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The Cologne Wailing Wall was created at the end of 1980 by Walter Herrmann in the Schildergasse in Cologne, Western Germany. [3]
Messages denouncing the living conditions of Palestinian people were written on small cardboard pieces and suspended on clotheslines. The "Wailing Wall" was erected in 1991 in front of the south tower of the Cologne Cathedral, supported by a vigil against the Second Gulf War. The authorities attempted to stop the project multiple times, using lawsuits, [4] confiscations and evictions.
Until 1997, 50,000 supporters used this form of open communication to post their messages of solidarity, calls for social justice or letters of support on cardboard. The project was awarded the Aachener Friedenspreis in 1998.
The "Wailing Wall" was reactivated in 2004 by Walter Herrmann. [5] The project was criticized[ according to whom? ] and accused[ according to whom? ] of one-sidedness and antisemitism. [6] [7]
The Western Wall, Wailing Wall, often shortened to The Kotel or Kosel, known in Islam as the Buraq Wall, is an ancient limestone wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a relatively small segment of a far longer ancient retaining wall, known also in its entirety as the "Western Wall". The wall was originally erected as part of the expansion of the Second Jewish Temple begun by Herod the Great, which resulted in the encasement of the natural, steep hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, in a huge rectangular structure topped by a flat platform, thus creating more space for the Temple itself, its auxiliary buildings, and crowds of worshipers and visitors.
Alois Brunner was an Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) officer who worked as Adolf Eichmann's assistant. Brunner is held responsible for sending over 100,000 European Jews to ghettos and concentration camps in eastern Europe. He was commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, from which nearly 24,000 people were deported.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish, pro-Israel, human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The Center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance education, defending Israel, and its Museum of Tolerance.
The Jewish Museum Berlin was opened in 2001 and is the largest Jewish museum in Europe. It consists of three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind. German-Jewish history is documented in the collections, the library and the archive, and is reflected in the museum's program of events. The museum is one of Germany's most frequented museums.
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian political cartoonist. His work deals with themes such as anti-Zionism, anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, and opposition to U.S. military interventions. He is best known for his images depicting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Arab Spring events.
A Nazi hunter is an individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, or SS members, and Nazi collaborators who were involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prominent Nazi hunters include Simon Wiesenthal, Tuviah Friedman, Serge Klarsfeld and his wife Beate, Ian Sayer, Yaron Svoray, Elliot Welles, and Efraim Zuroff.
Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp, the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.
Efraim Zuroff is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing indicted Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is the coordinator of Nazi war crimes research worldwide for the Wiesenthal Center and the author of its annual "Status Report" on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals which includes a list of "most wanted" Nazi war criminals.
Marvin Hier is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, its Museum of Tolerance and of Moriah, the center's film division.
The Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem is the Simon Wiesenthal Center-planned Museum of Tolerance at the center of West Jerusalem between Zion Square and the neighborhood of Mamilla. The project was re-designed on a more modest scale than originally planned. The construction started in 2004, where Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger was invited to break ground on 30 April, and still continuing in 2019. The 3-acre, 185,000 square foot campus is scheduled to open in 2021.
The Holocaust in Ukraine took place in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, Crimean General Government and some areas under military control to the East of Reichskommissariat Ukraine and as well in the Transnistria Governorate and Northern Bukovina and Carpathian Ruthenia in World War II. Between 1941 and 1944, more than a million Jews living in the Soviet Union were murdered by Nazi Germany's "Final Solution" extermination policies. Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, of which Ukraine was the biggest part.
The history of the Jews in Cologne is conjectured to date back possibly as far as the late Roman Empire, and is officially documented from the period of the High Middle Ages. Over its history, the Jewish community of Cologne has suffered persecutions, many expulsions, massacres and destruction. The community numbered about 19,500 people before its dispersal, murders and destruction in the 1930s by the Nazis before and during World War II. The community has re-established itself and now numbers about 4,500 members. Because of its historical continuity, today's Jewish synagogue calls itself the "oldest Jewish congregation north of the Alps".
The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) is a research centre dedicated to the research and documentation of and education on all aspects of antisemitism, racism and the Holocaust, including its emergence and aftermath. It was designed by Simon Wiesenthal as well as international and Austrian researchers. The institute is located in Vienna, Austria. It is financed by the City of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy.
Josephine Witt is a German activist and former member of the FEMEN group.
Frank Sinatra was a strong supporter and activist for Jewish causes in the United States and Israel. According to Santopietro, Sinatra was a "lifelong sympathizer with Jewish causes". Sinatra participated in Hollywood protests and productions supporting Jews during the Holocaust and the formation of the State of Israel. He actively fund-raised for Israel Bonds, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and helped establish two intercultural centers in Israel which bear his name. Due to his support of Israel, his recordings and films were banned by the Arab League and by Lebanon.
Günther Herrmann (1908−2004) was a functionary in the SS of Nazi Germany during World War II and a convicted criminal. He commanded the Sonderkommando 4b and the Einsatzkommando 12 of the Einsatzgruppe C in the occupied Soviet Union and the Einsatzgruppe E in Croatia. In 1973, Herrmann was convicted for the murders committed in 1941–42 in the occupied Soviet Union and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Miriam Rürup is a German historian and director of the Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg (Germany).
The Kritische Islamkonferenz or KIK is an irregular organised event in Germany, which was conceived to be the critical counterpart to the Deutsche Islamkonferenz. Its first edition took place in 2008 in Cologne, where it was co-hosted by the Central Council of Ex-Muslims and the Giordano Bruno Foundation. The second edition was held in Berlin in 2013.
Jüdische Rundschau was a Jewish periodical that was published in Germany between 1902 and 1938. It was the biggest Jewish weekly publication in Germany, and was the organ of the Zionist Federation of Germany.
