By Maya Pogrebinsky, Special to the Jewish Sound When was the last time you paid a visit to a resident of an assisted-living center? When was your most recent encounter with an elderly member of the community who wasn’t a relative? A group of about 15 students from Northwest YeshivaContinue Reading
PRAGUE (JTA) — The presidential palace in Bulgaria’s capital will remain lit throughout the night of International Holocaust Memorial Day to encourage actions against anti-Semitism. The symbolic act at the Sofia residence was announced Tuesday by Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev at a meeting organized by the European Jewish Congress inContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, The Jewish Sound They’ve done this trip before, but this summer, the Holocaust Center for Humanity is doing something new. Added onto the educational trip through Warsaw and Krakow that the organization formerly known as the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center will be an optionalContinue Reading
By Dan Aznoff, Jewish Sound Correspondent For one Bellevue retiree, President Obama’s decision to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba rekindled memories of his parents’ clandestine escape from the island nation more than 50 years ago. Gabe Sterns remembers clearly how it took dramatic action from both U.S. senators fromContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist Dear readers who read: For over a decade I have written these quarterly book reviews, reading or skimming 15 to 20 books over six weeks, and reporting back to you. But the time has arrived when I no longer have the time for that, soContinue Reading
By Abraham H. Foxman NEW YORK (JTA) — Each year on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, we recall the opening salvo of the violent assault on Jews that foreshadowed the Holocaust and ask ourselves what should have been done at that moment. In thinking about Kristallnacht, we should also consider the outpouringContinue Reading
By Batya Ungar-Sargon, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA) — As the last generation of Holocaust survivors ages and dies, efforts to capture their final, untold stories have abounded. But in her new book “Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind,” Sarah Wildman has turned insteadContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JewishSound Columnist Holocaust Sometimes the idea behind a book is as successful as the book itself, but sometimes the idea is more interesting than the end result. The story behind Dan J. Puckett’s “In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War, and the Holocaust”Continue Reading
This year’s Jacob Friedman Holocaust Writing, Art, and Digital Media Contest, sponsored by the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, received 700 entries from students across the state. Here are excerpts and artwork from several of the winners: Digital Media 1st Place: Marina LaBossier, Grade 10, Eastside Catholic High School,Continue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, The Jewish Sound Henry Friedman had a message for the nearly 100 school-aged kids and their parents who sat in the shell of what will soon become the museum that bears his name: “It’s not for Holocaust survivors,” he said. “It’s for you.” The event, anContinue Reading
By Abdullah H. Erakat, The Media Line [AL-QUDS UNIVERSITY] — The Palestinian professor who touched off a maelstrom of controversy by taking a group of students to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland is now at odds with his former employer after the school accepted his resignation. Dr. MohammedContinue Reading
The oldest man alive of record has passed at 111. Alexander Imich was a Holocaust survivor born in Poland in 1903 who lived through a Soviet Gulag and emigrated to the US in the 1950s. He died peacefully at his home in New York peacefully on Sunday. He had turnedContinue Reading
The Times of Israel reports that the Polish government has expanded the parameters for Polish survivors of Nazi persecution who are eligible for monthly pensions. This new law will increase coverage to include Holocaust survivors of Polish descent, along with Polish victims of Soviet persecution, who are now living outsideContinue Reading
By Michael Gerson, The Washington Post Several years ago, I attended the bar mitzvah of a friend’s son. Uniquely in my experience — and, I’d bet, most people’s experience — all of the boy’s four grandparents were Holocaust survivors. In the middle of the ceremony, one grandfather interrupted: “I haveContinue Reading
Maramures County in northern Transylvania is opening its first Holocaust education center, The Holocaust Cellar, on Sunday, May 18. The town is the childhood home in Romania of Nobel Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. The site of the new center is in the old Jewish ghetto of Sighet in MaramuresContinue Reading
Martin L. Johnson and Olinda Young of Phoenix, Arizona, have generously donated a 250-year-old Torah that was recovered from the Nazis to Virginia Commonwealth University. The couple are art and antique collectors with an interest in old Bibles. This is the not first Torah they have acquired and donated, butContinue Reading
(JTA) — A California school district said it will change an eighth-grade assignment that asked students to argue whether or not the Holocaust happened. The writing assignment for eighth graders in the Rialto Unified School District asked students to write an argumentative essay about the Holocaust in which they mustContinue Reading
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Much ink has been spilled since the release of the Pew Research Center survey on Jewish identity in the United States. Many have addressed a number of the findings of the survey, with varying degrees of concern. But as we approach Yom Hashoah, I would like toContinue Reading
Uriel Heilman, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA) — When a 2009 Holocaust-era assets conference concluded with a landmark statement of principles on Holocaust restitution, many restitution advocates had high hopes that a corner had been turned in the struggle for survivor justice. The Terezin Declaration, which had theContinue Reading
By Rita Berman Frischer, Special to the Jewish Sound The Holocaust is a difficult topic for parents or teachers to introduce to children so they often turn to books for help. At first, such resources were rare and indirect. For example, “Terrible Things” in 1980, a picture book allegory, emphasizedContinue Reading
