Search Results for: auschwitz

During the very week of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the Israeli Knesset continues to debate a monstrous proposed bill to resurrect capital punishment in the ostensible Jewish state. Such a spectacle is nothing short of an abject desecration of that sacred day. Drawing directly on his Holocaust experience, Nobel Laureate and acclaimed [...]

The US government should not kill Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. State-sponsored murder won’t stem the rising tide of political violence looming over all of us. And Utah is one of only five states in the US that allows execution by firing squad. Though rare, the prospect of the state shooting Mr. Robinson to death for [...]

“History is an illustrious war against death.” Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958) Policy Contexts and Legal Obligations Even after defeating Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah on tangible fields of battle, Israel has ample reason to stay vigilant against jihadi terrorism. In essence, Israel’s recent tactical successes have been partial and transient. This is [...]

On Friday, March 7, just ahead of the Jewish Sabbath, a South Carolina firing squad will shoot to death my longtime pen pal and friend Brad Sigmon. This will mark the first American firing squad execution to take place in 15 years. Accordingly, it will be the first since I co-founded the 3,800+-member-strong L’chaim! Jews [...]

Over 40 human rights groups warned Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk against implementing his plan to temporarily suspend the right to claim asylum in an open letter on Monday. Among the groups are Amnesty International, several asylum law organizations, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. The organizations stressed that the fundamental right to asylum is binding on [...]

A German court rejected an appeal against the conviction of Irmgard Furchner, a 99-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary, on Tuesday. Furchner was employed as a stenographer in the commandant’s office of the Stutthof concentration camp located near the Polish city of Gdansk (formerly Nazi-occupied Danzig), where over 60,000 people were killed. Run by the [...]

Recently, the Alabama Supreme Court approved a request by the state to execute Allan Eugene Miller with nitrogen gas. This will be the second time Alabama will attempt to execute Miller and the second use of nitrogen gas for the purpose of execution. Alabama wants to kill with nitrogen gas despite widespread reporting of a [...]

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo decried the vandalization of the Shoah Memorial, a memorial dedicated to the Holocaust and Jewish history during the Second World War, as “unspeakable” in a press release issued in the French capital on Tuesday. Overnight Monday, about 20 red hands were spray painted on the Shoah Memorial, including the Wall of [...]

At its core, the death penalty feeds one of the basest desires known to humankind: the craving for revenge. The 3,200+ members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” — a group I co-founded — along with millions of other death penalty abolitionists across the world have demonstrated time and again in recent years how [...]

Alabama’s experimental use of gas to torture to death Kenneth Smith on January 25th — like all executions by lethal injection — has perpetuated a horrific Nazi legacy in the United States and is a traumatizing affront to many in the Jewish community. The fact that this torment was blindly carried out just ahead of [...]