#rafael medoff

[geekcavepodcast]

Dark Horse and Yoe Book to Release “Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry”

Dark Horse and Yoe Books are publishing Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry, which tells the story of how, in the 1940s and 50s, a Jewish organization enlisted some of America’s cartoonists on a nationwide campaign against bigotry. The campaign aimed to flood America’s papers, classrooms, and union halls with anti-racist comics and cartoons.

Cartoonists Against Racism is authored by Holocaust scholar Dr. Rafael Medoff and comics and cartooning historian Craig Yoe. Professor Susannah Heschel provides the forwards. Cartoonists featured in the book includes Bill Mauldin, Vaughn Shoemaker, Carl Rose, Mischa Richter, Frank Hanley, Robert Osborn, Dave Berg, Willard Mullin, Bernard Seaman, Mac Raboy, and Eric Godal.

Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry goes on sale in bookstores on November 28, 2023, and in comic shops on November 29, 2023.

(Image  via Dark Horse - Cover of Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry)

[smashpages]

Dark Horse and Yoe Books will publish Whistleblowers: Four Who Fought to Expose the Holocaust to America. This graphic novel anthology by Rafael Medoff and Dean Motter tells the true stories of four heroes who “risked everything to expose the horrors of the Holocaust.”

Read more 

[graphicpolicy]

Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry is unfortunately relevant for today

Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry is unfortunately relevant for today and very educational #comics #comicbooks #graphicnovel #ncbd

Horrific scenes of anti-Jewish violence in Europe filled the newsreels in American theaters in the 1930s and 1940s. What could be done to make sure it didn’t happen in America? One Jewish organization hit upon a remarkable idea–to enlist some of America’s most beloved cartoonists to wage a war on bigotry. Cartoonists Against Racism uncovers the secret campaign to create anti-racist comics and…

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Rabbi Herschel Schacter 

Rabbi Herschel Schacter was a young U.S. Army chaplain who helped traumatized Holocaust survivors rebuild their lives, and later became an influential leader in the Orthodox movement and a strong advocate for Soviet Jewry.

Herschel Schacter was born in Brooklyn in 1917, the son of immigrants from Poland and the youngest of ten siblings. His family was religious, and he was educated at the finest yeshivas before obtaining smicha (rabbinic ordination) in 1941. Rabbi Schacter served as a pulpit rabbi for a year before enlisting in the Army after Pearl Harbor. After attending Army Chaplain school at Harvard, he was sent to Europe with the VIII Corps and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

Rabbi Schacter was one of the liberators of the Buchenwald concentration camp. He stayed in Germany for two and a half months after the war, tending to the broken spirits of survivors, most of whom had lost their entire families. Many were the only survivor from their entire town; everyone they ever knew had been murdered. A famous photograph shows him leading Shavuot services at Buchenwald (above). This photo occupies an entire wall at Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem.

What Rabbi Schacter saw at Buchenwald was hell on earth. The inmates who were still alive – barely -were emaciated, lying on filthy planks and covered in lice, hollow-eyed ghosts blinking in the sunlight and without the energy to even lift their heads. The stench of rotting flesh and feces was overwhelming. 

Rabbi Schacter noticed Yisrael Meir Lau, 7 years old, hiding behind a pile of corpses. Known as Lulek, the child had lost most of his family and had been on his own since age 5. Rabbi Schacter cared for the boy and helped him immigrate to Israel, where he would one day become Chief Rabbi.

Rabbi Schacter’s son Jacob, a prominent Orthodox rabbi and professor at Yeshiva University, wrote in a piece for Tablet Magazine, “My father spent the rest of his life describing what he saw in Buchenwald and what he did during his 10 weeks there. His work focused on a number of different areas: he tended to the psychological needs of survivors; he worked hard to reunite families; he founded a kibbutz outside Weimar for young survivors preparing to make aliyah [move to Israel]; and he organized a transport of children to Switzerland.”

