Tagged Holocaust

Jackie Tohn tells us all about that seder scene in ‘GLOW’

Jackie Tohn recalls her family's Holocaust past in an extraordinary scene on her Netflix show. (Sela Shiloni)

This article originally appeared on Alma. In the sixth episode of the newly released third season of “GLOW,” there’s an unconventional seder in the Nevada desert. It’s led by Melrose — played by Jackie Tohn — the Jewish party girl who talks the group through the 10 plagues, the… Read more »

Life before war focus of community Yom HaShoah commemoration

Holocaust survivor Walter Feiger, right, lights a candle with his partner, Nancy Alexander, and Rabbi Thomas Louchheim of Congregation Or Chadash.

The community-wide 2019 Yom HaShoah commemoration on Sunday, May 5 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center focused on highlighting Jewish life and culture before the Holocaust. Rather than rehearse the political miscalculations and complicity of European nations or the mechanics of Nazi genocidal violence, says Bryan Davis, executive director… Read more »

Local film screening reminds us of cost to survivors of bearing witness

(L-R): Pawel Lichter, Walter Feiger, Sidney Finkel, and Wolfgang Hellpap pose with their ‘World War II Holocaust Survivor’ caps at the Holocaust History Center in Tucson. (Courtesy Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona)

In an interview published Aug. 27, 2012, five years before his death in 2017 at the age of 87, Elie Wiesel spoke of devoting his life to the principle and the ideal of memory and remembrance. The article was titled “Elie Wiesel on His Fear of Being the Last… Read more »

Nelly Ben-Or risked all to play the piano. It helped her survive the Holocaust.

Nelly Ben-Or sits by one of her two pianos in her London home, Dec. 13, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

LONDON (JTA) — Like countless world-class pianists, Nelly Ben-Or began playing piano at the age of 5 and never stopped. That discipline helped Ben-Or, 86, became an international concert pianist and the person most widely recognized for adapting the Alexander technique for posture and movement improvement for musicians. But… Read more »

ID system for asylum seekers in Mexico recalls Holocaust tattoos

Central American migrants show the numbers to ask the US for political marked in their arms at the Migrant's House (Casa del Migrante) in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on November 15, 2018, in El Paso, Texas. (Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ / AFP) (Photo credit should read HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Asylum-seeking migrants waiting in Mexico to gain entrance to the United States are having tracking numbers written on their arms in permanent marker, recalling the Holocaust when concentration camp inmates were tattooed with numbers. Accounts vary on when and who started the numbers-tracking practice in Mexico, but… Read more »

Despite tensions over the Holocaust, Israeli tourism in Poland is booming

Yossi Blak, left, and fellow travelers from Israel visit Lublin's Hotel Ilan, Sept. 5, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Shopping was the last thing on Sarah Hirsch’s mind this summer when she boarded a flight from Tel Aviv to this capital city. It started out as a Holocaust pilgrimage. Hirsch, 67, flew to Warsaw in August with her husband, Naftali, and a friend to see… Read more »

Danish Jews recall community’s rescue from the Nazis 75 years ago

A Torah scroll that fleeing Jews hid 75 years ago at a church Is returned to the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 11, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (JTA) — Danish Jews celebrated their community’s rescue 75 years ago in a ceremony Thursday at the country’s main synagogue, the packed sanctuary filled with dozens of survivors and luminaries. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was among those on hand at the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen, joining Crown… Read more »

A Chicago teacher showed her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator. Now Lithuania is paying attention.

Silvia Foti visits a friend in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 2013. (Ina Budryte)

(JTA) — Barring unexpected delays, Silvia Foti is months away from fulfilling an old promise that’s become her life’s work: to write a biography of her late grandfather, who is a national hero in his native Lithuania. Foti, a 60-year-old high school teacher from Chicago, made the pledge to… Read more »

‘Never Again’ article misrepresents gun control movement

I feel uncomfortable writing this letter, but I feel that a response is needed to the recent article written by Dov Marhoffer, “‘Never Again’ belongs to the Holocaust, not the gun control movement,” (AJP 9/14/18).  I cannot begin to imagine the horrors that he must have experienced as a… Read more »

How a rabbi got caught up in a Belgian spy scandal

(JTA) — Moshe Aryeh Friedman may be mild-mannered, but the Antwerp rabbi certainly has a knack for publicity. An anti-Zionist activist from New York, Friedman, 47, has been accused — falsely, he has said — of denying the Holocaust during a 2006 conference organized by then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… Read more »

‘Never again’ belongs to the Holocaust, not the gun control movement

I am a Holocaust concentration camp survivor. I am one of a rapidly dwindling number of eyewitnesses to the Nazi Holocaust, the most systematic genocide of all time. I regularly speak at high schools, universities and community events, sharing my eyewitness account with newer generations of Americans who have no… Read more »

Nazi camp guard Jakiw Palij deported from U.S. to Germany

The view down an alley off the street where Nazi camp guard Jakiw Palij lived in Queens, N.Y., Dec. 4, 2017. (Celeste Sloman for the Washington Post)

(JTA) — A former guard at a Nazi concentration camp was deported to Germany overnight from the United States, where he had lived for decades. Jakiw Palij, 95, had lived in Queens, New York. He served as a guard at the Trawniki concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, during World… Read more »

Ghost writer revisits her own amazing Holocaust survival story in Amsterdam

During World War II, Miriam Dubi-Gazan registered falsely as the daughter of a Nazi collaborator without his knowledge. (Courtesy of Dubi-Gazan)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — As a seasoned ghost writer who specializes in biographies, Miriam Dubi-Gazan says there is no such thing as a boring life story. Her attention to detail, creativity and editing skills yield satisfying results even for clients whose resumes are not exactly the stuff of spy novels… Read more »

This bike saved Jews from Nazis

The Giro d’Italia bike race is moving from Israel to Italy but this story lives on — about the heroic sports hero Gino Bartali, the Tour de France and Giro champ who saved 800 Jews from the Holocaust by teaming up with a convent of singing nuns and document-forging… Read more »

An exhibit shows ordinary Americans knew a lot about the Holocaust as it was happening

The "Americans and the Holocaust" exhibition is on display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Holocaust historians ask what Americans knew at the time, the focus often is on the politicians and lawmakers whose votes and initiatives may have mitigated the Nazi genocide against the Jews. An exhibit opening this month at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here asks the… Read more »