[000:00:00;00] the you can draw the line between the spaces because i don't believe that space is, is a morally relevant criterion anymore than i believe that rice or sex is on frontier in. 2 2 should. 2 2 we humans are closer to a chimpanzee vanishing. pansy is even to a dog. but dr. series about our complex relationship with animals. watch now on youtube dw documentary, the 30 years ago filmmakers,

steven spielberg create their show off foundation shortly off the his movies. endless list had brought the holocaust to the big screens. he wanted to preserve the testimonies of genocide survivors to the stage. the show of foundation has recorded more than 56000 testimonies. dw was able to speak to its executive director walter williams. at a time when anti semitism is on the rise globally, robert williams, executive director of the u. s. c. show up foundation and welcome to the doctor you . you came here to berlin from the united states, where we have seen a lot of protests at us campuses slightly in the past weeks. how have you been experiencing those pro post in protest, joe biden, to us present them, has caught them and to submit a, do you agree with this description? there?

i take, i take issue with one aspect of, of the way that you characterized it. i think the notion that they are pro palestinian creates a, a false assumption that the other side is anti palestinian. and i think those of us who care about anti semitism and peace in the middle east certainly want the palestinian people to live in peace. i would characterize these protests as anti as railey, and at times anti semitic. there are always valide reasons to protest the actions of anti government. more often than not as of late. we seen those protests when they are directed at the state of israel, devolved into anti semitic rhetoric, the use of anti semitic images. and yes, it has opened the door to the normalization of anti semitism in parts of my country . the protesters, though the students, um, say that there is not enough pressure on israel to end. the war that has already

killed more than 30000, pulsed indians and casa, and this is why they out there. universities to divest from is really companies and companies with connections to israel or to the military. are these not legitimate demands, in your opinion, asking for the succession of civilian deaths and a military conflict is always a concern. i think there is a lack of critical thinking that play in part the number of civilian deaths as reported by the hamas wrong gaza health ministry is not shifted significantly over the past couple of months. the fact that the information is coming to us from a known terror organization automatically makes some of those numbers suspect. we certainly know that civilians have died and that's tragic. but in terms of the scale of civilian deaths by percentage, it's lower than any other. more recent, a case of urban warfare,

including some of the us military's incursions into afghanistan and iraq. the a notion that us universities are somehow actively complicit in this, at a reading level is also very suspicious. the idea of a boy called is a form of protest, has a long lineage, but a single out israel and call for a complete boy. cotton divestment is rarely goods and is rarely products. at the same time, you have so many other military conflicts. some of the other human rights abuses happening in other parts of the world where nobody talks about boycott or divestment is suspicious. that is in part why we're concerned about rise in anti semitism. because we mentioned the numbers of casualties in gauze on the reason why also we, we use these numbers is that they have proven quite correct and past conflicts. actually, even though it's correct to stress,

that these are numbers provided by the author on house ministry and got some pets there, widely used also by the one correct. let us have a closer look at what is legitimate criticism off is really politics. and when it's becomes anti semitic rhetoric, your advisor to the international hawk cost remembrance of lions and told ira, so where do you draw the line? well, it's important to note that when it comes to criticism of israeli government policies, no community is more critical than the israeli public itself. we often forget that prior to 7 october, hundreds of thousands of israelis were in the straits. i've witnessed a few of those protests in jerusalem last summer and they're back on the streets, voice and concerned about the direction their country is taking the actions of their government. the need to release the hostages civil discourse and civil

disobedience have a role in us. but we have seen from time to time, certain use of phrases and words that play on old anti semitic stereotypes in the context of these protest. obviously if you are blaming the entire jewish diaspora, jews around the world for the actions of the israeli government, that is a form of anti semitism. if you are using images that show jews as somehow particularly murderous or praying upon children in particular, those are plain on medieval anti jewish stereotypes that have been with us for almost a full century. that is a form of anti semitism. if you are quite honestly singling out the state of israel and calling for it's complete destruction because of putative charges leveled against it,

but not calling for the destruction of other countries that also have their set of problems. it may not be anti semitism, but it's certainly suspicious. we have seen a rise in anti semitism since october 7th, already before in europe in the us and elsewhere. yes. how concerns? how alarm maybe are you? i'm extremely concerned and beyond the warm and countries that have taken out to some of this and very seriously, like the federal republic of germany. it's still frightening to see that there have been more than an 85 percent increase in anti semitic incidence over the course of the last 10 years. and now i think the reason we know that is because germany has taken the issue so seriously and monitors that in countries. i take it less seriously than germany. elsewhere in the u, we've seen rises of more than 100 percent. and it's not particularly the eastern