Another story that illustrates Rabbi Schacter’s massive impact concerns Yoav Kimmelman, a 16 year old from a Hasidic home who lost every single member of his large extended family, around 60 people. The Holocaust destroyed Yoav’s faith and identity as a Jew. According to Rabbi Jacob Schacter, Yoav was “done with God, done with Jewish life, done with Jewish destiny, done with the Jewish people.” Rabbi Herschel Schacter reached out – literally – and singlehandedly brought Yoav back to Jewish life. It happened when Rabbi Schacter was taking 200 child survivors to Switzerland. He wanted young Yoav to go with him, but the boy had no interest in being around fellow Jews and he refused to go. Rabbi Schacter asked him to come to the train station to say goodbye and while there, the rabbi reached down and physically dragged Yoav onto the train. The teen was angry and sullen, but the rabbi convinced him to join a minyan and read Torah in the DP camp. Long story short, Yoav Kimmelman remained religious and at his death, he left 80 descendants, all of them Torah Jews. “That’s all because my father had the guts to pull him onto that train when it left the station,” said Rabbi Jacob Schacter.

Rabbi Herschel Schacter became a prominent leader of Orthodox Judaism in America, helping to rebuild from the ashes and grow the movement. He was elected president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in 1968. Dr. Rafael Medoff, in his book “The Rabbi of Buchenwald,” wrote: “He was the first Orthodox rabbi to reach that level of leadership. Until then others saw Orthodox leaders as fit to be heads of Orthodox groups, but not larger ones. Rabbi Schacter broke that mold. He was sufficiently savvy and sophisticated to represent the entire [Jewish] community, not just the Orthodox minority.”

At the very beginning of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, in 1956, Rabbi Schacter was part of the first rabbinical delegation to visit the USSR since 1917. He then went to Hungary to help Jewish refugees flee during the Hungarian revolution. 

Rabbi Schacter served as a pulpit rabbi in the Bronx for more than 60 years and was known as a brilliant and inspiring orator, beloved by his congregation. He passed away in 2013 at age 95 and was survived by his beloved wife Pnina, two children, four grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Pnina Schacter died in 2018.

For healing the broken spirits of Holocaust survivors and helping them rebuild their lives, and for his devotion to the Jewish people and his decades of leadership, we honor Rabbi Herschel Schacter as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[cephalopodvictorious]

My book just shipped and I'm so excited!

Horrific scenes of anti-Jewish violence in Europe filled the newsreels in American theaters in the 1930s and 1940s. What could be done to make sure it didn’t happen in America? One Jewish organization hit upon a remarkable idea—to enlist some of America’s most beloved cartoonists to wage a war on bigotry. Cartoonists Against Racism uncovers the secret campaign to create anti-racist comics and cartoons to flood America’s newspapers, classrooms, and union halls. Meet the artists and the work that was their ammunition in the battle for America’s soul. The book showcases impactful anti-racism artwork from the era’s preeminent cartoonists, including multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Bill Mauldin and Vaughn Shoemaker; New Yorker cartoonists Carl Rose, Mischa Richter, and Frank Hanley; famed antiwar cartoonist Robert Osborn; Dave Berg of Mad magazine; renowned sports cartoonist Willard Mullin; noted labor cartoonist Bernard Seaman; comics artist Mac Raboy (Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel Jr.); and Eric Godal, who escaped from Nazi Germany and became a leading cartoonist in the American press and acclaimed artist Dick Dorgan.

I'll let you all know how it is

[eretzyisrael]

