Vatican City (dpa) – There will be no statements from Pope Francis when he visits the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps – a key moment in his upcoming pilgrimage to Poland – the Vatican said Wednesday. The pontiff will travel to Poland from July 27-31 to take part in World Youth Day, an international Catholic youth festival
Pope to remain silent during visit to Auschwitz Read More »
International, Jewish HistoryI’m following the Republican National Convention this week in Cleveland with particular interest, partly because I am a child of Holocaust survivors, and partly because of my relationships with two men who are no longer among us. One is Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who died July 2, who famously beseeched President Ronald Reagan not
David Lee Preston: Will the GOP show principles, progress this week? Read More »
Jewish History, USAA series of controversial proposals being weighed by the United Nation”s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have been shelved yet again, following the terror attack in southern France and attempted coup in Turkey over the weekend. The current UNESCO session, which was meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, was ended early following disruptions caused by the
UNESCO hearing on ‘offensive’ Temple Mount resolution delayed Read More »
Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East
What Ifs of Jewish History: From Abraham to Zionism edited by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld; (c) 2016 Cambridge University Press; ISBN 978110-7037625; 406 pages including notes and index; $34.99 hardback. By Mitchell J. Freedman POWAY, California –Counterfactuals or alternative histories remain controversial among historians mostly because it is an area where Literature with a capital L
Alternative Jewish histories: Fun, instructive Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish HistoryBy Joe Spier JERUSALEM– As I walk the grounds of Yad Vashem, I approach the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles. At the entrance stand three plaques placed in an honored position. Raul Wallenberg, whose exploits in saving over 100,000 Jewish lives are well known, Irena Sendler, not so well known, saved 2,500 Jewish children from the
The village that saved the Jews Read More »
International, Jewish History, Middle EastBy Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — Life is full of strange coincidences. I first encountered the story of Charlotte Salomon about twenty years ago, when an exhibition of her work, a series of paintings with captions describing her life and entitled Life? Or Theatre? was held at the Royal Academy in London. It made
Artist Charlotte Salomon’s life told in free verse Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Jewish History
By Jerry Klinger July 18, 1947, in international waters off the coast of Sinai, a shadowing British battle fleet attacked an unarmed American Chesapeake Bay steamer, the President Warfield. They had been shadowing the lumbering vessel since she left Sete in France. A warning to stop and submit to boarding came from the light cruiser
In memory of a fallen hero from Exodus-47 Read More »
Jerry Klinger, Jewish History, Middle East, Obituaries & memorials, USAAUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU, Poland – A sombre and visibly moved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wiped away tears several times Sunday as he paid his respects at the biggest and most notorious of the network of death camps run by the Nazis. Walking alongside Auschwitz survivor Nate Leipciger of Toronto and the President of the Montreal Board of
Emotional day as Trudeau pays respects at Auschwitz Read More »
International, Jewish History“The fiercest arguments we have in parliament are over Israel.” These words, spoken by the chairman of the Dutch Foreign Affairs Committee, startled me. But they failed to faze the other committee members from the both the left and right. On the contrary, they all readily agreed. In the end, only I displayed surprise. “Let
Europe’s Continuing Fixation on Jews Must Not Grip U.S. Read More »
International, Jewish History, Middle East, USAEfraim Zuroff has accomplished much in his long career, but there’s one thing he’s particularly proud of: He’s the most hated Jew in Lithuania. His Lithuanian friend Ruta Vanagaite agrees: She called him a “mammoth,” a “boogeyman” and the “ruiner of reputations”—and that’s just in the introduction to a book they co-authored. Last summer, in
The Last Nazi Hunter Read More »
International, Jewish HistoryBefore, During, and After the Holocaust—from Africa to Berlin to North Carolina (c) By Edwin Black In recent years, some in the African-American community have expressed a disconnect to Holocaust topics, seeing the genocide of Jews as someone else’s nightmare. After all, African-Americans are still struggling to achieve general recognition of the barbarity of the
Nazi Policy and Black Victims Read More »
Edwin Black, International, Jewish History, USAFORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Press Release) — Corey Samuels’ journey to tell the story of her grandfather, Holocaust survivor Henry Oertelt recently culminated in an emotional donation of Oertelt’s personal belongings to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Oertelt had been liberated by General Patton’s Third Army during the Flossenburg death march in April 1945. He arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota, in
Family donates Survivor Henry Oertelt’s effects to Holocaust Museum Read More »
International, Jewish History, USABy Edwin Black After Hitler’s defeat in May 1945, many Nazis melted away from the Reich, smuggled out by such organizations as the infamous Odessa group andthe lesser-known Catholic lay network Intermarium, as well as the CIA and KGB. They ensured the continuation of the Nazi legacy in the postwar Arab world. Egypt was a prime
When Iraq expelled its Jews to Israel Read More »
Jewish History, Middle East
By Stanley Tiger SAN DIEGO–How does one mourn the passing of a prophet? Elie Wiesel was as close to a prophet as we can get in the modern world. It was not so much the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize that impressed me. It certainly put him on the map and made him a
Elie Wiesel was a modern day prophet Read More »
Jewish History, Obituaries & memorials