Global Forum 2020

A discussion produced in partnership with the prestigious Munich Security Conference, on the current state and future of the critical alliance between the United States and Europe and the ramifications for Israel and the Jewish community, featuring Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, and AJC Europe Director Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, moderated by Remko Leemhuis, Director of AJC Berlin.

After five days of inspirational speeches and spirited debates, AJC CEO David Harris, whom the late Israeli President Shimon Peres called “the foreign minister of the Jewish people,” closes the historic AJC Virtual Global Forum with a call to action!

Adam Hall’s paternal grandfather smuggled his family through the sewers after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to survive the Nazis. After a series of truly remarkable events, the family immigrated to the U.S. where Hall’s father resolved to never again be a victim. “Never again is not just a slogan,” Hall said. “It’s a way of life.”

Through a series of miracles and the benevolence of righteous gentiles, all of Bini Guttman’s grandparents survived the Shoah. They lived long enough to teach him that “Never again” is not an empty phrase. “It means you fight for what’s right.” Now president of the European Union of Jewish Students, Guttman knows while life may not always be easy for Jews in Europe, “we have won.”

Fred Strober’s father was part of the U.S. Army unit that helped liberate a slave labor camp where Nazis imprisoned Jews and Roma. But his father did not speak of the horrors he saw there until 40 years later, before Fred took a trip to Auschwitz. Fred explains that he is attending AJC Virtual Global Forum 2020 in honor of those who bore witness, like his father, and to make “a better future for all of us.”

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Federal Minister of Defense of Germany, addressed AJC Virtual Global Forum 2020.

Ruth Krall’s earliest childhood memory is of her father searching for the family he lost after he
immigrated to the U.S. His 44 relatives in Poland were likely burned inside a synagogue. Krall
calculates how many cousins she might have by now and shares how “the family that never had
a chance” inspires her to fight antisemitism and nurture a growing family.

When Beverly Block Rosenbaum’s mother was told by a Nazi officer that she was “too pretty to be a Jew,” she bravely replied: “I am a Jew and I’m proud of it,” and, remarkably, survived. Rosenbaum shares her mother's story and how it shaped her identity. “Like my mother on the Nazi selection line I will never be afraid to say I am a proud Jew.”

As a child, Baron Dr. Julian Klener was forced to separate from his family in Brussels, and live
two blocks from where his parents, who were also hiding from the Nazis. “Never again is not a
certainty,” he said, “but it is surely an obligation.” He explains how his son, granddaughters, and
great-granddaughter are his form of Jewish continuity.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker in conversation with AJC Managing Director, Policy and Political Affairs Julie Rayman on the fight for racial justice in America. This program is presented by the Leonard Greenberg Forum for Domestic Policy Issues.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker, addressing the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Virtual Global Forum, declared that “silence is complicity” when fighting for racial equality in the United States and combatting assaults on Blacks and Jews. In the conversation with Julie Rayman, AJC’s Washington-based Managing Director, Policy and Political Affairs, Senator Booker discussed longstanding issues that have come to the forefront in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

Antony Blinken, Deputy Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, and KT McFarland, past Deputy National Security Advisor under President Donald Trump, debate competing perspectives on American foreign policy in the Max Fisher Annual Program at AJC Virtual Global Forum 2020.

Taunted by classmates and expelled from school for being Jewish, Eric Adamson’s grandfather escaped on the Kindertransport to England. He later helped the Allied Forces liberate the Mauthausen concentration camp. Adamson shares how he works for AJC Berlin “to ensure that Jewish life has a vibrant future in Germany and Europe – a life my grandfather was denied.”

As a child, Edith Chaifetz eavesdropped on her parents as they described horrors of the Holocaust. She shares why “those memories haunt me to this day,” and why she’s devoted to the imperatives of fighting antisemitism and preserving both Israel and sacred memories.

Harriet Schleifer’s parents lost most of their relatives in the Treblinka extermination camp and raised their daughters to have a strong Jewish identity. She reveals why she works to ensure Jewish identity can thrive around the world. “I always strived to fill the hole in my parents’ lives … that they would never again be victims or feel fear.”

Belle Etra Yoeli’s grandmother was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, where more than 95% of the Jewish population was murdered by Nazis. Her grandfather, whose family was also murdered during the shoah, served in the British army as a doctor. Yoeli shares how her grandparents’ story forms the center of her Jewish identity and her missions to protect the memory of the Holocaust and build “a bright Jewish future.”

75 years after the end of WWII, three generations share their families’s Holocaust stories at AJC Virtual Global Forum 2020.

Steve Zelkowitz lost grandparents, six aunts and uncles, and first cousins whose names he will never know in the Holocaust. He explains why he “cannot and will not be a bystander while antisemitism grows in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.”

In a historic public dialogue, Dr. Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, details his nation’s efforts to promote regional stability and interfaith cooperation.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Mohammed Gargash, in a historic public appearance by a senior Arab government official before a global Jewish organization, today addressed the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Virtual Global Forum. Gargash and other senior UAE officials have welcomed AJC delegations on regular visits to the Gulf state for more than 20 years. “AJC has been a quite remarkable bridge for the region. The fruit of AJC work has been impressive and substantive,” he said.