Chris Tanz passed away at her home on Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025. Chris was a Holocaust survivor and a past board member of Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center. Chris Tanz was born Krystyna Maria Szwienczicka on Sept. 27, 1944, in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents, Henryk and Regina, were… Read more »
Robert G. Varady’s father, László Weisz (“Laci,” pronounced “Lutzee,” to family and friends), cultivated a reputation as a raconteur. Varady grew up on Laci’s stories of business prowess in pre-war Budapest and survival during World War II – all of which Laci attributed to his quick wit, connections, and… Read more »
Jaivet Ealom is now a political science student at the University of Toronto. (Cole Burston)
This story originally appeared on Alma. Jaivet Ealom is the only known person to have ever escaped the notoriously brutal Australian-run refugee detention center on Manus Island. As a Rohingyan refugee fleeing Myanmar’s campaign of genocide, Jaivet found himself imprisoned on the remote island near Papua New Guinea for three… Read more »
Manya Tepelboym, 91, died April 6, 2020. Mrs. Tepelboym, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Proskurov, Ukraine, on Dec. 31, 1928. She was 12 years old when World War II started. After the war, she went on to become an accountant for the City of Starokonstantinov, where she met… Read more »
Patricia Brish, 81, of Marquette, Michigan, and Sun City West, Arizona, died Feb. 20, 2020, in Tucson. Mrs. Brish was born in Warsaw, Poland, to Rachela and Hermann Kühl on Jan. 16, 1939. As a Jewish toddler during the Holocaust, she survived because her mother bought papers claiming they… Read more »
Agnes Keleti, in her mid-90s, performs a split in front of young Hungarian gymnasts in Budapest, Jan. 16, 2016. (Peter Kohalmi/AFP/Getty Images)
BUDAPEST (JTA) — When journalists ask Agnes Keleti about her health, she gently smiles and slowly extends her right hand in apparent gratitude for the question. Keleti yanks anyone who is foolish enough to grasp her hand with enough force to throw them off their balance. Then she replies:… Read more »
"Ask Dr. Ruth" chronicles the life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became America's most famous sex therapist. (Austin Hargrave)
(JTA) — Judging by all the media attention, the world loves short Jewish women named Ruth. One of them, Ruth Westheimer — better known as the renowned sex therapist Dr. Ruth — is on the phone to talk about her life and a new documentary about it. But first… Read more »
Mikhl Baran with some Kinder Ring campers. (Courtesy of Sharon Strongin/Camp Kinder Ring)
Editor’s note: JTA published this article in February 2018. Marc Rauch, director of Camp Kinder Ring, assures the Arizona Jewish Post that Mikhl Baran, now 96, taught at the camp “throughout the summer of 2018 and plans to return in 2019. He is truly an icon at Kinder Ring,… Read more »
Noah Klieger discussed his life in a 2018 video for 70 Faces Media, JTA's parent company. (70 Faces Media)
(JTA) — Noah Klieger, who survived Auschwitz by pretending to be a boxer and went on to a storied career in journalism, died Thursday in Israel. He was 92. As a prisoner in Auschwitz, Klieger was selected for the gas chamber but managed to talk himself out of the… Read more »
Mordechai Schachter at his home in Teaneck, N.J. (Josefin Dolsten)
TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) — Mordechai Schachter didn’t know he would soon be a soldier when he traveled from his native Romania to prestate Israel in 1948. He was a 17-year-old with a passion for Zionism, leaving behind a country that was becoming increasingly anti-Semitic a few short years after at… Read more »
Daniel Knoll, on the left side of the podium with white kippah and no tallit, at a vigil for his mother at the Tournelles Synagogue in Paris, March 28, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
PARIS (JTA) – French Jews mourning a Holocaust survivor murdered in her Paris apartment welcomed the presence of France’s interior minister, Gérard Collomb, at a vigil in her memory. “We appreciate authorities’ swift action for justice and continued support,” Joel Mergui, the president of the Consistoire Jewish group, said… Read more »
Jews participating in a memorial march in Paris for Mireille Knoll, March 28, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
(JTA) — Last April, Traore Kobili threw his Jewish neighbor to her death from her third-story home in Paris while calling her a demon and shouting about Allah. French authorities waited 170 days before they declared the killing of Sarah Halimi an anti-Semitic hate crime — and that was… Read more »
Pawel Lichter, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Tucson, will present “A Polish Jew’s Story of Survival” at a community event sponsored by the Northwest Division of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona on Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 6 p.m. at the Northwest office, 190 W. Magee Road, Suite… Read more »
Edith Eger, Ph.D.
Forgiveness is the ultimate spiritual freedom, says Edith Eger, Ph.D.: “It takes forgiveness to heal.” One of the last remaining Holocaust survivors, Eger, a psychologist, will be the guest speaker at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Women’s Philanthropy Connections 25th Anniversary brunch, “The Power to Heal,” on Feb.… Read more »
Leslie Schwartz Holocaust survivor Leslie Schwartz will speak about his experiences as a teenager in Auschwitz, Dachau and Mühldorf and show a film titled “The Mühldorf Death Train” on Wednesday, April 5 at 6 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The event is sponsored by the German studies department at… Read more »
Joe Feingold and Brianna Perez in the Oscar-nominated short documentary ‘Joe’s Violin.’
Filmmaker Kahane Cooperman hasn’t written an Oscars acceptance speech yet, but she likely will before the Academy Awards ceremony on Feb. 28. Not to jinx things or appear overconfident, Cooperman told JTA in a telephone interview, but “on the chance it happens, for fear of leaving someone out.” Her… Read more »
Palestinian man seen in front of a fire raging at Gaza's main power plant following an overnight Israeli airstrike, south of Gaza City, July 29, 2014. (Emad Nassar/Flash90) RAMLE, Israel (JTA) — In her living room in the Israeli town of Ramle, Sarah says she wants a peaceful life. At 79, she deserves one. A Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, Sarah was sent to a Nazi concentration camp in Serbia as a child, arriving in Israel at age 17.… Read more »
Selma Neuhauser Selma Neuhauser, age 85, died Feb. 21, 2012. Mrs. Neuhauser (nee Fussgteig) was born in Vienna, Austria. She was placed on a Kindertransport to Sweden at age 11 and moved to the United States at age 22. Both of her parents died in Auschwitz. A resident of Tucson since… Read more »