by Rafael Medoff

It may seem perplexing that anybody would criticize Israel’s rescue of four hostages from Gaza. But in 1976, there was criticism of Israel’s rescue of hostages from Entebbe, too. In June 1976, Palestinian Arab terrorists hijacked a French plane on its way to Israel and forced it to fly to the Entebbe airport in Uganda. There they released the non-Jewish passengers, and held the remaining 106 passengers and crew hostage, demanding the release of terrorists who were imprisoned in Israel. Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was deeply sympathetic to the terrorists, and Ugandan soldiers helped the hijackers guard the hostages. On July 4, Israeli commandos raided the airport and freed the hostages. All seven terrorists, and several dozen Ugandan soldiers, were killed. The only rescuer killed was the raid’s leader, Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Israel’s current prime minister. Mrs. Dora Bloch, an elderly passenger who had been taken to a local hospital, was murdered there by Ugandan soldiers.Most of the world celebrated the rescue raid on Entebbe. But not everybody. The Organization of African Unity, consisting of several dozen African countries, accused Israel of “wanton aggression” and demanded reparations for damage to the airport. The Soviet and Chinese governments denounced what they called “the Zionist aggression.” United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim charged that Israel had committed a “serious violation of the sovereignty” of Uganda. A few years later, Waldheim’s past as a Nazi war criminal was exposed. (However, that did not prevent his election as president of Austria in 1986.) The Mexican government criticized Israel’s “flagrant violation” of Ugandan sovereignty, and declared its “firm rejection of the use of armed force by any state as a means of trying to solve conflicts.” The Mexican position was especially surprising because just months earlier, it had explicitly promised to refrain from anti-Israel policies. That promise was made in order to secure an end to the boycott of Mexico announced by Jewish organizations following its support of the infamous Zionism-is-racism resolution at the U.N. in 1975.The French government’s response to the Entebbe rescue was particularly troubling, given the fact that it was a French plane that was hijacked, and French crew members who were held hostage. The French Foreign Ministry issued a brief statement which expressed satisfaction at the rescue, but emphasized its condemnation of the casualties, almost all of whom were the terrorists or the soldiers who assisted them. A spokesperson for the Air France crew read a statement hailing President Amin for his “constant care to ensure our safety, our material comfort and even our health.” The statement appeared to have been dictated by French officials. The U.S. government publicly praised the Israeli rescue mission, but it also introduced an “even-handed” resolution at the U.N. Security Council. While condemning the hijacking, the resolution also affirmed “the need to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all States.” The resolution did not secure enough votes to pass, so it was withdrawn. At the same time — according to declassified documents — Secretary of State Henry Kissinger informed Israel’s ambassador in Washington that because the Israelis had used US equipment in the raid, “we will have to put a temporary freeze on military shipments.” Ambassador Simcha Dinitz replied: “You are kidding me.” Kissinger was not kidding. “

[fangirlnationmag]

'Whistleblowers' Explores Four Who Risked Everything to Expose the Holocaust

The new graphic novel Whistleblowers: Four Who Fought to Expose the Holocaust to America is a new graphic novel from Dark Horse and Yoe Books. The story follows four heroes that risked their lives to expose the horrors of the Holocaust.  The graphic novel is written by Holocaust scholar Dr. Rafael Medoff, with art and colors by Dean Motter.  One chapter in the book is based on a diary entry from…

[browsethestacks]

We Spoke Out: Comic Books And The Holocaust (2018)

Art by Neal Adams

[jewishbookworld]

The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust by Rafael Medoff Based on recently discovered documents, The Jews Should Keep Quiet reassesses the hows and whys behind the Franklin D.

[comiccrusaders]

We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust on Shelves this week's NCBD!

We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust on Shelves this week’s NCBD!

Classic comic book stories about the Holocaust and interviews with their artists and writers, with a cover drawn especially for this book by Neal Adams. An amazing but forgotten chapter in comics history! Long before the Holocaust was taught in schools or presented in films such as Schindler’s List, the youth of America was learning about the Nazi genocide from Batman, the X-Men, Captain America,…

[gay-jewish-bucky]

Some books covering the Jewish roots of the comic superhero genre:

Up, Up and Oy Vey!: How Jew­ish His­to­ry, Cul­ture, and Val­ues Shaped the Com­ic Book Superhero by Rabbi Simcha Weinstein

From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books by Arie Kaplan

Superman Is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the Jewish-American Way by Harry Brod

Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero by Roy Shwatz

We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust by Rafael Medoff (Author), Neal Adams (Author), Craig Yoe (Editor), Stan Lee (Introduction)

(please feel free to add more if you know of any!)

[smashpages]

As part of their partnership with Yoe Books, Dark Horse will release Cartoonists Against Racism in November, by Dr. Rafael Medoff and Craig Yoe. It tells the story of “how a Jewish organization enlisted some of America’s most beloved cartoonists to undertake a nationwide campaign against bigotry in the 1940s and 1950s.”

Read more

[graphicpolicy]

Exclusive Preview: Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry

Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry exclusive preview. Cartoonists Against Racism uncovers the secret campaign to create anti-racist comics and cartoons to flood America's newspapers, classrooms, and union halls #comics

[girlactionfigure]

The Rabbi of Buchenwald 

Soothed Suffering Souls

Rabbi Herschel Schacter was a young U.S. Army chaplain who helped traumatized Holocaust survivors rebuild their lives, and later became an influential leader in the Orthodox movement and a strong advocate for Soviet Jewry.

