Good Friday morning!

Today marks 57 years since Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington. Last night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) spoke at a virtual march organized by the NAACP, which continues tonight.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris, will headline the launch of the Biden campaign’s Jewish outreach effort in Florida today, along with Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) Ted Deutch (D-FL) and Lois Frankel (D-FL), and Biden campaign senior advisor Tony Blinken.

Last night at the Republican National Convention, President Donald Trump touted his Mideast record, proclaiming: “When I took office, the Middle East was in total chaos.” He listed withdrawing from the Iran deal, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and achieving “the first Middle East peace deal in 25 years” among his accomplishments.

The United Nations Security Councilis voting today via email on a resolution that would extend the mission of UNIFIL and call on the Lebanese government to facilitate “prompt and full access” to cross-border tunnels between Lebanon and Israel. 

Check out Jewish Insider’s latest ‘Jewish Nielsen’ report to see which webcasts people tuned into over the past week.

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Frist hand

Inside the hidden facility safeguarding America’s largest collection of Holocaust artifacts

In Bowie, Maryland, 35 miles away from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, sits a nondescript, highly-secure 103,000-square-foot warehouse. That building houses the largest collection of Holocaust artifacts in the United States. Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch took a recent exclusive tour of the facility, which opened in 2017. 

Getting there: The final couple miles of the drive to the warehouse, officially called the David and Fela Shapell Family Collections, Conservation and Research Center, take you past nondescript office plazas and hotels, all of which looked mostly abandoned — a result of COVID-19’s impact on the economy — on a recent Friday afternoon. The final turn toward the Shapell Center, as museum staff call it, leads visitors to a narrow road surrounded by bright green trees. (The Shapell Center sits across from a nature preserve.) If, amid the idyllic surroundings, you briefly forget where you’re going, you’ll be reminded when two security guards emerge from a booth on the edge of the property, whose perimeter is entirely surrounded by a tall fence and security cameras. One guard will check your ID, while the other will lead a bomb-sniffing dog around your car. The building’s address is not posted publicly; individuals cannot visit without express permission.

Heart and soul: “This is the foundation, the heart and soul of everything we do,” Sara J. Bloomfield, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s director, said of the millions of written pages, objects, films, artworks and other artifacts from the Holocaust housed in the center. “If we lost this,” she explained, “we’ve lost everything.” She added, “If we lost the [museum] building, we could rebuild a building. This you can’t rebuild.”

Origins:When Congress passed a bill in 1980 creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the original plan did not involve a massive collection of historical artifacts. The only goal was to create an exhibition space — a large museum, free to the public. It took 13 years to finally open the museum, and in those early years, “they were just trying to get the museum opened,” Bloomfield recalled. But it soon became clear that Holocaust survivors, World War II veterans, and many others would continue approaching the museum with artifact donations. “We decided, we are America’s national memorial. We should have America’s national collection. And then we began aggressively building it.”

Preserving history: Rebecca Boehling — director of the museum’s National Institute for Holocaust Documentation — showcased the meticulous processes that guarantee every item that arrives at the museum, down to even a single-page of a faded handwritten letter, is carefully preserved, documented and digitized. The museum’s renowned conservation department works to reinforce and strengthen artifacts, a different process than the restoration art museums do after acquiring a painting or a sculpture. “If you had a Picasso, you would restore it to try to get it back to where Picasso had it. We want the history of the object to show,” Bloomfield explained.  

Perfectly planned:Every detail of the facility was planned and approved by conservation experts. In the event of a fire, a special sprinkler system would provide just enough water to extinguish the blaze without causing too much damage to the artifacts. The cases are made out of material that does not cause any chemical interaction with the object, and they are raised off the ground so that, in the case of a flood, water would not seep into them and damage the contents. Each individual case is set to a different temperature, with custom humidity levels and lighting. 

Collecting evidence: For several years, the museum has been working on a project to document all the sites of incarceration in Nazi Europe, from a single jail cell at a Gestapo prison all the way to Auschwitz. They’ve documented more than 42,000 sites so far. “All these Europeans who said, ‘Well I never saw anything, I never heard anything,’ it’s a little hard to claim that now. That’s kind of the same feeling I get when I’m in a place like this,” Bloomfield said of the facility. “There’s so much evidence.”

