LONDON — Abe Foxman was a year old when the Nazis ordered his parents to report to the Jewish ghetto in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1941.

His nanny, a Catholic, told them to leave the child with her, expecting that they would be back several weeks later.

Foxman’s stay with her ended up lasting years, until his parents returned. He moved to America in 1950 at the age of 10 — but his early life experience has never left him.

“I am a survivor, an example of what good words can lead to,” Foxman, 80, said. “My nanny risked her life for four years protecting me and hiding me, giving me a false identity.”

Foxman, a former director of the Anti-Defamation League, is one of several high-profile survivors to join a new campaign, #ItStartedWithWords, reflecting on the origins of the Holocaust.

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The campaign is spearheaded by the New York City-based nonprofit Claims Conference, which works to secure compensation for survivors from the German government. It is supported by the United Nations and Holocaust museums around the world, and is being launched on the Jewish community’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday.

And the new drive for awareness comes as polls show an increase in anti-Semitism around the world, as well as a lack of awareness among adults under 40 about the Holocaust.

The Claims Conference polled 1,000 adults in what it said was the first 50-state survey of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Generation Z. It showed that nearly half the respondents could not name a single one of the concentration camps or ghettos established during World War II. More than half were unable to identify the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and 11 percent believed that Jews caused the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, the FBI reported that more than 60 percent of religion-based hate crimes were directed at Jews in 2019, and a poll released in March by the Anti-Defamation League and YouGov showed that 63 percent of Jews in America say they’ve either experienced or witnessed some form of anti-Semitism in the last five years.

“Around the world, it’s become more acceptable to hate, to demonize, dehumanize other people, and we are seeing it now with Asian Americans,” Greg Schneider, Claims Conference executive vice president, said.

“People don’t wake up one day to say I want to commit mass murder today, but it’s a process that over time people are dehumanized. That starts with words and ideas,” he added.

Research published last month by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, showed that hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent rose by nearly 150 percent in 2020.

In a video produced for Claims Conference, the former leader of Germany’s Jewish community recalled how at the age of 4, she was one day no longer allowed to play with other children across the street from her Munich home.

“The apartment manager came out and screamed at me, ‘Jewish children are not allowed to play with our children,’” Charlotte Knobloch, 88, said. “I didn’t even know what Jews were.”

The push for the campaign came from survivors, the youngest of whom are now in their late 70s and worried that the lessons of the Holocaust are now being forgotten.

“There is a politicization, there is a lack of truth, lies abate, there is no consensus on civility, no one listens to each other. All taboos have been broken on respect and tolerance,” Foxman said. “Sadly enough, 75 years after the Holocaust, this is a time to remind people what words can do.”

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WASHINGTON — The United States and Iraq said Wednesday they have agreed on the eventual withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq and that the two governments would hold talks to work out the timing of the move.

In a joint statement following a round of talks between U.S. and Iraqi officials, the two governments said the mission of U.S. forces was now focused on training Iraqi troops to fight ISIS. As a result, combat troops would no longer be necessary in the future, the statement said.

There are currently roughly 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq helping Iraq counter ISIS, according to the Pentagon, but it’s not clear how many forces could be considered combat troops.

“Based on the increasing capacity of the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces), the parties confirmed that the mission of U.S. and Coalition forces has now transitioned to one focused on training and advisory tasks, thereby allowing for the redeployment of any remaining combat forces from Iraq, with the timing to be established in upcoming technical talks,” said the joint statement.

“The transition of U.S. and other international forces away from combat operations to training, equipping, and assisting the ISF reflects the success of their strategic partnership and ensures support to the ISF’s continued efforts to ensure ISIS can never again threaten Iraq’s stability,” said the statement.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters no details had been worked out as to the possible timing of a combat troop exit, or even the timing of planned talks on the issue.

“There was no specific agreement of a date certain or a certain number of troops by a certain date,” Kirby said.

The United States has never intended to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely, he said.

“I think we all realized when we were invited in by the government of Iraq, that this mission was aligned against ISIS, and that there was no expectation that it was going to be a permanent, enduring mission or footprint,” Kirby said.

President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, and then sent forces back to the country in 2014 after ISIS militants seized large swathes of territory in Iraq.

The Pentagon says the threat posed by ISIS has been greatly diminished and that the group has been dramatically weakened from what it was, but that the militants still pose a danger to Iraq and the region.

Mosheh Gains contributed.

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Unusual blood clots should be listed as “very rare” side effects of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, Europe’s main drug regulator said Wednesday.

Emer Cooke, the executive director of the European Medicines Agency, said that the “benefits of the AstraZeneca overall outweigh the risks of side effects.”

The vaccine has “proved to be highly effective,” she said at a news briefing, adding that it prevented “severe disease and hospitalization and it is saving lives.”

