A UK rabbi has spoken out about the shocking moment he learned of a knife attack in his hometown while visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp. Rabbi Doron Birnbaum, an educator at Hasmonean High School, had just returned from a four-day trip to Poland with 90 Jewish students when he was interviewed by GBNews about the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, north London, on April 29. Authorities are treating the attack as an act of terrorism.
The Rabbi's Account
Rabbi Birnbaum described the harrowing experience of receiving the news while standing in the latrines barracks at Auschwitz, the site where over a million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. He said: 'My phone pings, I get a message that two Jewish people have been stabbed in Golders Green, minutes from my home. Out of respect, I step outside the barracks, and I’m in Auschwitz.'
He continued: 'I want people to understand this, because sometimes in numbers, we miss the personal narrative. Everyone’s got a family WhatsApp group. As a Jew, I go on to my family WhatsApp group, and I ask, are you OK? Are my family still alive? I get pictures and videos from the community. I zoom in at the bodies, the legs, the clothes that can be seen, to try and identify, ‘Is that my own family?’ and every single Jew in our community did that yesterday.'
A Painful Connection to History
Birnbaum noted the eerie parallels between the attack and the history he was teaching his students. He had been in Poland visiting mass graves of children and camps like Majdanek before heading to Auschwitz. After receiving the news, he had to sit down 40 teenagers outside the gas chambers and explain what had happened. 'You might need to check on your parents, just to see if they’re OK,' he told them.
'People need to see the connection between these two things,' Birnbaum said. 'There are Jewish communities that have been decimated and don’t exist anymore. One day, in 80 years’ time, am I or my children going to take our grandchildren down the streets of Golders Green, Hendon, Edgware, Stamford Hill, any Jewish community in the U.K., and they’re going to say, look at that marking on the wall: There was once a Jew here. Because that’s the way we’re going.'
Community in Shock
The stabbing attack occurred amid a series of arson attacks targeting Jewish sites in the area. Jewish groups have expressed deep concern over the rising antisemitism. Birnbaum emphasized that the conversations Jewish families are having today mirror those of 1935 Germany. 'Unfortunately, we heard the devastating news about this terrorist attack, yesterday,' he said.
The rabbi’s poignant remarks have resonated widely, highlighting the ongoing threat to Jewish communities and the importance of remembering history.
