Tagged Holocaust survivors

Mario Cuomo, seated, was New York's governor when he waa a featured speaker at the 57th General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations held in New Orleans, November 1988. Showing their appreciation of the governor's comments are CJF President Mandell Berman, right, and Daniel Shapiro of New York. (Robert A. Cumins)

(JTA) — Mario Cuomo, a three-term New York governor, was the rare politician who appealed to the Jewish tent’s opposite poles. A strident liberal with a nuanced understanding of the sense of vulnerability among the deeply religious in a secular society, Cuomo died of heart failure on Thursday just… Read more »

Emily Kessler strums the mandolin in her Upper West side apartment. (Raffi Wineburg/JTA)

For Emily Kessler, a Holocaust survivor, the prospect of performing at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall is less worrying than figuring out what to wear for the occasion. “I came to the conclusion,” she said, in an interview at her apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, “that what is… Read more »

Major League Baseball's official historian, John Thorn, pictured holding a royal decree knighting his great-grandfather, says the past enhances the present in sports as well as family matters. (Hillel Kuttler).

CATSKILL, N.Y. (JTA) – The past escorts John Thorn home from the moment he greets a visitor at a 139-year-old railroad station, crosses the Rip Van Winkle Bridge and arrives at his residence, a county historical landmark. Clad in a facsimile jacket of the defunct Negro Leagues’ Kansas City… Read more »

Dov Jakobovitz, 85, lives in an old-age home in a poor neighborhood of Tel Aviv. He survived Auschwitz and fought in two Israeli wars, but now he doesn't have enough money for food. (Ben Sales)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Breakfast costs Dov Jakobovitz $2. Lunch costs him $2.25. Both are served in the public old-age home in south Tel Aviv where he lives. But the food is not to his liking. Jakobovitz longs for the dishes he ate as a child in Transylvania —… Read more »

Sen. Frank Lautenberg attending a Holocaust memorial ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, May 1, 2008. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In 1982, Frank Lautenberg was running for New Jersey’s U.S. Senate spot at a time when  Democrats in the state were down on their political fortunes. The Jewish community knew and liked Lautenberg, a data processing magnate who died Monday at 89 after serving more than… Read more »

German officials laying a wreath at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as Claims Conference officials look on, May 2103.

NEW YORK (JTA) – The German government agreed to significantly expand its funding of home care for infirm Holocaust survivors and relax eligibility criteria for restitution programs to include Jews who spent time in so-called open ghettos. The agreement, reached after negotiations in Israel with the Claims Conference, will… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Now that it’s clear that the top leaders of the Claims Conference were involved in investigating an anonymous accusation of restitution fraud in 2001, the question is who bears the responsibility for failing to detect that a broad fraud scheme was underway. The person at the… Read more »

President Barack Obama and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speaking at a news conference in Warsaw, Poland, May 2011. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Poland is a stalwart American ally in Europe, a bulwark against an increasingly belligerent Russia and, with the recent opening of a major new Warsaw museum, is enjoying a flush of accolades for its belated embrace of its Jewish roots. But there’s a thorn in the… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Who knew what, and when? Those are the questions critics are asking following the disclosure that the Claims Conference received an anonymous letter in 2001 identifying several fraudulent Holocaust-era restitution claims — nearly a decade before the organization halted a massive fraud scheme. By 2009,… Read more »

Phyllis Fields, second from right, during a 1989 family trip to Hawaii. (Courtesy Fields family)

The Seeking Kin column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Earlier this month, a “Seeking Kin” column concluded with Rozanne Dittersdorf of New York expressing hope that Phyllis Garfunkel, a childhood friend with whom she lost contact in the late 1940s, “found happiness over… Read more »

BERLIN (JTA) — I was 23 when I first met my cousin Gilbert Michlin. He was sitting at a brasserie near his office in Paris wearing a dark suit with a folded handkerchief poking out of the breast pocket. His short, dark hair was perfectly combed. He said, in… Read more »

Shoshana Golan, left, a Holocaust survivor who changed her name from Rozia Beiman, reuniting in New York with Wiadyslawa Dudziak, a Pole who passed her off as a family member during the Holocaust, November 2012. (Chavie Lieber)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Even though 67 years had passed since they last saw each other, Wladyslawa Dudziak and Rozia Beiman reunited as if they hadn’t missed a moment. Dudziak, 85, was flown to New York last week from Poland to meet with Beiman, whom she had saved from… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – We could have been in Tehran. Men in dark suits and earpieces stood outside the doors of the hotel, keeping watch for protesters and anybody else who didn’t belong. Inside, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepared to meet a group of university students. Except this was… Read more »

Holocaust survivor Larisa Rakovskaya in her Odessa apartment, Sept. 14, 2012. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) — In her dilapidated apartment, Larisa Rakovskaya examines a stack of unpaid heating bills. Sick and alone, the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor and widow is preparing for another encounter with the cold, her “worst and only fear.” Rakovskaya says her hope of staying warm this winter lies… Read more »

Marika Weinberger, a Holocaust survivor and former president of the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants. (Henry Benjamin)

SYDNEY (JTA) — In a court ruling that is bringing new attention to Australia’s failure to prosecute alleged Nazi-era war criminals, the government will not surrender to Hungary the man believed to be the country’s last World War II war crimes suspect. The nation’s High Court ruled Wednesday that… Read more »

Ron Ben-Israel, a former dancer, has gone on to become the host of Food Network's "Sweet Genius." (Food Network)

TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) — As the minutes on the clock tick away, the chefs run about their kitchens furiously trying to complete their Taj Mahal-themed desserts. “What have I got for you now?” booms the thickly accented master pastry chef Ron Ben-Israel as he overlooks the chefs’ workstations. “Another… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE was the first great national tragedy in Jewish history. During the subsequent exile, four fast days commemorating the calamitous event were added to the Jewish calendar: the 10th day of the Hebrew month of… Read more »

Sharon Azrieli-Perez, a Candian-born opera singer, performs "Turandot" with the New Israel Opera in 2008. (sharonazrieli.com)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Sharon Azrieli-Perez told her father — David Azrieli, one of Israel’s biggest real estate moguls — that she wanted to be an opera singer, he told her he’d pay for voice lessons only if she got into Juilliard. That was all the motivation she… Read more »

(JTA) — Tributes and statements of profound respect and admiration are pouring in for Elan Steinberg, former executive director of the World Jewish Congress, who died April 6 of complications from lymphatic cancer. He was 59. “Elan’s premature death will leave a huge void in the Jewish world,” said… Read more »

Paulina Goldberg (left) and Raisa Moroz, Holocaust case manager at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, review paperwork at Goldberg’s Council House apartment.

Raisa Moroz, Holocaust case manager/program manager at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, has more than 80 clients on her caseload. But she wants more. “I want people to know this program is available,” says Moroz, who estimates that there are 120 or more Holocaust survivors in Southern Arizona. Every… Read more »