 It was murdered by the Nazis during World War II. An official state ceremony will immediately begin right after the siren at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, where the President, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Knesset Speaker, Supreme Court President, and several Holocaust survivors will lay wreaths. This year's theme focuses on Jewish resistance, as this year marks 80 years since the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In studio with me is Dr. Carl Janker, Senior Researcher at the Center for Study of Contemporary European Jewelry Pardon at Tel Aviv University. Thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. In a moment, the siren to murmur the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust will ring, but this year the theme is Jewish resistance. Tell us about that decision. Well, the decision in the report was to focus more on attacks against the Haradim as the main victims of physical attacks in the West, and to come up with new solutions, to promote new solutions for getting these attacks, the number of these attacks down. And that siren will be ringing in 30 seconds time. Quite an incredible moment for the Jewish state to all stand together as one car stopping in the middle of the street. It's really quite a fascinating thing to see. It's one of the more emotional moments I remember the first time I experienced it, when everything comes to a standstill to honor the victims and the heroes that fought in the Holocaust. And that siren will be beginning in just five seconds time. We will take a moment. And that was the entire country of Israel coming to a halt for two minutes for the siren that marks the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. With me in studio still is Carl Yonker, senior researcher at the Center for Study of Contemporary European Jewelry at Tel Aviv University. Those were quite incredible images we just saw at Tel Aviv, the entire country coming to a standstill, the highway car stopping in the middle of the street to take a moment to pause to remember the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, a very powerful moment. I want to turn our attention to a special report that you were involved in. It's a report by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League released yesterday just on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. And the findings are quite concerning because there's a major increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the United States and in Europe in 2002 compared to the previous year, pardon, largely targeting Jews that are visibly Jewish. So we're talking about the ultra-Orthodox community. What are the main reasons for this uptick? So there's a perception that ultra-Orthodox Jews are perceived as weak and are perceived as vulnerable, that they won't fight back when they're attacked. But they're also easy to identify. And what we found in our field research and in our research that a lot of these attacks happen are not pre-planned, are not pre-meditated. It's someone who decides at that moment they identify someone as Jewish and they decide to attack whether that's spitting, knocking off someone's kippah, pushing the violence ranges. But they're perceived as a legitimate target that won't fight back unlike other groups of people. And those are live images we're seeing from Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Museum of the Ceremony taking place to mark Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day. I want to ask you about this report. What sort of educational campaigns can lead to a reduction in the number of anti-Semitic attacks and the violence against Jews? So what we found is that there's a lot of failure in education in Holocaust education or in educational programs. What we're more after right now is looking at ways that we can repair and investigate ways that we can improve on education. But what we're really after is looking at policing, that we know where these attacks are occurring in certain areas of certain cities and to increase police presence, to increase prosecutions, to make sure that even what's perceived as a small crime of maybe spitting is prosecuted to the full extent of the law so that perpetrators understand that this is unacceptable. Right, and those are images of Israeli President Isaac Herzog laying the reef. I want to ask you turning back to education of the Holocaust to younger generations. Unfortunately, Holocaust survivors are unfortunately dying. They're getting older. We're now 80 years since the end of World War II. What about Holocaust education for young generations who are now so addicted to their smartphones? We have our own phones right here in studio. Their attention span is much shorter. What sort of education programs are there specifically for the younger generation? As far as I'm aware, there's lots of efforts, you know, Yad Vashem has an excellent educational program that they've developed over the course of years. We also saw the Anne Frank Diaries down for two. The Anne Frank Diaries. Did you take talk to Instagram? Exactly. But the question is at the end of the day are these effective? What's the reach? What's the impact? There's no doubt that preserving the memory of the victims of the survivors is key and important, but we need to figure out how this makes an impact and to make it relevant to today's students. So that also includes maybe broadening the subject area to talking about threats to democracy, threats to human rights. And again, as we point out in the report, racism is racism. And so when we talk about fighting manifestations of anti-Jewish racism, we also need to talk about fighting manifestations of racism elsewhere. And so this education, I think, comes in a holistic approach. Right. And speaking of that report, you noted that Russia in the past year has had an alarming amount of anti-Semitic statements by those close to Putin's regime, along with continuous cynical use of the memory of the Holocaust on part of Putin's government. These incidents raise fear that Russian Jews could also become a scapegoat for the regime's military failure, correct? Correct. And we saw this even early on in the Ukraine War, the chief rabbi or the rabbi, the Chabad rabbi, was warning that things could get bad for Russian Jews if the war were to go badly or if things were to develop badly, that they're a ready scapegoat. And so you've seen, there's been somewhat of an exodus, there's keeping heads down. Right. And the report, as we mentioned, also marks a very big uptick in anti-Semitic incidents, both in the United States and in Europe. And happening just this week in Barcelona on the Grand Lemonade de CienaGog was vandalized just this Sunday evening with graffiti, anti-Semitic graffiti that read free Palestine from the river to the sea, a common phrase heard at pro-Palestinian rallies and demonstrations. The city also decided to sever ties with its twin city, Tel Aviv, you know, over the Jewish state's policies towards the Palestinians. How concerning is this for the Jewish community in Spain and Barcelona specifically? I mean, these, unfortunately, these events happen. If you look at the report from the last year and in previous years, you see these incidents of vandalism, whether it's drawing a swastika on a synagogue, desecrating cemeteries, things like that. Unfortunately, these are events that keep happening. You know, it's something to be concerned about, but the community needs to be vigilant, police need to be vigilant, and they need to investigate again to find these perpetrators. You mentioned earlier that in the report, you also mentioned racism and anti-Semitic, not anti-Semitic, but more racist remarks also here in Israel. Right. To walk us through that decision. So again, we believe that racism is racism, and we need to call it out wherever we see it, not just against, when it's expressed against Jews, but against any minorities or anyone. And we've had in the past year, a few months, we've had members of Knesset play the sounds of, you know, of animals on the Knesset floor during a Facebook Live doing it to Arab Knesset members. That's, it's a racist, it's a racist expression, and it needs to be condemned. Call Yonker, senior researcher at the Center for Study of Contemporary European Jewelry at Tel Aviv University. Thank you very much.