The ADL Deems The Swastika A Universial Symbol Of ‘Hate’, Then Again ‘It Depends’

The swastika now shows up so often as a generic symbol of hatred that the Anti-Defamation League, in its annual tally of hate crimes against Jews, will no longer automatically count its appearance as an act of anti-Semitism.

“The swastika has morphed into a universal symbol of hate,” said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization. “Today it’s used as an epithet against African-Americans, Hispanics and gays, as well as Jews, because it is a symbol which frightens.”
Observing the trend, he said that his group had decided it would examine reports of scrawled swastikas for contextual clues. If it appears Jews were not the target, the incident will not be included in the league’s annual audit of anti-Semitic hate crimes.more

Instead, the new system shows a 10 percent decrease. But comparing the two surveys would be akin to comparing apples to oranges because of the varying qualifiers. William Helmreich, a sociology professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, said he understood the reasons for differentiating between swastikas directly targeting Jews and those painted in general locations. But Helmreich said he had “reservations” about omitting the latter category from the report.

“I don’t feel they should stop taking note of swastikas in general because they do represent a symbol of hatred,” he said. “Why not just differentiate it in the report, as we do in sociology? Rather than yes or no, there is agree, agree strongly or disagree.”*

Lauter said information on swastikas not directed at Jews was being preserved, even if excluded from the audit. “We may take a look to see if it warrants a separate report,” she said. “This [system] does enable us to look at these kinds of trends.”

Michael Berenbaum, former project director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and now a consultant, said he agrees with ADL’s decision.  “The presence of swastikas in certain contexts is not sufficient to prove anti-Semitism,” he said. “Individual judgments should be made, and ADL has done as good a job as anyone over the years in quantifying anti-Semitism. They have reported declines when it is in their self-interest to have it on the rise [because of fund raising].”

A March 2007 story in The Jewish Week noted that the ADL’s presentation of numbers that year was misleading because while there was a drop in the overall number of incidents—including e-mails and verbal harassment—violent attacks on Jews were on the rise, particularly in New York. In stressing the aggregate decrease in incidents, the organization was presenting a picture of greater tolerance and safety when the rising assaults told a different story.  At the time, Foxman said the agency was considering changing the way it tracks and documents incidents.more

70s film on private Hitler rediscovered

When “Swastika” was shown at the 1973 Cannes film festival, fights broke out and somebody threw part of a chair at the screen.“All hell broke loose,” says the film’s Australian-born, Los Angeles-based director Phillipe Mora. “There were eruptions all through the theatre. Finally they stopped the film and a French guy came out, looking like a head waiter and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Cannes film festival, not a beer hall.” The cause of the ruckus was, primarily, that the film appeared to humanise Adolf Hitler and his inner circle. Never-seen-before colour footage, shot mostly by Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun, showed the personification of evil cuddling his dog, playing with children and discussing “Gone with the Wind.”



The revival of “Swastika,” championed by the German documentary director Ilona Ziok, is a sign, Mora says, that Germany has matured in how it handles its Nazi legacy. After the Berlin screening, a German film producer effusively told Mora, a Jew whose father was born in Leipzig, that “Swastika” should be shown in every school. It’s a far cry from its reception in 1973. Three decades before films such as “Downfall” began breaking the taboo against exploring the human side of the Nazis, Mora’s film provoked outrage.

“The film was made under the assumption that everybody knew Hitler was a monster and a murderer. I didn’t realise it was open to debate,” he says. “But he was a man with a mother and a father and sisters and a pet dog. And that viscerally disturbed people. They had only seen Hitler ranting and raving in grainy black and white film. It took 30 years but now a new generation is interested.”

Lost at the Pentagon

Mora went to the Pentagon, which found the eight cans of film and happily handed them over. “We were just dumbfounded,” he recalls. “Here was this incredible footage that’d just been sitting there because no one had asked for it.”More > > >