Read the full feature and see more photos of the facility here.

Ready for retirement

Reverend Rubén Díaz, Sr. looks back

In the lead-up to New York’s June 23 primary, it looked as if Rubén Díaz, Sr., the brash Pentecostal minister and Bronx city councilman, was strongly positioned to defeat his Democratic opponents in the 15th congressional district race. But when the votes were tallied, he lost by 18 points to Ritchie Torres, the 32-year-old progressive city councilman. In a recent phone interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, Díaz adopted a care-free tone in discussing his loss. “I have no regrets,” he said. “No regrets.”

Blame game: “I did what I had to do,” Díaz, 77, told JI. “I congratulate Ritchie Torres.” Still, the city councilman sounded somewhat aggrieved in assessing the reasons he believes he failed to garner a plurality of the vote. He blames President Donald Trump. Or, rather, he blames Torres’s apparently successful effort to link Díaz — who holds conservative social positions and has expressed positive views of Trump — with the president. “I thought people would not believe it, but they did,” said Díaz. 

Assessing the loss: Díaz seemed surprised that his enthusiasm for Trump’s first presidential campaign might have hampered his prospects in the Bronx. “I have supported Republicans in the past, and I have no problem with that,” he said. “Most likely, I will do it in the future.” Though he admitted in a March interview with JI that he did little campaigning in his district, Díaz averred that there was nothing he would change if he had the chance to do his campaign over, implying that his record stands on its own. “No elected official does more activity for that community than me,” he declared. “No one.”

Voting verdict: Asked who he would vote for in the upcoming election, Díaz put forth a roundabout response. “I’m not voting for Biden,” he said. “No. I’m not voting for him.” Would he vote for Trump? “I don’t know,” Díaz said. “I might vote for Trump, who knows? Hey, I’m deciding. I’m probably — I’m a Democrat. I am a Democrat. And I might be voting for Biden, yes. I’m just joking with you. I think that I am a Democrat.”

Retirement: Díaz told JI he plans to retire from the city council at the end of his current term in 2022. “Next year I’m not running,” he said. “I’m out of politics.” Though his run for Congress didn’t seem to yield the result he would have liked, Díaz said he has nevertheless been keeping busy in his capacity as a city official. His district office is open, he told JI, pointing out that he has been working to serve his community amid the coronavirus outbreak. “This is my last year and that’s it,” he said. “But I’m going to keep doing what I always did.”

Read the full interview here.

Heard Yesterday

Kushner: Trump admin strategy on Israeli-Palestinian issue is ‘not to do stupid things’

White House senior advisor Jared Kushner defended the decision of the Trump administration to cut U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority in an interview with PoliticoPlaybook yesterday. 

Assigning blame: “Our strategy has not been to isolate the Palestinians. Our strategy has just been to not do stupid things,” Kushner said, explaining why the administration has cut off aid as the PA grapples with an ongoing financial crisis. Kushner said he told representatives of the “Quartet” — the U.S., U.N., E.U. and Russia — on Wednesday that the Palestinians are complaining about “a self-made financial crisis,” because they are unwilling to take money from Israel. Kushner also addressed the escalation between Israel and Gaza, saying: “The only reason why they have conflict is because they’re shooting rockets on buildings in Israel.”

Don’t mess with us: “In the past, people would rush and try to help them, but we just haven’t rewarded bad behavior,” Kushner stressed. “They started criticizing America when we moved the [U.S.] Embassy [to Jerusalem], we basically said, OK, we’re not sending you money anymore.’ We’re not going to send American taxpayer money over to a country, to a people who basically insult America and take [us] just for granted. So we’ve just taken a common-sense approach. We’ve tried not to do stupid things again.” Kushner suggested President Donald Trump “could actually be the first person to lead the Palestinian people to a place where they have self-determination, hope and a lot of economic opportunity” if they choose to return to the negotiation table. 