However, Cooke added that after a “very in-depth analysis,” the regulator had “concluded that the reported cases of unusual blood clotting following vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine should be listed as possible side effects of the vaccine.”

Because of a very small number of blood clots in younger people reported in the U.K., the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, Britain’s vaccines advisory body, said Wednesday that it was recommending that those under the age of 30 should be offered an alternative Covid-19 vaccine to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, where one is available.

More than 20 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered in the U.K. so far, according to the separate Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

In a separate statement, the EMA said that blood clots should be “listed as very rare side effects of Vaxzevria,” the official name of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

“So far, most of the cases reported have occurred in women under 60 years of age within two weeks of vaccination,” the statement added. “Based on the currently available evidence, specific risk factors have not been confirmed.”

The announcement comes less than a month after the EMA said the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was “safe and effective” to use. That statement was prompted after a number of countries, including Germany, France and Italy, suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine over concerns about blood clots in some recipients.

Most European countries that had put the vaccine on hold resumed administering it after European regulators said it was safe. Danish officials, however, said last month that they would prolong their suspension of the vaccine while they continue evaluating a potential link with blood clots, according to The Associated Press.

In Britain, which has given out more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine than any other country, the medicines regulator also reported Wednesday that 79 people in the U.K. had suffered from rare blot clots after being vaccinated and 19 of those died.

June Raine, the MHRA’s chief executive, said the agency’s review had concluded that more work is needed to establish beyond all doubt that the vaccine has caused the side effects.

In any case, the rare suspected side effects have occurred in an “extremely” small number of people, she added.

Raine said based on the current evidence the benefits of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine against the disease and its associated risks hospitalization and death, continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of cases.

She said the risk of this type of rare blood clot is about 4 people in a million who receive the vaccine.

Meanwhile, Dr. Sabine Straus, the chair of the EMA’s Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee, said at Wednesday’s briefing that the currently available data “did not allow us to identify a definite cause for these complications.”

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She added that “no specific risk factors could be identified based on the current data” and therefore the committee “cannot recommend any specific measures to reduce the risk.”

“Most of the cases occurred in individuals below 60 years of age and in women,” she said. “But because of the different ways the vaccine is being used in different countries, the committee did not conclude that age and gender were factors.”

More research would be conducted, she said.

Cooke added the available data did not allow the EMA to draw any causal link with age groups, or whether male or female. “There is a lot more use in younger age groups in the U.K. than there is in the E.U. at the moment, and we will take this into account in our further evaluations,” she said.

Also on Wednesday, South Korea said it will temporarily suspend providing AstraZeneca’s vaccine to people under 60 amid the European review. It also approved the Johnson & Johnson shot in a bid to speed up its inoculation rollout.

Brazil is bearing the brunt of an alarming surge in Covid-19 cases, with fatalities reaching more than 4,000 in a single day on Tuesday and hospitals stretched to breaking point.

As the United States ploughs ahead with vaccinations and public debates continue on reopening the economy with possible ‘vaccine passports,’ Brazil’s plight is a reminder that much of the rest of the world is still in the grip of the pandemic.

“It’s a nuclear reactor that has set off a chain reaction and is out of control. It’s a biological Fukushima,” Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian doctor and professor at Duke University, told Reuters.

Brazil’s overall death toll of 337,000, according to Brazilian Health Ministry data, is surpassed only by the U.S.’s figure of 562,000, according to NBC News’ tally.

The country is battling a highly-contagious local variant amid meager social distancing efforts and a national shortage of hospital beds, according to health experts. Many lay blame with right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro who has repeatedly denied the benefit of wearing masks and questioned the efficacy of vaccines, contradicting global health advice.

Brazil has also been through four health ministers since the pandemic began, slowing planning efforts, with some Brazilians travelling to countries such as Uruguay to get vaccinated. Authorities in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, have emptied old graves to make room amid soaring death tolls.

Despite the recent surge, Brazilian officials are insistent the country can soon return to something resembling business as usual.

“We think that probably two, three months from now Brazil could be back to business,” Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said during an online event on Tuesday. Meanwhile, leading economists urged the government in an open letter to speed up vaccinations and prepare for emergency lockdowns, contradicting Bolsonaro’s assertions that such closures could impose too much financial hardship.

The surge in deaths across the globe serve as a grim reminder that despite successful vaccination roll-outs in the U.S., U.K. and other countries, the global pandemic can’t be suppressed while the virus still lingers and mutations evolve.

“No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone,” the World Health Organization said in a statement last week. “The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.”

Rowland Kao, a professor of veterinary epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, said that although vaccines and social restrictions were working, “we’re definitely not on top of this, speaking globally,” he said.

