Dr. Elina Bardach-Yalov
Dr. Elina Bardach-Yalov, head of the Antisemitism Watch NGO and a former Israeli Knesset Member, holds a Ph.D. in mass communications from the University of Leeds (United Kingdom). In the past she served as an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as press secretary to Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. She currently teaches at the David Yellin Education College in Jerusalem and is a Research Associate at Ariel University.
On January 1, 2025, the name Hugo Valentin was removed from an interdisciplinary research center at Uppsala University’s Faculty of Arts in Sweden. The Hugo Valentin Center was established on January 1, 2010, to conduct research and offer teaching in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. Valentin was a Swedish historian, scholar, and leading Zionist, and Uppsala University was his alma mater. He is well known for his important scholarship on the Holocaust and the history of the Jews in Sweden. Among his most notable works is an article from 1942 in which he claimed, based on data available to him at that time, that the Nazis had already murdered 700,000 Jews in Poland.
Clearly, Valentin’s name has a strong and obvious connection to Holocaust and genocide studies, especially at Uppsala University. However, somebody apparently decided that it would be a good idea to remove the name of this Jewish historian from the center. As Eric Lindberg, Dean of Uppsala University’s Faculty of Arts noted: “It’s called the Uppsala Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies because it is at Uppsala University and because its activities focus on the Holocaust and genocide. This is important research, and we want it to be noticed. To this end, we need a name that reflects what we do and that is clear, not least in international contexts.” For some reason, Lindberg and his colleagues deemed it prudent to remove from the center the name of a Jewish figure renowned for groundbreaking research in both fields. The removal of this Jewish name was apparently explained by a “lack of funding in recent years.” However, it was not explained how its removal might help resolve the problem.
Hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish academics have since signed a letter to the Vice- Chancellor of Uppsala University, Professor Anders Hagfeldt, calling on him to reverse the decision to erase the name of Hugo Valentin. In addition, they have asked him to rename the center as the “Hugo Valentin Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies”—thus properly stating its purpose while also honoring a Jewish man who was, according to the letter, an “ardent anti-Nazi advocate, a tireless opponent of Nazism and fascism, and a leading figure in alerting the world to the Holocaust during and after its occurrence.” As yet, there has been no reaction from the university.
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Uppsala University’s decision to remove Valentine’s name fits disturbingly well into the growing global trend of exploiting the Holocaust for agendas that deliberately exclude Jewish connections—a reflection of the prevailing zeitgeist. Unfortunately, this incident is far from being an isolated one. Instead, it reflects a broader movement to erase Jewish history, sever Jewish ties to the Holocaust, and appropriate the names of prominent Jewish figures for purposes that often bear little relation their values and beliefs—or even contradict them.
Take, for example, the case of the so-called Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (LIGP), which has blatantly appropriated the name of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer and scholar who coined the term “genocide” and was instrumental in the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Lemkin passed away in 1959.
Neither he nor his family ever granted permission to this Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, established in 2021, to use his name. Before the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, the LIGP had already been shamelessly leveraging Lemkin’s name to promote a pro- Hamas agenda, going so far as to advocate for the persecution of Israelis who wage war against terrorist forces.
Less than a week after the October 7 attack, instead of expressing condolences for the victims and their families or condemning the terrorists who had murdered, tortured, and raped civilians, the LIGP referred to the massacre as an “unprecedented military operation against Israel” and issued a “genocide alert.” No, they didn’t call the massacre a “genocide”: the alert was issued in response to the subsequent Israeli retaliation—even before the launch of the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza.
On October 18, 2023, the Lemkin Institute publicly urged the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “the crime of genocide,” citing the siege and bombardment of Gaza as well as alleged expressions of genocidal intent. The post on social media garnered significant attention, amassing 1.3 million views on X (formerly Twitter).
When the Lemkin family learned about the LIGP, they expressed shock and outrage. New Jersey lawyer Joseph Lemkin, a relative of the famous Raphael Lemkin, made the following statement (with full support of the family): “Members of our family were killed in the Holocaust, and Rafael Lemkin would be outraged by the use of his name and the abuse of the word genocide. … Our family fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself and are fully in favor of US policies to support Israel. Indeed, we have many family members in Israel; family members who have served in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and others that have been impacted by the terror of Hamas.”
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The trend of appropriation and erasure outlined above goes beyond local institutions and into the realm of governments. In September 2023, 120 European rabbis signed a letter to Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog in which they appealed to him to encourage the Armenian government to refrain from using Holocaust-related terminology when discussing regional political conflicts. They specifically urged him “to make [the Armenian government] aware that the practice of minimizing and downplaying the suffering of the Jewish people for furthering any political agenda through the continued use of Holocaust-related phrases should be ceased immediately and completely.” Why did this group of apolitical religious leaders decide to weigh in on a political matter and even write to the president of the only Jewish state in the world? Because Armenian government officials, including the president, exploited the Holocaust theme for their own political purposes. For example, in an interview with AFP, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said: “Now in Nagorno Karabakh they have created a Ghetto, in the most literal meaning of the word.” In another example, Hagop Ipdjian, an advisor to the president of the Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, juxtaposed images of starved Jews in concentration camps with Armenians in Artsakh standing in the street (presumably waiting to buy bread) and remarked: “Azerbaijan’s blockade of Artsakh echoes Hitler’s Hunger Plan—both imposed suffering on innocent populations. Both defied international law, and both demand global attention.”
Even when taken at face value, such comments clearly appropriate aspects of the Holocaust and Jewish history and should be considered even more disgraceful due to the high levels of antisemitism currently found in Armenia. The president of a country whose only synagogue suffered four arson attempts in just one year should not exploit Jewish tragedy for his own political purposes.
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In a different but related case, the influential Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) went even further than just appropriating Holocaust. It decided to appropriate the Jewish capital city of Jerusalem. There is a legal quarrel in the so-called Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City about the legality of a long-term lease on a large parking lot. Based on previous experience, this would not have caused a major outcry, except for the fact that in this case the lessee is Jewish. Since the start of the dispute, which concerns the an attempt by the lessee, a Jewish developer, to build a hotel on the parking lot (which does not violate the terms of the lease), there has been a massive online campaign to “Save the Armenian Quarter.” The campaign rhetoric is heavily on the side of “Armenian Jerusalem” and the “sanctity” of the land of the quarter, which is a slightly grandiose way to describe a parking lot. In addition, the campaign also uses a lot of Palestinian tropes when describing Israelis and Jews, who are always portrayed as “extremist settlers” or “armed settlers with dogs” or any combination thereof. The campaign is fueled by ANCA, which calls the land deal an “existential threat facing the 1,700-year-old Armenian Christian presence in the Holy Land.”
Recently, ANCA decided that the best date to host an in-person community briefing on “The Future of Jerusalem’s At-Risk Armenian Quarter” was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Previously, the above mentioned Lemkin Institute also issued a red flag alert, claiming that “the disturbing level of Armenophobia present in genocidal regimes [like] Israel is alarming and places Armenians in a state of constant peril.” Considering that they ignored an attempted genocide of Israelis on October 7, it is clear that both institutions feel very comfortable separating Jews from their history and appropriating the language of Jewish tragedies while simultaneously ignoring or denying the existence of those tragedies.
It is imperative to put an end to such rhetorical attempts to appropriate or erase Jewish history, as they only encourage and strengthen the resolve of those that wish to physically erase the Jews as well. We have seen before where such rhetoric can lead, and it should therefore not be tolerated at any level.