Jewish History

Brooklyn’s first Holocaust museum isn’t about death. It’s about Jewish religious life.

One generation from now, it may be impossible to hear firsthand stories of the Holocaust. Seventy-one years after the end of World War II, there’s a growing urgency to preserve the stories of survivors. A new museum in Brooklyn is trying to do just that. But the Amud Aish Holocaust Museum and Memorial is a […]

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International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, USA

Eight ex-Nazis may face prosecution in Germany

LUDWIGSBURG, Germany (JNS.org) Germany’s lead Nazi crimes investigator has identified eight people who are suspected of working at concentration camps in Poland during the Holocaust. The head of Germany’s Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg, Jens Rommel, told German news agencyDPA that information about the eight elderly suspects, four men and

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International, Jewish History

I-8 Jewish Travel: Desert View Tower

-70th and Final Installment in a Series- Exit 77 In-Ko-Pah Park Road, San Diego-Imperial County Line, California By Donald H. Harrison JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, California — The dogs that greet visitors at the entrance to the venerable Desert View Tower are alive, if sleepy in the hot sun, but there are many other animals nearby

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, San Diego County, Travel and Food

Art detective tracks down works of great grandfather

Chasing Portraits by Elizabeth Rynecki; New American Library, © 2016; ISBN 978110-1987667; 387 pages; $27. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – Coming this September is an art history book that fans of detective stories also may enjoy.  Elizabeth Rynecki’s great-grandfather, Moshe Rynecki, was a well-known artist, although not on the order of a Chagall

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

Holocaust hero Bialowitz passes away at 90

{San Diego Jewish World’s eulogy series is sponsored by Marc and Margaret Cohen in memory of Molly Cohen, and by Inland Industries Group LP in memory of long-time San Diego Jewish community leader Marie (Mrs. Gabriel) Berg.  Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name

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International, Jewish History, Obituaries & memorials

Former KGB director: Wallenberg executed by Soviets

MOSCOW, Russia (WJC) — Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who courageously saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation to the German death camps, was executed in a Soviet prison, according to the diaries of Ivan Serov, a former director of the Soviet spy agency KGB. According to the New York Times, Serov’s diaries were discovered inside the walls of his

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International, Jewish History

Christopher Biggins To Visit Camps After ‘Nazi Joke’

British actor Christopher Biggins has announced he will visit Nazi concentration camps, after he was removed from reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother for making a “joke” about the Holocaust. Last week, the 67-year-old told singer and former X Factor contestant Katie Waissel, who is Jewish: “You better be careful or they’ll be putting you

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International, Jewish History, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Baghdad to destroy home of Jew who helped found modern Iraq

The Baghdad municipality announced Friday it would demolish and then give to a developer the 100-year-old home of Iraq’s first finance minister, Sir Sassoon Eskell, while an official in Iraq’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities slammed the decision as a “violation” of the law. Eskell, who was born into an aristocratic Baghdadi Jewish family in

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Jewish History, Middle East

WWII-Era Tunnel Unearths Story of Lithuania’s Jews

The diary of Kazimierz Sakowicz opens with his description of a pleasant summer day in the Ponar forest, outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius: “July 11: Quite nice weather, warm, white clouds, windy, some shots from the forest. Probably exercises.” The shots were not exercises, as Sakowicz would very quickly discover. The year was 1941,

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International, Jewish History

Parents of AMIA bombing victims become plaintiffs in case against former Argentine President Kirchner

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (WJC) — The fathers of two victims of the 1994 AMIA center bombing were admitted Tuesday by a judge as plaintiffs in the case against former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner that could reopen the investigation of the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman into a cover-up of Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing.

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International, Jewish History

‘Then there is the man of horror’: Heinrich Himmler’s recovered diaries reveal both family man and monster

Diaries belonging to Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and architect of the Holocaust, have been recovered in a Russian archive after being thought lost for more than 70 years. The diaries, which are being published in daily excerpts by the German newspaper Bild, cover 1938 and the crucial war years of

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International, Jewish History