“The worst thing you can have is substantial numbers of vaccinated people at the same time as substantial numbers of unvaccinated people with a circulating disease,” he told NBC News. A scenario that increases the chances of transmission and the spread of mutated variants that are “vaccine-evading,” he said, while jeopardizing global travel and trade.

Kao said it would require a “balancing act” for countries to get moving again. “It’s going to be a game of can you keep it out long enough to develop boosters towards variants,” he added. “All it takes is one person to cross a border.”

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Elsewhere the pandemic continues to grow.

India reported a record 115,736 new cases on Wednesday, a 13-fold increase in just over two months with pressure growing on the government to expand its vaccination campaign.

As a second wave gathers momentum, the federal government has asked states to decide on local curbs to control the spread of the virus, but has so far refused to impose any national lockdown after the last one in 2020 devastated its economy.

“The pandemic isn’t over and there is no scope for complacency,” Health Minister Harsh Vardhan tweeted, urging people to get “vaccinated on your turn and follow Covid-appropriate behavior scrupulously!”

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea on Wednesday reported its highest single-day number of new cases in three months, amid a rise in infections in kindergartens, saunas, bars and churches, mostly in greater Seoul. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 668 new cases for Tuesday, the highest level since Jan. 8.

While in Japan, where the Olympics are due to begin in just over 100 days, the western region of Osaka on Wednesday canceled scheduled Olympic torch events and declared a state of medical emergency, as cases skyrocketed.

“It is almost certain that this mutant strain is highly contagious with a high transmission speed,” Osaka governor Hirofumi Yoshimura said in televised remarks. “The medical system is in a very tight situation.”

Arata Yamamoto contributed.

PARIS — Agnès Callamard is best known for her investigation into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and has made a career uncovering extrajudicial killings.

The French human rights expert’s focus on rights abuses is taking on new dimensions as she assumes leadership of Amnesty International and turns her attention to what she says is one of the world’s most pressing issues — vaccine equity to end the coronavirus pandemic, which has eroded freedoms globally.

Amnesty International released its annual report on Wednesday, arguing that governments have used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to clamp down on human rights, whether or not that was the original intent. The wide-ranging report took particular aim at governments in Myanmar and Russia, among others, but also critiqued the use of coronavirus-related police powers in places like Britain and the United States against protesters.

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The only way to end the virus — and the abuses that have accompanied it, primarily against the world’s most vulnerable — is to distribute vaccines globally and equitably, she told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“What we found is that the victims of Covid, whether it was in the U.K., in France, in the U.S., in India, in the Middle East, in Brazil, those victims were primarily among the most disenfranchised and vulnerable groups,” she said. “As a global community, as a national community, we failed the test that Covid-19 represented.”

Callamard rarely hesitates to call out the powerful. In 2019, as a U.N. special rapporteur, she concluded there was “credible evidence” that Khashoggi’s killing was state-sanctioned. She also investigated the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and concluded it was unlawful. Earlier this week, she said there was a real risk that Russia was subjecting opposition leader Alexei Navalny to “a slow death.”

She said she will no longer lead her own investigations, as she has done for years for the U.N. — but will continue to call out human rights violations as she sees them. And the pandemic exposed plenty. Ending it, she said, will expose even more, especially among wealthy and powerful nations which have purchased more vaccines than they need.

“Not only do we buy everything, but on top of it, we stop others from being able to produce it. In the name of what? In the name of profit and in the name of greed,” Callamard said, referring to the European Union and U.S. decision to block a proposal to relax intellectual property restrictions on patents related to coronavirus treatments and vaccines.

One of her proposals falls along the same lines as the Biden administration’s call this week for a minimum global corporate income tax. In a foreword to Amnesty’s report that she wrote before Monday’s announcement by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Callamard said the global taxation system had produced more losers than winners.

“Global taxation is a way of rebalancing equality,” she said. “It’s a way of ensuring that it is not always those who have the least who are requested to give the most.”

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s president has named Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the party leader to try to cobble together a governing majority.

Reuven Rivlin’s announcement in Jerusalem on Tuesday nudged forward the twin dramas of the country’s future and Netanyahu’s fate as his corruption trial resumed across town.

The charges facing Israel’s longest-serving premier posed an extraordinary choice for the country’s president over whether “morality” should be a factor in who should lead the government.

The March 23 election revolved around whether Netanyahu is fit to continue serving. His Likud party won the most seats, but no party won a governing majority of 61 seats in the Knesset. That handed to Rivlin the task of deciding who has the best chance of cobbling together a coalition.

Netanyahu denies all charges and says prosecutors are trying to undermine the voters intent and oust him from office.

The decision came as Netanyahu’s trial reopened on a day that might shed light on who, if anyone, can lead the splintered government after its fourth election in two years.

The March 23 vote revolved around whether Israel’s longest-serving prime minister remains fit to continue serving in the post. It produced no governing majority in the 120-seat Knesset, leaving it to Rivlin to pick a party leader most likely to form a coalition. The parliament was to be sworn in later Tuesday.