Trump’s alliance: In a Zoom call hosted by the American Jewish Committee yesterday, Peter Berkowitz, director of policy planning at the State Department, denied that the U.S. has isolated itself on the issue of Iran following the U.N.’s rejection of the Iran arms embargo extension. “We need to understand that the American partners who are most directly affected by Iran’s ceaseless effort to extend its hegemony throughout the Middle East — that is our Arab Gulf partners and Israel — are at one with us in our approach to Iran and support the maximum pressure campaign,” Berkowitz explained. “The countries that understand, I think, best and face most immediately the Iranian threat… they understand this as the United States is working actually with them to advance our shared interest in stability in the Mideast.” 

Read more here.

Worthy Reads

📜 Document Dive:Historian David I. Kertzer explores in The Atlantic the secrets unearthed in the newly opened Holocaust-era Vatican archives, including memoranda — “steeped in antisemitic language” — persuading Pope Pius XII not to speak out against Nazi atrocities. [TheAtlantic]

🏗️On the Record: Stephen Ross, the billionaire investor, sports team owner and real estate developer, held a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times’s David Gelles about politics, philanthropy, the pandemic — and the president. “I’m going to give back more than half what I have to charity,” he vowed. “I’m not looking to be some public figure, and I’m not controlling everything.” [NYTimes]

⚔️ Law and Order: In The Financial Times, Dan Senor posits that ongoing social unrest in the United States will only fuel Trump’s reelection prospects. “The gun and law enforcement issues could well undermine a key part of what was supposed to be Mr. Biden’s strength: his ability to win back working-class voters.” [FT]

Around the Web

✈️ Ground Breaking: Israel’s El Al airlines is slated to fly to Abu Dhabi on Monday, in what will be the first commercial passenger flight from Israel to the UAE. 

🏦 Cash In:The biggest banks in Dubai and Israel, Bank Leumi and Emirates NBD Bank PJSC, are in early talks about potential cooperation.

🤝 Slow Pace: Israeli investors are worried that investments from the UAE in the country’s tech industry will be lower than expected due to the decades-long regional conflict.

👨‍⚖️ Legal Matters: Israel’s High Court ordered the removal of the Mitzpe Kramim outpost in the West Bank because it was built on privately owned Palestinian land.

⚽ Red Card: A Europa League game between Maccabi Haifa and Željezničar in Israel was postponed yesterday after five players from the Bosnia-Herzegovina club tested positive for COVID-19.

🔥 Fiery Exchange: Residents living in the south of Israel have joined firefighters in recent months to extinguish blazes caused by incendiary balloons launched from Gaza. The IDF struck Hamas targets in Gaza again overnight after further rocket fire from the Strip. 

🖼️ On Auction: Billionaire Ron Perelman has asked Sotheby’s to find buyers for valuable works from his arts collection as he shakes up his vast investment empire.

✊ Solidarity: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tweeted that news of an arson attack on the University of Delaware’s Chabad House “is deeply disturbing — as an alum of @UDelaware and as an American.”

💺 Musical Chairs: A British-Israeli woman is suing easyJet after she was asked to switch seats on two separate flights from Tel Aviv to London to accommodate Orthodox Jewish passengers. 

🧔🏽 Talk of the Nation: American Jews of color feel increasingly “stuck in the middle,” facing both racial injustice and antisemitism, as their numbers appear to be growing.  

🚗 War Machine: A new study has found that German automotive manufacturer Continental AG used forced laborers and supplied military equipment to the Nazi regime during World War II.

🕯️Remembering:Famed D.C. restaurateur Mel Krupin died at age 89. 

Pic of the Day

dpatop – 26 August 2020, Berlin: Gabi Ashkenasi, Foreign Minister of Israel, is standing in front of a wreath at the memorial site “Gleis 17”. The “Gleis 17” memorial at Grunewald station commemorates the Holocaust crimes committed by the Nazis and the transport to the concentration camps. Photo by: Michael Kappeler/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi lays a wreath at the “Gleis 17” memorial at Grunewald station in Berlin during a visit to Germany. 

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