Security guards told influencer Lizzy Savetsky that she could not enter the the UN Holocaust Remembrance Day event in New York wearing her blazer, which had an Israeli flag displayed prominently on its back.
She was eventually allowed into the General Assembly Hall — only after checking her jacket.
“I do find it interesting that I was asked to check my Judaism at the door of an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event. Kind of ironic, no?” said Savetsky in an Instagram post about the incident.
Julian Voloj, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, was blocked from attending the the event in after taking a photograph of Savetsky’s confrontation with security.
Voloj said a security guard “stormed right to me, moved me aside, took my phone, used my face ID to access my photos and made me delete the pictures.”
From there, Voloj said the security guard took his pass for the event and escorted him off the premises.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was created by the UN in 2005. Voloj said attending the annual event had become a “meaningful” tradition to honor the legacy of his grandmother, who survived a Nazi concentration camp in Transnistria as a teenager.
“Being a grandson of Holocaust survivors and then being so badly treated at the UN and kicked out for standing up for someone who, politically, I might not even agree to, I mean, I’m just beyond words,” said Voloj.
Savetsky, a pro-Israel influencer who left the cast of “Real Housewives of New York” in 2022, has long posted pro-Israel and politically conservative content on her Instagram page, which has 480,000 followers.
She posted: “You know, the United Nations knows no bounds when it comes to antisemitism.”
“In recent years, we have heard many warnings from this podium about the rise in anti-Semitism, about dangerous lies, about how hatred begins with language,” said Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, at the Holocaust remembrance event on Jan. 27. “Those warnings are right, but they ring hollow when the lies that fuel anti-Semitism are allowed to spread, including here in this building, in the UN.”
According to the UN’s New York visitors services website, guests are prohibited from public displays, including “clothing, banners, placards or other written or visual means” that disrupt the “normal functioning of the organization’s programmatic activities.”
After attending the ceremony nearly every year since 2007, Voloj said he had never seen someone targeted for wearing clothing that featured a national flag.
Savetsky said in an Instagram post that a UN staffer had told her a Palestinian flag would not get the same treatment.
Savetsky posed with an Israeli flag in the UN General Assembly hall that she said had been “smuggled in” by another attendee.
Savetsky reported that the actual International Holocaust Remembrance Day event was a “beautiful event.”
