KnowUs, a new, effort to counter misleading, negative portrayals of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, penned an open letter to the Board of the Pulitzer Prize urging it to refrain from granting its award to The New York Times for its deeply offensive and flawed series of articles attacking these thriving communities. Prize winners are scheduled to be announced in May.

Since September 2022, KnowUs has chronicled a Times crusade of one-sided, inaccurate articles mischaracterizing Orthodox Jews. The activist reporting is widely rumored to have set its sights on the journalistic award.

KnowUs mailed the letter to each of the 18 Pulitzer Board members.

If in the past, denial of the Holocaust was carried on by the historiography which distorted real history for the sake of glorifying and memorializing the rebels for their own propaganda agendas.

The chareidi historian, Rabbi Yehoshua Eibshitz zt"l proved with stark facts that HaRav Alexander Zusha Friedman zt"l HY"D, author of "Maayona shel Torah," a famous publicist and representative of chareidi Judaism in the leadership of the Warsaw ghetto, called upon the heads of those who were planning the uprising residents in the bunker on Dzelena 34 St., not to carry out the revolt. He argued that without the revolt, it was plausible that a portion of the Jews would survive. The other scenario would be a total annihilation of the entire ghetto.

The saga of the judicial reform is behind us. Now comes the truth, the real thing, the very purpose behind the wild and violent struggle against the elected government.

The goal of all Jewish antisemites, past and present, has always been a secret they sought to hide under a veil of motives and reasons of all kinds. In the past, they claimed that the Jews were to blame for everything; today it is the chareidim and bnei Torah, even though they had no part or parcel with the controversies between Right and Left. But it is their goal and mission. Everything else is merely a cover-up.

The broad public which went forth to demonstrate, probably believed, and still do, that they were fighting for democracy. But there are concealed leagues behind this battle, powerful ones with huge monetary backing, who calculated their goals which were totally different, and utilized the government's program and actions regarding the Reform to further their own purposes.

These factions seek to destroy the Jewish State, or better said, what is left of it, and the reality that the government is actually dependent upon the chareidi and traditional public upsets them no end.

<Part I

This long series of articles was originally published in print in 1994, exactly 29 years ago. It describes the approach and feeling of certain representatives of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust. Sammy Kaufman argues that their behavior was influenced by their political desires to achieve a Jewish state, and their assessment that Jewish sacrifices in the war will make achievement of that goal more likely.

On the twenty-eighth of Nisan, the State of Israel observed "Holocaust and Heroism Day." Fifty years later however, even the secular establishment have had to face the serious cracks in the facade of Zionist "heroism" of that period that have come to light.

The issue of the conduct of the Zionist leadership during the destruction of European Jewry has become the subject of intense public debate over the past few years as walls of silence have come tumbling down. Historian Sammy Kaufman has researched the subject thoroughly, examining documents, interviewing researchers and meeting those who took part in the fateful events. His journey into the bloodstained past also led him to a personal journey back to Yiddishkeit. He presents his findings in the following series of articles which were originally published by the Hebrew Yated.

General Introduction

Rav Michoel Dov Ber Weissmandel was assigned by Heaven to one of the most extraordinary roles that were filled in the Second World War. He was to become the instigator of one of the most daring rescue projects to be attempted during that period of the fearful destruction which overwhelmed the Jews of Europe.