 7
  • Film Fest starts soon
  • Test of Bill 22 a failure
  • War is also fought in words

Archives

Tag: Sweden

Celebration of courage

Celebration of courage

A still from the documentary Passage to Sweden, which will screen as part of the annual Raoul Wallenberg Day for Civil Courage event on Jan. 21.

This year’s annual Raoul Wallenberg Day for Civil Courage gathering, on Sunday, Jan. 21, held at Congregation Beth Israel, will explore and honour civil courage in Scandinavia during the Second World War.

Just over 80 years ago, in late 1943, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes had to confront moral choices, when Denmark and Norway dealt with military occupation by Nazi Germany. Many people defied Nazi policies that threatened the human rights and lives of their fellow citizens and residents.

In Denmark, thousands of Christian Danes risked their own lives, cooperating in the dramatic, swift and secret rescue operation. The Jews, who faced deportation and certain death at the hands of the Nazis, were ferried to safety in neutral Sweden. Their homes and properties were safeguarded until their return after the war. Sweden welcomed and aided the Danish Jews, risking its own status as a neutral nation. 

In Norway, the site of significant armed attacks by Nazi Germany, hundreds of Norwegian police officers refused the orders of Nazi occupiers, a collective action that led to their imprisonment at Stutthof concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Poland. There, the Norwegian police maintained their solidarity as they acted to reduce the suffering of their fellow prisoners, including many Jews, such as the late Jennie Lifschitz, who settled in Vancouver in the early 1950s.

Finland and the Baltic nations (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were also engulfed in the war, victims of the Soviet Union’s military occupation and, in the case of the Baltics, annexation and mass civilian deportations. 

While Nordic peoples, like most Europeans, were not completely free of hostility toward Jews and other minorities, they offer a good example of civil courage, based on the belief that Jewish citizens and residents were their equals.

This year, at the local Wallenberg Day event, Vancouver Holocaust educator Norman Gladstone will speak about the remarkable rescue of Denmark’s Jewish population. Local researcher and author Tore Jørgensen will speak about the hundreds of Norwegian policemen, including his father, who refused to collaborate with the Nazi occupiers. Historian Gene Homel will introduce the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society and the City of Vancouver proclamation of Wallenberg Day.

As well, the documentary Passage to Sweden will be screened. The film covers the wartime courage of Scandinavians, including Sweden’s Raoul Wallenberg, who acted courageously to protect civilians in Hungary, and was taken into custody by the Soviet army. His fate is unknown to this day. 

The 19th annual Wallenberg Day on Jan. 21 at Congregation Beth Israel will be held at 1:30 p.m. Admission is free and donations will be gratefully accepted.

For more about the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society, which organizes the annual event, visit wsccs.ca. 

– Courtesy Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society

Format ImagePosted on January 12, 2024January 11, 2024Author Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage SocietyCategories LocalTags courage, Denmark, hero, history, Holocaust, Sweden, Wallenberg Day, Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society

Ludicrous standards

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström has accused Israel of “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinian terrorists. The minister said, in the country’s parliament, that Israel has a right to defend its citizens, but went on to clarify that such defence should not include “extrajudicial execution” and accused Israel of a “disproportionate” response.

It is a familiar refrain from the European community, a place where Israeli products are being labeled as part of a boycott strategy, sometimes by vigilantes in makeshift uniforms patrolling shops and applying stickers to Israeli goods. Israel has a right to defend itself, in the world’s eyes, up to and until it actually begins to defend itself.

The issue is confused by some outside observers. It is true that Israel is a democratic state that respects the rule of law. But it is also a country at war with radical Islamist terrorism. There are, certainly, laws and judicial recourse for crimes, but when a murderous act is in the process of unfolding, the first objective of security forces is to end the situation. Certainly, the next objective should be ensuring that judicial process takes precedence by, for instance, shooting in the leg or otherwise disabling the attacker through non-lethal means. From half a world away, it is hard to judge the actions of frontline security personnel (or, at least, it should be more difficult than it seems to be) but we would hope that response is balanced with preservation of life and the addressing of crime through Israel’s admirable system of judicial oversight.

At the same time, we should be cognizant of double standards.

Remember just over a year ago, in October 2014, a terrorist murdered Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial and then proceeded to Canada’s Parliament Buildings, where he was taken down, fatally, by the sergeant-at-arms, Kevin Vickers.

Vickers became a national hero. He was not condemned by the government of Sweden or anyone else. The Canadian government was not pilloried for “disproportionate” force or “extrajudicial execution.”

No, there are two sets of rules in this world. One set for Israel which, despite all the threats and existential challenges it faces, is expected to maintain the world’s highest standards – actually, ludicrous standards – of engagement, while everyone else gets a pass, including the tyrants whose governments currently sit on august bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Predictably and correctly, Israel’s foreign ministry lambasted the Swedish politician’s comments, dismissing them as “scandalous, delusional, rude, and detached from reality.”

“The [Swedish] foreign minister suggests that Israeli citizens simply give their necks to the murderers trying to stab them with knives,” the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement. “The citizens of Israel and its security forces have the right to defend themselves. In Israel, every person who commits a crime is brought in front of a judge, including terrorists. The citizens of Israel have to deal with terrorism that receives support from irresponsible and false statements like that.”

The Swede’s comments are not unusual, although they are particularly flagrant. They are of a type we have seen repeatedly when Israel faces an upsurge in terrorism. The attitude it depicts reflects more concern for the murderers than it does for their victims. Rare is the word of support or empathy for Israel’s untenable position facing down individual terrorists incited by their government and society to stab, drive over or otherwise murder Jews.

The Swedish foreign minister’s words really speak volumes about where Europe’s sympathies lie these days.

Posted on December 11, 2015December 9, 2015Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags antisemitism, Israel, Margot Wallström, Sweden, terrorism
Proudly powered by WordPress