Holocaust survivors speak at Vienna Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress
Over 400 people attended the first Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress held in Vienna in June 2025.The Congress was held in the shadow of Israel’s ongoing murders in Gaza and just as Netanyahu launched missiles at Iran in an attempt to start a nuclear war to consume us all
Most of us at the Congress were from Europe but there were people from all continents. Over three days we heard from experts in the histories of Palestine, Israel, Zionism and antisemitism and from activists opposing apartheid and genocide and challenging their government’s complicity in crimes against international humanitarian law.
For many of us it was a chance to meet fellow campaigners who we only knew from email or from Zoom and meet new comrades. Networks like Global Jews for Palestine and European Jews for Palestine were enhanced by these deepened and new connections and the prospects for Jewish international action against international crimes strengthened.
Netanyahu has yet again used the Holocaust to justify his endless wars across the Middle East. He appeared on Fox News on 15 June to justify his attacks on Iran:
‘We will not have a second Holocaust, a nuclear Holocaust. We already had one, in the previous century – the Jewish state is not going to have the Holocaust committed on the Jewish people. It’s not going to happen. Never again is now and we have to act now!’
Here are statements by five Holocaust survivors denouncing Israel’s war crimes and the repression of opposition to these crimes. The statements were made – or read out by Katie Halper – at the Vienna anti-Zionist Congress on 13-15 June 2025.
Dr. Gabor Mate: “Hello and I salute all of you at this congress, which is in support of freedom, dignity and justice, the highest Jewish values. Two days ago, I stood in Auschwitz at the place where, almost 81 years to the day, my grandparents stepped off the transport train and were immediately driven to the gas chamber. It was only owing to good fortune that my mother and I were not on the same train with them. We can learn from that horror what happens when we dehumanize people, when we think of them as less than ourselves, when we believe we are more entitled than they are. It is appalling to me how the memory of these tragic events is used today to justify the oppression, dispossession and mass killing of the Palestinian people. Let us say together, this is not happening in our name. Thank you all.”
Marione Ingram: “As a Holocaust survivor and a survivor of the deadliest European bombings during World War 2, I’m horrified to see what Israel is doing using methods of killings and destructions in ever widening areas in the Middle East. And it horrifies me that the resemblance to Germany’s goal, to make it Juden Frei applies to Netanyahu’s war against Palestinians. No terrorist organizations can harm Israel as much as it is harming itself with its grotesque brutality of bombings and starvation of Gazans, and especially of the murder and starvation of the children of Gaza.
Israel’s aim is to rid Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians, and this horror is wholly supported with bombs and rockets by the USA. Whether Jews are in support of the unprecedented brutality or an active opposition to it, Jews everywhere will pay a heavy burden by guilt of association. Netanyahu’s war against Palestinians, the terrible destruction of life and all cultural institutions is itself a Holocaust. Peace and love, Marion.”
Dr. Agnes Kory: “Today I turned 80 years and six months young and I am a Holocaust child survivor as well as a voluntary Holocaust researcher. I have been a lifelong Zionist, although for several decades I was critical of Israel’s apartheid regime.
On Friday May 2nd 2025, the Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a call to their members asserting that the weekly London IJAN – which is International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network – protests were anti-Semitic. As a result of this call, the 20 or so IJAN protesters were confronted by about 60 or more Board of Deputies of British Jews protesters who shouted horrendous abuse at this small IJAN gathering, played loud music, danced and sang while we were reading the names of Palestinian children murdered by Israel. This event clarified for me that Zionism now equates with what could be described as fascism. With the genocide in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine, I had no choice but to convert fully to anti-Zionism. Solidarity. Thank you.”
Susan Berliner-Weiss: “I’m a Holocaust survivor and an anti-Zionist Jew. Congratulations to the Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress meeting in Vienna. Jews across the world are proudly visible among the millions demonstrating in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli-US-Zionist colonialist genocide. Our moral duty as Jewish anti-racists demands that we pressure the governments in partnership with the Israeli-US genocide to act immediately and unconditionally to stop the war in Gaza, to block the genocide and to send the food and medical aid to the besieged Palestinians.
As a survivor of Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust, I was a Jew marked down for death as subhuman. In France where I was born, I was saved by the solidarity of many individuals. Whole communities hid us and acted collectively with fierce determination to protect those fleeing the organized Nazi butchery. They believed in justice and in humanity.
Zionism contorts Judaism to mean the same as Zionism. But Jews today can reclaim our Judaism and show in action our rejection of the horror that makes Palestinians pay for the crimes of the German Nazis. Today I look at Israel’s unspeakable barbarism against the steadfast Palestinians and tremble at this unforgivable crime done in the name of the Jewish people. As anti-Zionist Jews we must redouble our commitment in the Palestinian resistance movement and work collectively with meaningful acts of solidarity that strike at the military and economy of Israel and of our governments and corporations in our home countries.
As Jewish anti-Zionists we resolve to continue to struggle with tenacity to break through the repression that silences the Palestinian voice. Palestinians must be heard, they must live. They have a right to their land their life and liberty. Palestinian freedom is also our freedom and the freedom for humanity. I cannot attend this important conference of anti-Zionist Jews but I encourage those who can to go and contribute to the discussion. Thank you for allowing me to say a few words to you today and best wishes to the conference.”
“Thank you for inviting me: it’s an honour to join this fight-back against Zionism. As we are discussing the dangers of the revival of fascism, I would like to honour the memory of a victim of World War 2 fascism, the eminent Hungarian Jewish poet, Miklós Radnóti.
In such an age I dwelt on earth
when men had fallen so beneath their nature
that they, unbidden, for their lust to kill,
and foaming stagger in the tangles of confusion,
possessed by tainted creeds, bewildered by delusion.In such an age I dwelt on earth
when spies were honored, and the murderer,
the traitor, and the thief were held as heroes–
but he whose zeal, it seemed, lacked voice and violence
would be abhorred as if he bore a pestilence.In such an age I dwelt on earth
when he who would protest perforce must hide,
and gnaw his fist in bitterness and shame–
the nation in its madness laughed and thought it good
to taste such fatal horrors, drunk with filth and blood.In such an age I dwelt on earth
when to the child the mother was accursed,
the woman who miscarried would rejoice,
the live man envied the entombed and wormy dead,
while on his table poison thickened, foamed, and spread.In such an age I dwelt on earth
when the dumb poet must wait and hold his peace,
hope for the day when he might find a Voice—
for none could here pronounce the dark, demanded, verse
but that Isaiah, master of the fitting curse.
When young and naive my first adventure to Europe the prominent flag hanging from buildings was the peace flag with and without doves. The visit this year, I see none.