Netanyahu was not expected to appear in court Tuesday, but his increasingly fraught future ran through both arenas.

In politics, his Likud party won the most seats in the election, but came up short of a majority.

In court, where he faces fraud, breach of trust and bribery charges in three separate cases, the outlook was not flattering. A key witness on Monday cast Netanyahu as an image-obsessed leader who forced a prominent news site to help his family and smear his opponents.

Netanyahu denies all charges and in an nationally televised address accused prosecutors of persecuting him in an effort to drive him out of office.

“This is what a coup attempt looks like,” he said.

While a ruling could be months or even years away, the proceedings are expected to take place up to three days a week, an embarrassing and time-consuming distraction that is certain to amplify calls for Netanyahu to step aside.

A few miles away, Rivlin consulted with the various parties elected to parliament before he was to chose a candidate to form a new government. The talks risked plunging the country into an unprecedented fifth consecutive election.

Israeli media reported that Rivlin was considering another factor that alluded to Netanyahu’s legal difficulties. In a meeting with the Likud party, Rivlin said “there may be a moral component to choosing a prime minister,” but he did not know whether that factor was up to him or the Supreme Court.

With both Netanyahu and his main rival, Yair Lapid, failing to gain the support of a majority of lawmakers, Rivlin faces the difficult task of choosing the leader most likely to be able to form a governing coalition with 61 votes.

Late on Wednesday, Lapid called on the country’s anti-Netanyahu factions — a patchwork of parties with vast ideological differences — to put aside their differences and form a unity government. He said he had even offered Naftali Bennett, leader of a small right-wing party, a power-sharing rotation, with Bennett serving first as prime minister.

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“Anyone who saw Netanyahu’s reckless performance today understands he can’t carry on in his job,” Lapid said Tuesday.

Netanyahu spent part of Monday in court, where the evidentiary phase of his trial unfolded. The session focused on the most serious case against Netanyahu — in which he is accused of promoting regulations that delivered hundreds of millions of dollars of profits to the Bezeq telecom company in exchange for positive coverage on the firm’s popular news site, Walla.

Ilan Yeshua, Walla’s former chief editor, described a system in which Bezeq’s owners, Shaul and Iris Elovitch, repeatedly pressured him to publish favorable things about Netanyahu and smear the prime minister’s rivals.

The explanation he was given by the couple? “That’s what the prime minister wanted,” he said.

In his televised statement, Netanyahu accused prosecutors of conducting a “witch hunt” against him.

The intertwined political question hovered. Rivlin has until midnight Wednesday to choose a prime minister-designate who would be given up to six weeks to form a coalition. If he feels there is no clear choice, he also could send the issue straight to the Knesset, ordering lawmakers to choose a member as prime minister or force another election.

North Korea won’t participate in the Olympic Games in Tokyo this year because of coronavirus fears, the country’s sports ministry said Monday.

It is the first country to make the decision to skip the Games, due to begin on July 23. The decision was made at a March 25 meeting of the country’s Olympic committee to “protect the athletes from the global health crisis created by the Covid-19,” the statement posted on the Sports Ministry’s website.

North Korea has not reported any internal Covid-19 numbers and very little is known about the pandemic within the secretive and closed country. However, leader Kim Jong Un delivered an unusual, tearful apology to the North Korean people in October for failing them during the crisis.

This year’s Tokyo Games were originally scheduled to take place in 2020 but were pushed back due to the pandemic. Organizers have have banned international spectators. Yet Japan’s rising caseload and slow vaccination program have raised questions about whether the Games should be held at all.

There had been hopes that the Olympics would be an opportunity for North and South Korea, who are technically still at war with each other, to once again compete under the same flag as they did during the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Tuesday it had been “hoping that the Tokyo Olympics could serve as an opportunity to promote the peace on the Korean peninsula as well as inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation, but we find it a shame that we cannot because of the Covid-19 situation.”

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Covid-19 cases in Japan have been steadily rising, with between 1,000 and 2,000 cases a day throughout March.

Around 11,000 athletes and tens of thousands of coaches are expected to attend the Games, along with other officials and broadcasters. NBC Universal, the parent company of NBC News, holds the U.S. media rights to the upcoming Olympics.

Ties between the North and South, and between North Korea and the U.S., have been strained since a February 2019 summit between President Donald Trump and Kim collapsed over disputes surrounding sanctions. Kim has since threatened to enlarge his nuclear arsenal in protest of what he called U.S. hostility.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month slammed the North for “systematic and widespread abuses against its own people.” He also said that Washington has reached out to North Korea through several channels starting in mid-February, but it hadn’t received any response.

At the end of March North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, describing them early Friday as a new type of tactical guided weapon.

Stella Kim contributed.