May 18-24,
2013: As his first act as President Obama's newly appointed Special Envoy to
Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Ira Foreman hopped on a plane Monday night to
join the CIU's "Imams to Auschwitz from the Middle East and Developing
World©," now in progress. These influential Muslim leaders in the world
are on an historic journey - from Dachau to Auschwitz - to see for themselves one of the great
tragedies of the 20th century.
Among the
participants will be Imams, Sheikhs, Islamic educators and leaders from Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Bosnia, Palestine,
Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey. Ambassador Foreman will
join them in Warsaw, alongside the current
Special Envoy Ambassador Michael Kozak and Rashid Hussein, U.S.
Special Representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The
delegation will tour the Jewish Ghetto and make a daylong visit to the infamous
Auschwitz-Birkenau camps. Among other events, they will meet with survivors,
Righteous Among Nations and Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland, will host an interfaith dinner in Warsaw with Warsaw's
chief Imams.
Rabbi Jack
Bemporad, Executive Director of the New Jersey-based Center for Interreligious
Understanding (CIU), is leading this landmark mission of learning and
compassion. The rabbi, who escaped Italy in 1938 at age five, has
dedicated his life to interreligious dialogue in ways too few leaders are
willing to engage.
"This
is a truly unique journey with an unprecedented group of global Muslim
leaders," says Bemporad. "First and foremost, we thank them for their
willingness to come. Our task is to encourage proper understanding between our
faiths in ways that stress our common humanity. Understanding our particular
histories will help us better understand each other so that we can unite in
combatting prejudice against all religions."
Rabbi
Bemporad and the trip's organizer, Catholic University of America Law Professor
Marshall Breger, an Orthodox Jew and former Reagan White House liaison to the
Jewish community, led a similar, highly successful trip for American Imams in
2010. "The U.S.
Imams told us that their trip was transformative and they shared their
experiences with their American Muslim communities. We thought a trip with an
international group of Imams and religious leaders to be of vital
importance."
These
Muslim leaders are important to us all, note the organizers. Misuse of the
Holocaust is a leading propaganda tool that foments a deadly anti-Semitism and
anti-Western sentiment. This in turn distorts Islam and leads many in the West
to see in it something inherently evil, which could not be further from the
truth.
"Increasing
compassion and preserving man's humanity starts with unveiling falsehoods that
shore up bigotry. Unfortunately, one of those is Holocaust Denial. Muslims and
millions of others also suffered and Holocaust Denial denies them, too, not
just Jews who perished," says Prof. Breger.
This
CIU-sponsored trip is funded with grants and support from the Polish Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. State Department, and supporters of the CIU
