One of the marchers that interrupted a Holocaust Remembrance event in Russellville, Arkansas this week. Image by Facebook/Jasmin Joy Elma Lyon

By Ari Feldman May 9, 2019

A Holocaust Remembrance Day event in a small Arkansas city was interrupted by a group of white supremacists, a local news station reported.

About 8-12 men walked by the Holocaust Remembrance event carrying swastika flags, a white cross and posters with anti-Semitic slogans.

“It made me feel terrible, it made me feel terrible for my friends. They were talking to us like we were pieces of nothing,” said Joyce Griffis, who helped organize the Holocaust memorial event.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The appearance of the white supremacist group comes as Arkansas Technical University, located in Russellville, is being criticized for creating a scholarship in honor of a deceased professor who many have claimed taught Holocaust-denying books in his class.

A member of the group, called Shieldwall, told a reporter that their appearance at the Holocaust Remembrance event was in support of the legacy of that professor, Michael Link.

“The rally that we held was a protest against the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), and Dr. Sarah Stein’s attempts to intimidate and blackmail Arkansas Tech University into removing Dr. Michael Link’s name from the scholarship he endowed,” said Billy Roper, a network coordinator for Shieldwall.

Link was a professor of history at ATU for 51 years, until his death in 2016. He left $190,000 in his will for a scholarship to the school in his and his mother’s name.

But in a letter sent to the school last week, the ADL alleges that Link consistently gave students books that questioned the “myth” of the Holocaust, and participated in online forums where he denied the historical reality of the Holocaust. The university has said that it has no evidence that Link was a Holocaust denier, but appears to have elided evidence that others had raised concerns about Link’s beliefs about the Holocaust more than ten years ago.

People present at the event this week posted pictures of the white supremacists, many of whom wore camouflage-print clothing and masks and hats that obscured their faces.

Police said that no one was injured during the event.

“We will accept you if you accept us,” Griffis, the Holocaust memorial event planner, told a reporter. “We want you to have your life, but we want our life also, and we want the truth to be known about history.”

Russellville is something of a hot spot for white supremacists. In February, authorities arrested 54 members of a white supremacist gang in and around Russellville. The group, called the New Aryan Empire, has been fingered for murders, violent assaults, kidnappings and meth distribution in the area.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount