been confirmed also by the us secretary of defense, lloyd austin. that is really it from the news for now. we will be back with more at the top of the next hour. hope to see you then by the 1st into our is whenever they feel like it sounds kind of cool. design a session and pain, most pieces in the sky, the bed have most and many on, including the us of the volume the how do they do the secret lines. but stats may 22nd on d w. the 30 years ago. so makers steven spielberg create additional off foundation shocked

me off the his movies. endless list had brought the hollow cost to the big screens . he wanted to preserve the testimonies of genocide survive us to the state. the show i found a sion 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. senior show off. honda ation 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 palestinian 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 false assumption that the other side is anti palestinian. and i think those of us who care about anti semitism and piece in the middle east certainly went 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 any 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 to the protesters, though the students on say that there is not enough pressure on israel to end. the war that has already killed more than 30000 posted in some casa,

and this is why they, after universities to diag best from, is really companies and companies with connections to israel or to the military. are these not legitimate demands, in your opinion? asking for 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 cause of health ministry is not shifted significantly over the past. couple of months. the fact that the information is coming to us from a known care 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

notion that us universities are somehow actively complicit in this at a reading level is also very suspicious. the idea of boycott is a former protest has a long lineage, but the single out israel and call for a complete boycott and divestment is rarely goods and is rarely products. at the same time, you have so many other military conflicts, so many other human rights abuses happening in other parts of the world where nobody talks about boy carter divestment is suspicious. that is in part why we're concerned about rising anti semitism. it because we mentioned the numbers of casualties in gauze, all 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 mouse, run house ministry in gone,

but they're widely used also by the one correct. let us have a closer look at what is legitimate criticism off is rarely politics. and when it's becomes anti semitic rhetoric, your advisor to the international hawk cost remembrance alliance 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 playing on mid evil 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 its complete destruction because of putative charges leveled against it, but not calling for the disruption 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. and did you ask them 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 for northern europe. this is something that's found across the continent.

how concerned are you about the rise of power, right parties in europe, and also in well and 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 gaining 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 a 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 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 populace to 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 and finding out the semitism 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 turbo tax on israel, you have starting come started conducting interviews with survivors off october 7. what does the significance of this day? also for the show off on the issue, 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 number. then if you go ahead, in this case 40 to 50 years, and you look at the testimony is given by book 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 acceptable for them to kind of meet on a, somebody over there, about 245246000 holocaust survivors still alive today. their average age is more than 86 years old. and the vast majority of the 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 19 ninety's. 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 genocides. now this term 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 you end genocide convention. now, does that preclude the possibility of other crimes have haven't happened? no, of course not. and we know that the as 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 for 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 act of best cleansing, or a mass atrocity, or a war crime or genocide? not really. ultimately,

these terms end up becoming used as political tools to that inhibit global pace. thank you so much for the enter. your thank if of the 5 months into the war and gaza and deadly chaos around in a convoy has glaringly highlighted the desperation and climbing death toll among civilians. the cottage of humanity is something they haven't seen protected by guess this week on complex own is not to find me. former egyptian foreign minister and long time diplomat of what points as egypt have no choice. but to consider opening its border 2 thousands on to monetary and grounds have the shocking scenes of suffering, process complet to an inflection point. now the sun.