Meet Irena Wachendorff.
Heeb Magazine has her story:
Up until now, Wachendorff has made a decent career of being an Alibijude, an alibi Jew. The job is easy: If someone is accused of anti-Semitism, alibi Jews are brought in as defending witnesses. It’s the old “some of my best friends are pantomimes” routine, with an added speaking part for friends. In a country like Germany, where the Jewish community is only sporadically visible, being an Alibijude can be a worthwhile endeavor.
If all anyone ever talks about is how Israel is the root of all global evil, people might start to ask questions. This is when the accused is able to point to the the supportive alibi Jew, who in turn is able to point to his or her family history or just basic Jewishness and say something like: “What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is what the Nazis did to my parents.”
Wachendorff has a fine pedigree:
As an alibi Jew, Irena Wachendorff is the whole package (except for one simple fact.) Her mother was in Auschwitz—“I grew up with the number on her arm”—her father a tzadik who escaped to England. Irena herself was in the IDF during the Lebanon War. Today she’s a “German-Jewish poet” who lives in Israel six months every year to support an Arab-Jewish kindergarten. The rest of the year, she’s in Germany to act as the hazzan of her congregation and to send violins to Gaza.
And she has been very active indeed, politically:
Newspapers have written about her work as an activist and she’s been interviewed on local TV. She frequently talks to schoolchildren about her parents’ fate. Wachendorff is also quite active in discussions on the Facebook page of leading politician Ruprecht Polenz, chairman of the foreign council of the German parliament, who has come under attack for perceived “anti-Israel” feelings. Polenz often points to Wachendorff when he needs support, which she will gladly supply:
“I think I should only take seriously someone who 1) was in the IDF, 2) has lived in Israel for at least two years and 3) is even Jewish. Hello…anybody here???”
However, German investigative journalist Jennifer Nathalie Pyka has done some digging, and this is what she found:
Upon being asked, Wachendorff’s mother says she was never in Auschwitz—“my husband was though.” Probably not as an inmate: He wasn’t an Orthodox Jew but a Protestant officer of the Wehrmacht. A speaker of the Israeli army can find no record of an Irena Wachendorff having ever been in the IDF. During the Lebanon war, Irena Wachendorff acted in various productions in local theaters in the Rhine region. The kindergarten she supports does exist, but there is no evidence of her ever having visited it. And finally, she isn’t a member of her alleged congregation.
And now this liar has vanished into thin air:
After the initial article, Wachendorff wrote on Facebook that she had deliberately spread false information about herself as to protect her family and her congregation. When the Jerusalem Post called her some days later, she said that she doesn’t really remember what camp her mother was in exactly and that she isn’t too sure whether that’s a number on her arm or something else. After that, she deleted her Facebook profile and hasn’t been heard from since.
Ah well. There will be another one along in a minute. File under: Schivone.
UPDATE
A little more on the politician, Polentz, from the Jerusalem Post:
Ruprecht Polenz, a senior deputy in the Bundestag, vehemently defends the anti- Israel activist’s work.
Polenz, the head of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, welcomed a group of Iranian lawmakers to Berlin last year. He has served as Wachendorff’s main advocate.
In an email to the Post, he declined to provide specific comments on the string of alleged lies from Wachendorff.
In addition to being under fire for defending Wachendorff, critics accuse the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) deputy of allowing his Facebook site to be turned into a magnet for jihadists, raging anti-Semites, haters of Israel and extremist leftists. In a number of entries examined by the Post, which appeared on Polenz’s Facebook, writers posted “that rich, industrial Jews planned the genocide on the Jewish people in order to create Israel.”
In another entry, Darwisch Salman Khorassani wrote that if “USREAL [Israel and the US] attack, I will register as a suicide bomber. Not from Islamic motives but from pure humanistic motives.”
When asked about hate and anti-Semitism on his Facebook page, Polenz wrote the Post, “When in doubt, decide in favor of freedom of opinion – every person is responsible for his opinion.”