Herschel Schacter was born in Brooklyn in 1917, the son of immigrants from Poland and the youngest of ten siblings. His family was religious, and he was educated at the finest yeshivas before obtaining smicha (rabbinic ordination) in 1941. Rabbi Schacter served as a pulpit rabbi for a year before enlisting in the Army after Pearl Harbor. After attending Army Chaplain school at Harvard, he was sent to Europe with the VIII Corps and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

Rabbi Schacter was one of the liberators of the Buchenwald concentration camp. He stayed in Germany for two and a half months after the war, tending to the broken spirits of survivors, most of whom had lost their entire families. Many were the only survivor from their entire town; everyone they ever knew had been murdered. A famous photograph shows him leading Shavuot services at Buchenwald (below). This photo occupies an entire wall at Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem.

Rabbi Herschel Schacter leads holiday services at Buchenwald.

What Rabbi Schacter saw at Buchenwald was hell on earth. The inmates who were still alive – barely -were emaciated, lying on filthy planks and covered in lice, hollow-eyed ghosts blinking in the sunlight and without the energy to even lift their heads. The stench of rotting flesh and feces was overwhelming. 

Rabbi Schacter noticed Yisrael Meir Lau, 7 years old, hiding behind a pile of corpses. Known as Lulek, the child had lost most of his family and had been on his own since age 5. Rabbi Schacter cared for the boy and helped him immigrate to Israel, where he would one day become Chief Rabbi.

Rabbi Schacter’s son Jacob, a prominent Orthodox rabbi and professor at Yeshiva University, wrote in a piece for Tablet Magazine, “My father spent the rest of his life describing what he saw in Buchenwald and what he did during his 10 weeks there. His work focused on a number of different areas: he tended to the psychological needs of survivors; he worked hard to reunite families; he founded a kibbutz outside Weimar for young survivors preparing to make aliyah [move to Israel]; and he organized a transport of children to Switzerland.”

Another story that illustrates Rabbi Schacter’s massive impact concerns Yoav Kimmelman, a 16 year old from a Hasidic home who lost every single member of his large extended family, around 60 people. The Holocaust destroyed Yoav’s faith and identity as a Jew. According to Rabbi Jacob Schacter, Yoav was “done with God, done with Jewish life, done with Jewish destiny, done with the Jewish people.” Rabbi Herschel Schacter reached out – literally – and singlehandedly brought Yoav back to Jewish life. It happened when Rabbi Schacter was taking 200 child survivors to Switzerland. He wanted young Yoav to go with him, but the boy had no interest in being around fellow Jews and he refused to go. Rabbi Schacter asked him to come to the train station to say goodbye and while there, the rabbi reached down and physically dragged Yoav onto the train. The teen was angry and sullen, but the rabbi convinced him to join a minyan and read Torah in the DP camp. Long story short, Yoav Kimmelman remained religious and at his death, he left 80 descendants, all of them Torah Jews. “That’s all because my father had the guts to pull him onto that train when it left the station,” said Rabbi Jacob Schacter.

Rabbi Herschel Schacter became a prominent leader of Orthodox Judaism in America, helping to rebuild from the ashes and grow the movement. He was elected president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in 1968. Dr. Rafael Medoff, in his book “The Rabbi of Buchenwald,” wrote: “He was the first Orthodox rabbi to reach that level of leadership. Until then others saw Orthodox leaders as fit to be heads of Orthodox groups, but not larger ones. Rabbi Schacter broke that mold. He was sufficiently savvy and sophisticated to represent the entire [Jewish] community, not just the Orthodox minority.”

At the very beginning of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, in 1956, Rabbi Schacter was part of the first rabbinical delegation to visit the USSR since 1917. He then went to Hungary to help Jewish refugees flee during the Hungarian revolution. 

Rabbi Schacter served as a pulpit rabbi in the Bronx for more than 60 years and was known as a brilliant and inspiring orator, beloved by his congregation. He passed away in 2013 at age 95 and was survived by his beloved wife Pnina, two children, four grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Pnina Schacter died in 2018.

For healing the broken spirits of Holocaust survivors and helping them rebuild their lives, and for his devotion to the Jewish people and his decades of leadership, we honor Rabbi Herschel Schacter as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/AAEC_Cartoonist/status/912703325983866880

Interview w/the co-editor of “Cartoonists Against the Holocaust,” a look at how editorial cartoons portrayed Hitler:https://t.co/KGoRv24PPn http://pic.twitter.com/iikSzYzyE5

— AAEC (@AAEC_Cartoonist)

September 26, 2017

https://traffic.libsyn.com/telavivreview/TAR_25-9-17_WEB.mp3

Dr. Rafael Medoff, the Founding Director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C., discusses his co-edited book, “Cartoonists Against the Holocaust,” which offers a comprehensive panorama of how editorial cartoons in newspapers across the United States perceived the rise of Hitler and the world’s reaction to it.

