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Educating the Arab and Muslim World about the Holocaust
(Times of Israel) Yaakov Schwartz - Sharaka, a grassroots organization founded in December 2020 to strengthen the bond between Israel and the Arab world following the Abraham Accords, is participating in the International March of the Living Holocaust commemoration, which includes a two-mile trek from Auschwitz I to Birkenau in Poland. There are delegates from the Emirates and Bahrain, as well as Syria and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and eastern Jerusalem. They include authors, activists, social media influencers and politicians. Dan Feferman, Sharaka's director of communications, said, "For too long because of the conflict, the Arab world has either minimized, downplayed, ignored, or denied the Holocaust, claiming it's a conspiracy....This is really meant to be an eye-opening trip. All of these people through their various platforms - traditional media, social media - are going to relay this and use this as a platform to start a wider movement of educating the Arab and Muslim world about the Holocaust." Aysha Jalal, who works at Bahrain's National Commission for Education, Science and Culture for UNESCO, visited Israel with Sharaka this past October and visited Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust museum. She then wanted to see the extermination camps for herself. "It's a very hard experience, but we have to see it....I always heard that the Holocaust didn't happen."