Playwright Sophia Murashkovsky Romma is also an international human rights attorney and her plays often sound off against antisemetism. She organized and led a lunchtime panel April 19 at NY Bar Association, 42 West 44th Street, featuring experts, Holocaust survivors and advocates who battle Holocaust Denial. Recent reports of the New York City Bar Association were shared on subjects including antisemitic conspiracy theory, Holocaust Denial and Distortion and the rise of Antisemitism in Western and Eastern Europe.
One of the afternoon's most salient presentations was from The New York City Bar Association's European Affairs Committee, whose report surveys laws, proposed legislation and regulations, legal proceedings and political events that “suggest a revival of attempts at state-sponsored or state-sanctioned antisemitism in Europe.”
Following a recounting of antisemitic laws from the Early Middle Ages through the 2000s, the Committee's report cites the current resurgence of such legislation in countries throughout Europe, focusing on two themes:
• Legislation that prohibits speech alleging that a country collaborated with the Nazis or was responsible in any part for the Holocaust, notwithstanding the irrefutable historical record, and
• Legislation that restricts or prohibits religious practices, such as the ritual slaughter of animals (kashrut/kosher and halal) and circumcision.
The report called these "a reliable harbinger... of far more pernicious consequences."
Let me share this and some of the other presentations I saw for you to read (the next best thing to being there). I may be able to share more in subsequent newsletters.
New York City Bar Association, The Rise of Antisemitism in Europe: Could De Facto Again Become De Jure?
Sophia Murashkovski Romma, Esq., "The Plaguing Path to the Pestilence of Antisemitism"
Radio Bulgaria, "The Saving of the Bulgarian Jews discussed at a forum in New York"