Jewish Resistance
31st May 2023
Overview
The Jewish memory forum organised by Novact in the frame of SolRem’s project took place on the 31st May 2023, from 15.30h to 18.30h in Novact’s office and counted with the interventions of Dominique Salomon (she/her), activist from “Junts”1(Catalan Association of Jews and Palestinians) and Scout Bratt (they/them), from Jewish Voices for Pace2. The panel was moderated by Alys Samon Estapé (she/her), Novact’s board member and part of Eko3team. The format of this event consisted of the speech of both spokesperson and in an open questions debate, as the forum aimed at being an interactive encounter between participants and speakers. 26 people attended the event: 14 in person, and 12 online.
Dominique Salomon’s intervention consisted in a historical introduction about the Holocaust, the explanation of her life’s story as descendant of victims of the Shoah, and a brief explanation of Junts, the association where she belongs.
The spokesperson explained that in 1940 Germany occupied France, and that from that moment until the end of the Second World War, many laws were passed to discriminate Jewish population. That year, Jews were expelled from the public life, teaching for them was prohibited, they could not enter certain stores… In 1941, their possessions were seized. In 1942, the final “solution” arrived: millions of Jews were murdered. Dominque gave some important data, as the fact that the first massive detention of Jews in Paris took place on the 14th of May 1941, resulting in the deportation of 3.700 jews living in the city. She stressed that in France, the systematic detention and deportation of Jews was mainly made by French soldiers, and therefore, France was an essential actor for the Holocaust and Nazism.
Dominique Salomon is an anti-racist French-Polish Jewish woman whose grandparents, aunts, mother and brother, were deported in different concentration camps in France, Germany and Poland in 1942. Most of them died in Auschwitz. Luckily, her mother and brother escaped and, after some time hiding in France thanks to a French farmer, Dominique’s mother established herself and her kids there. Dominique’s father was part of the French resistance army and was one of the soldiers that entered Germany at the end of the war. Dominique’s grew up in France and for a long time did not define herself as Jewish, as she didn’t perceive it was a central characteristic of herself. However, at one point she did so, to the point that she even went to Israel in 1967 to fight next to the Israeli army in the Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Six Day War. When in Israel, she decided that her activism as a Jew had to consider the effects that the creation of the State of Israel had in the Palestinian people. Afterwards, she kept living in France until she met her husband, a Spanish anti-francoist activist, who was repressed by Fraco’s dictatorship. Dominique moved to Spain and nowadays also defines herself as anti-fancoist.
“Junts”, the Catalan Association of Jews and Palestinians, where Dominique Salomon belongs, was created in 2009 and aims at promoting dialogue between the Jewish community and the Palestinian one and defends the values of peace and freedom.
Scout Bratt’s intervention consisted in the explanation of their life’s story, a brief explanation of the American perspective of the Holocaust, and in the different definitions of antisemitism.
Scout Bratt is an LGBTQ+, anti-racist, American Jewish activist. They explained that they grew up in a religious environment, where they started getting involved in the Jewish community. They intensified their activism in college, and from 2014 until 2018 they volunteered in Avodah, an NGO that develops “lifelong social justice leaders whose work is informed and nourished by Jewish values” 4. In parallel, from 2016 until the present day, they also volunteer in the Center for Jewish Nonviolence5 as Campaign Organizer, an NGO that aims at connecting Palestinian activists and Jew activists. Also, from 2017 until nowadays, they are involved in the Tzedek synagogue, the first anti-Zionist synagogue in Chicago. These days, they are also a board member of Jewish Voices for Peace.
The spokesperson complemented Dominique Salomon in the history of the Holocaust, and in the brutality that the Jewish community suffered during the Second World War and the current discrimination of the collective. They pointed out the restrictions in German Jewish immigration policies that the US applied before the Second World War. They mentioned that in September 1939 95.000 German Jews had emigrated to the US.
Regarding the characteristics of antisemitism, and due to their activism, they made a brief mention to the IHRA definition and the need to explain that anti-Zionism does not imply antisemitism.
The open debate that took place after both interventions focused on the lack of knowledge in Spain of historical memory in general, and specifically regarding the Jewish community. Also, participants pointed out the lack of Jewish referents in Spain. Participants talked about the links between Franco’s dictatorship and Nazism. Finally, as the extreme right had won many voters in the local and autonomic elections that took place on the 28th March 2023 in Spain, 3 days before the memory forum, the debate of how extreme right uses antisemitism for its purposes arose.
Notes
1version_castellano.pdf (wordpress.com)
2Jewish Voice for Peace | Justice • Equality • Dignity
3 Ekō – People and planet over profits (eko.org)
4 As stated in its official website. Avodah – The Neighborhood (theneighborhoodbk.org) 5 Center for Jewish Nonviolence – CJNV brings Jewish activists from around the world to Israel/Palestine to join in Palestinian-led nonviolent civil resistance to occupation, apartheid, and displacement.
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