[eretzyisrael]

by Rafael Medoff

Bernie Sanders says his new bill to restrict aid to Israel is a response to the deaths of civilians in Gaza. Yet he also proposed cutting aid to Israel more than four years ago. The current war, it seems, is just a convenient excuse for Sanders to slam the Jewish state again.

In the immediate aftermath of the mass slaughter, torture and gang-rapes of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas on October 7, Sanders briefly took Israel’s side. He called Hamas “barbaric” and rejected the demands by his political allies that Israel cease firing at the terrorists. That enraged friends such as his ex-press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, who claimed there’s no evidence that Hamas raped Israeli women and called Sanders “the biggest political disappointment of our generation” for not agreeing with her.

It didn’t take long for Sanders to succumb to the criticism. He’s now the author of legislation to put restrictions on the supply of U.S. weapons that Israel needs to fight the gang-rapists.

But Sanders cannot pretend his motive is the current casualty toll in Gaza. In October 2019, addressing the annual conference of J Street, Sanders proposed reducing U.S. military aid to Israel—and he said a portion of the Israel aid should be diverted, “right now,” to Gaza.

Sanders said he was proposing that the funds to Gaza consist of “humanitarian aid.” But it has been well known for years that “humanitarian aid” such as concrete, ostensibly to build houses, was being used by Hamas to build tunnels. That is, the hundreds of miles of tunnels, underneath Gaza, where Israeli rape victims and other hostages are still being held to this day.

So it appears the new Sanders legislation represents nothing more than a political calculation. Impressing Briahna Gray and other rape-deniers is more important to Sen. Sanders than standing by Israel. And it’s not the first time that he chose to abandon Jews in their hour of need.

On May 17, 1988, then-U.S. Representative—today Senate Majority Leader—Chuck Schumer led a delegation of eight Democratic congress members to the Soviet Embassy in Washington to protest the Soviet regime’s persecution of Soviet Jews.

They were especially concerned about onerous new restrictions the Kremlin had imposed to deny requests for exit visas. Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate now had to prove that their departure would not cause financial hardships even for distant relatives. Invitations to Soviet Jews from relatives in America would no longer be accepted unless the relative was a parent, child or sibling. And not only were Jews who supposedly knew “state secrets” disqualified from emigrating, but now their spouses and children would be denied, too.

In addition, all families with children under the age of 17 would be denied exit visas until the children completed military service. That new rule was particularly cruel because it was a Catch-22: those who completed their army service were often then denied exit visas on the grounds that they had learned military secrets during their service.

Congressman Schumer said he was worried the Soviet Jewry issue would “be swept under the rug” in the name of pursuing détente between the U.S. and the USSR. He was right to be worried. Because his future Senate colleague, Bernie Sanders, was one of the ones doing the sweeping.

Two weeks after the Schumer protest, Sanders and his new wife, Jane, decided to spend their honeymoon with a group of Vermont political activists on a visit to the Soviet Union to promote friendly relations with the Kremlin. Upon their return, Sanders—who was then mayor of Burlington, Vermont—held an hour-long press conference with his fellow travelers to discuss their trip.

Sanders spoke first. He heaped praise on the “friendship and openness” of the “extremely generous and warm” Soviet officials who hosted them. He hailed the Soviet government’s cultural programs for youth, which, he said, “go far beyond what we have in this country.”

Sanders focused on the trains in particular. “In Moscow we were extremely impressed by their public transportation system,” he said. “In fact, it was the cleanest, most effective mass transit system that I’ve ever seen in my life…The stations themselves were absolutely beautiful, including many works of art, chandeliers that were beautiful, it was a very, very effective system.”

While Sanders had much to say about the efficiency of Soviet trains, he had nothing to say about the vicious mistreatment of his fellow-Jews behind the Iron Curtain. He never mentioned the plight of the three million Soviet Jews who were being persecuted and prevented from emigrating. He never spoke about the grueling new restrictions the Kremlin had imposed.

When Soviet Jews needed Bernie Sanders to raise his voice in protest, he abandoned them. Today, when the Israeli victims of Hamas rapes and torture need Senator Sanders to raise his voice on their behalf, he has chosen to abandon them, too.