Memorial candles in Prague for Vaclav Havel, who died this week. Jewish groups and leaders said the former Czech president was a symbol of freedom, Dec. 18, 2011. (David Short via Creative Commons) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Vaclav Havel was a friend of the Jews and of Israel, but prominent Jews who mourned his passing this week said the Czech leader’s greatest legacy was his universal message of freedom. “Vaclav Havel was one of the few islands of intellectual freedom in the sea… Read more »
(N.J. Jewish News) — Marlene Stevens says she gets goose bumps when she thinks that very soon she will meet the daughter of the sister she lost 70 years ago during the Holocaust. Her sister Frima died in 1984 before they were able to reconnect, but thanks to Marlene’s… Read more »
LOS ANGELES (The Jewish Journal) — The USC Shoah Foundation Institute is home to more than 52,000 videotaped testimonies about the Holocaust, and people searching the archive’s index enter a single keyword into their queries more than any other: “Auschwitz.” “Auschwitz seems to be the one that people go… Read more »
JTA’s new column, “Seeking Kin,” aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — The Ellbogen children, Edna and Michael, nearly became Mordechai “Moti” Malkin’s adopted siblings in early 1950s Israel. Six decades later, the 66-year-old Herzliya resident wants to know what’s become of them. When Paul… Read more »
Sixty-six years after they last saw one another, Mira Erlich, left, was reunited last week with Egle Bimbirine, who as a teenager rescued Erlich and her parents. (Hillel Kuttler) Mira Erlich, sitting left, was reunited with Egle Bimbirine, sitting right, who as a teenager rescued Erlich and her parents. With them are their repsective daughters, cheryl Rosen, standing left, and Ida Juraitieme. (Hillel Kuttler) JTA’s new “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE… Read more »
Paul Ellbogen is the first name appearing on this monument to 23 soldiers killed in a battle near Modin on Sept. 24, 1948 during Israel's War of Independence. The death of his wife a few years later left their two children as orphans. (Avishai Teicher) JTA’s new column, “Seeking Kin,” aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — The Ellbogen children, Edna and Michael, nearly became Mordechai “Moti” Malkin’s adopted siblings in early 1950s Israel. Six decades later, the 66-year-old Herzliya resident wants to know what’s become of them. When Paul… Read more »
Leo Bretholz, a Holocaust survivor, testifying at a House Foreign Relations Committee hearing on allowing lawsuits to go ahead against SNCF, the French national railroad, for its role in deporting Jews to death camps, Nov. 16, 2011. Bretholz fled from such a transport. (Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans) WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives again is considering Holocaust compensation legislation that has pit survivors against some leading Jewish organizations. The House Foreign Affairs Committee heard testimony Wednesday on a bill that would make it easier for claimants to make their case against Holocaust-era insurers in… Read more »
BALTIMORE (JTA) — Stare at the boy’s picture and be utterly charmed by that winning smirk. What a handsome child he is, so nattily dressed in a pinstriped suit, striking a perfect Bar Mitzvah portrait pose. Such dark eyes, such perfectly combed straight-back locks. His thumb tilts against his… Read more »
A destroyed Jewish clothing store in Magdeburg, Germany, after Kristallnacht, Nov. 11, 1938. (H. Frederick, Hanover) NEW YORK (JTA) — Before it was called Kristallnacht, it was known simply as “the pogrom.” Designated “the night of broken glass,” the 14-hour wave of Nazi violence on Nov. 9-10, 1938 left hundreds of Jewish storefronts and synagogues across Germany and parts of Austria in shards and splinters,… Read more »
This is the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, and the first one I will mark without my father. Kristallnacht is referred to as the “night of broken glass.” But it was much more. It was the beginning of the end of most of European Jewry. It was two days of… Read more »
Rafael Medoff WASHINGTON (JTA) — Most American Christian leaders strongly condemned the Kristallnacht pogrom that the Nazis carried out against Germany’s Jews 73 years ago next week, when hundreds of synagogues were torched, the windows of thousands of Jewish businesses were smashed, 100 Jews were murdered and 30,000 more were dragged… Read more »
Untitled 1968 lithograph by Marc Chagall “Flight: Mid-Century Masters Interpret the Escape for Survival,” an art exhibit that includes pieces by Marc Chagall and Joan Miró, is on display at the Tucson Jewish Community Center until Dec. 4. The exhibit is presented by the International Rescue Committee in Tucson, in partnership with the JCC. The… Read more »
Regina Gutman and Sam Spiegel wed under a chuppah at the Foehrenwald displaced persons camp in 1946. (Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Regina Spiegel, a Holocaust survivor from Radom, Poland, currently living in Washington, D.C., will discuss her experiences in ghettos, forced labor and concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, on Sunday, Oct. 30, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. The program, “Literature and Testimony,” presented by the Coalition for Jewish Education… Read more »
Alexander Soros, son of billionaire George Soros, chats with staffers and clients of the activist group Make the Road New York. (Shulamit Seidler-Feller) NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — Alexander Soros — what a catch! And not just for the obvious reason. Sure, papa George is worth $22 billion, and as your bubbe says, it’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one. But any grandmotherly… Read more »
ROME (JTA) — Auschwitz, the most notorious camp in the Nazi killing machine, may soon claim success in its campaign to preserve the legacy of the Holocaust. The foundation supporting the site in southern Poland has attracted tens of millions of dollars from donor countries, and the camp’s barracks… Read more »
The Holocaust has inevitably played an important role in the way I view the world and our responsibility to our neighbors. Knowing the facts of this genocide and the world’s complete failure to act in the face of it has led me to commit to do whatever I… Read more »
Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington star in "The Debt." (Laurie Sparham/Focus Features) LOS ANGELES (Jewish Journal) — As Jessica Chastain was preparing for her role in the Mossad thriller “The Debt,” her voluminous research led her to the story of a survivor who witnessed the destruction of her entire family in the Holocaust. “It was a woman’s memory of something she… Read more »
Many Holocaust memoirs cross our desks at the Arizona Jewish Post. “Waltzing With the Enemy: A Mother and Daughter Confront the Aftermath of the Holocaust” (Penina Press) has an evocative title and an Arizona connection (Phoenix, not Tucson), but what intrigued me most are the many dualities in this… Read more »
JTA is introducing a new column, “Seeking Kin,” that aims to help reunite readers with long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Eliyahu Finkelstein grew up in the only Jewish family in the village of Zavizov in northwestern Ukraine, escaped from the Nazis after losing his parents and sister,… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — After many decades of being excluded from most history books and Holocaust museums, the 1940s’ rescue activists known as the Bergson Group are finally receiving the recognition they deserve. That’s important to ensure historical accuracy, to promote Jewish unity and, most of all, to help inspire… Read more »