europe or northern europe is something that's found across the continent. how concerned are you about the rise of power, right parties in europe, and also in the north america? yes, everywhere in the world. but even if we look at germany, we're many people i think fault that's, you know, far right parties had no chance in germany. and now we can see that all right. party is like the off they are on gaming popularity. what do you think about that? it's always been in the quiet underbelly of postwar germany, including in the former data out where you had nationalist parties at least in certain context, accepted as part of the norm. so it's not as though it's come completely out of the blue, but the rise of certain movements over the last several years beginning with tequita and now of the day it is

a concern. but germany is not the only former access country that has had to deal with the rise of far right, politics, romania, russell's with us on occasion hungry. we know the current state of politics and hungry it's. it's a challenge that all of our countries have the best way to counter it is to try to shore up our liberal democratic values. the same is true of the united states. we have seen the rise of a form of popularized politics that was never fully absent from the american political scene, but also not something that's been accepted on such a broad scale or the last few years. this is a real danger, a, it's a danger for the sake of actually finding out the summit to them as well. because what we seen in the case of some of these far right parties is a tendency to project themselves as at the very least pro israel, if not pro jewish. and why are they doing this?

they're not doing it out of a love for the jewish people more often than not, they're doing it in order to, excuse other policies they have that are biased against other groups, including muslim communities that are coming in. all this does is separate communities which is going to lead to more attention. it's the responsibility of good politicians, which there are too few to try to re unite our communities rather than pull them apart. i would like to speak about october 7th, because i know that right after the brutal cairo tex on israel, you have starting come started conducting interviews with survivors off october 7. what does do the significance of this day? also for the show i foundation, why did you start doing this? i'm curious, so the reason we took the testimony so quickly in some part, based on my experience as a historian of the holocaust, there were very few attempts at the end of the war to take testimony of holocaust

survivors. one large exception actually happened a book involved when the us army interviewed survivors of that can to take their testimonies for something that became known as the book involved report. and when you look at these, written testimonies from 19451946, you see a high degree of historical accuracy, but also a tendency for the fresh trauma to appear some of the member. then if you go ahead, in this case 40 to 50 years and you look at the testimony is given by both involved survivors in the 19 ninety's. you see that they remember some of the facts, but they've also read, discovered things that they a head in the dark recesses of their psyche, as well as they have a better grasp on the emotions that they sell on those days. so what we've been doing with these 7 october survivors, we took $400.00 within the 1st few months of that attack. and we're going to return

to them in 2510 years whenever they've had a moment to process their trauma. for another set of interviews, this will help us from the scientific perspective, understand how to take better interviews over time. but we hope it will also contribute to a sense of ceiling across is rarely culture and, and o'clock across the world. we're still trying to process what exactly happened on that day. and you are still looking for holocaust survivors to give their testimonies. and still we know this as a race against time soon. there won't be any holocaust survivors to tell us. first hand about their what they had to experience, what can you do to actually, you know, give these testimonies to future generations to make it accessible for them to kind of meet on somebody over there, about 245246000 holocaust survivors still alive today. their average

age is more than 86 years old. and the vast majority of those survivors to experience the holocaust and the states of the former soviet union in eastern europe and in north africa, regions that most of us actually did not take testimony from the 1990s. so in order to build a more complete collection for historian scholars and family members down the road, we have to take those testimonies before it's too late. i would like to ask one question that goes a bit further because i know that the show our foundation is not only doing interviews with survivors of the holocaust. i mean already told us about october 7th, but also about savant with survivors of other gentle fives. now this time trying to find is highly being debated at the moment. also in regards to israel and even in front of the international court of justice. what's your take on this come on of

genocide in regards to his realm in regards to israel. in regards to israel, i think the current conflict fails to meet the threshold of the 1948 un genocide convention. now, does that preclude the possibility of other crimes have haven't happened? no, of course not. we know that the is rarely military is investigating several cases of excessive use of force in this conflict. but from the perspective of a scholar of the holocaust and of genocide, it does not meet that international legal standard. there's a 2nd part to the question though that i think is also worth noting. the term genocide has a pretty lip, a particular political value that has forced so many other atrocity crimes to try to claim the mantle of genocide from the perspective of this or of a survivor of any of these incidents. does it really matter if you were the survivor of an active s cleansing, or a mass atrocity, or a war crime or genocide?

not really. the, ultimately, these terms end up becoming used as political tools to that inhibit global pace. thank you so much for the enter your thank you the nuts and bolts kitchen, utensils houses and cars. do you know where the natural resources for these come from? they have to be withdrawn and refined into steel, for example. more and for modern extraction methods and technologies are being used to streamline the processes and make them cheaper and to protect the environment. even if this sometimes comes at a cost such as in sweden. also coming up on this