20 Facts About Hajo Meyer

Hajo Meyer was born on 12 August 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany, to Therese and Gustav Hajo Meyer, a notary who had fought in the First World War.

Hajo Meyer went into hiding in 1943, but was arrested after a year and spent ten months in Auschwitz.

Hajo Meyer broke the rule at a scientific conference in Amsterdam after the war, when he happened to be speaking on a similar topic to that discussed by Hermann Haken.

Hajo Meyer's parents had originally been deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, and after his father succumbed to an illness on 15 May 1944, it was decided that there was no more reason to allow his widow Therese to stay on, and that she should be deported to Auschwitz.

Hajo Meyer had hidden a cyanide capsule in a piece of bread and chose suicide, knowing that the chances of survival there were non-existent.

Hajo Meyer eventually became director of the Phillips Physics Laboratory.

Hajo Meyer was a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, founded in 2008 and the Dutch political party GroenLinks.

Hajo Meyer wrote a book titled Het einde van het Jodendom in 2003,.

Hajo Meyer encourages non-Jews to shed their guilt about the Holocaust and feel free to criticize Jews who are clearly committing crimes.

Hajo Meyer repeatedly argued that there are parallels between the Nazi treatment of Jews leading to the Holocaust, and Israel's dehumanization of Palestinians.

At one talk, organized and hosted by the leader of the UK's Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2010, Hajo Meyer was later reported to have repeatedly likened Israel's actions against the people of the Gaza Strip to the mass killing of Jews in the Holocaust and likened the government of Israel to that of Nazi Germany.

Hajo Meyer argued there are different interpretations of Judaism, and that Jews ought to return to the principles of the Book of Leviticus and the rabbinical principles of figures like Hillel, and avoid the 'doomsday Judaism' he identifies in the Book of Joshua and the positions of Abraham Isaac Kook which have in his view underwritten Zionism.

Hajo Meyer claimed Zionism predates fascism, that Zionists and fascists had a history of cooperation, charging, among other things, that Israel wants to foment anti-Semitism in the world to encourage more Jews to migrate to Israel.

Hajo Meyer spoke in favor of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

Hajo Meyer was the first signatory of a statement by 250 Holocaust survivors and descendants of Holocaust survivors protesting the killings that were taking place during the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict.

Hajo Meyer developed a theory based on the work of Hans Keilson regarding "sequential traumatizing," according to which Jewish collective remembering in a ritual setting of numerous past traumatic events befalling the community.

Hajo Meyer argues that the current government of Israel has used this re-traumatization of Jews with regard to the Holocaust, in order to indoctrinate and inculcate loyalty to Israel against its enemies.

Hajo Meyer applied this to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that Israel dehumanizes Palestinians the same way that Nazi Germany dehumanized Jews.

Hajo Meyer expanded on this sense of an analogy in the following terms:.

On 23 August 2014, Hajo Meyer died in his sleep in Heiloo, Netherlands at the age of 90.