TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — With the Nazis murdering Jews and ransacking their property outside on the infamous nights of Kristallnacht in 1938, 13-year-old David Toren sat in the sunroom of his wealthy great-uncle in Germany admiring a favorite painting depicting two men on horseback on a beach. Within a year, Toren would be smuggled out in one of the … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — With the global coronavirus pandemic ravaging the elderly, Israel’s aging population of Holocaust survivors finds itself on the country’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day this year much like they were during World War II — alone and in fear of the unknown. Some survivors say the current isolation and sense of danger has triggered difficult memories linked with … Read More
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli researchers reported Monday that the global coronavirus outbreak has sparked a rise in anti-Semitic expression blaming Jews for the spread of the disease and the economic recession it has caused. The findings, which came in an annual report by Tel Aviv University researchers on anti-Semitism, show an 18% spike in attacks against Jews last … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — As a child in Hungary, Arie Even survived the Holocaust by taking shelter along with his mother and brother after his father was shipped to a notorious concentration camp. Even’s well-connected grandfather found them refuge in a Swiss-protected home in Budapest before they were rushed to another shelter, under the cover of night, thanks to the Swedish … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Speaker by speaker, world leaders on Thursday denounced the rising threat of anti-Semitism and vowed never to forget the lessons of the Holocaust at a solemn ceremony in Jerusalem marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the infamous Auschwitz death camp. But the high-powered dignitaries also tinged their speeches with competing interpretations of World War II … Read More
Seventy-five years after the killing stopped at Auschwitz, the survivors still bear witness, and many observe the rising hatred and anti-Semitism in the world today with a sense of deep disquiet. Ahead of commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army, Associated Press reporters and photographers visited survivors in Germany, Poland, Sweden, Russia, the … Read More
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Over the next week, world leaders will gather twice to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of Nazi Germany’s death camps. That there will be two competing ceremonies — one in Jerusalem on Thursday and the other at the Auschwitz site in southern Poland on Jan. 27 — underlines how … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Shortly before they were rounded up by Nazi troops in Belgium and deported to Auschwitz in 1942, the parents of 3-year-old Maurice Gluck placed their only child in the care of a local Christian family. Gluck forgot his Yiddish mother tongue and that he even had parents of his own. After the war, his devastated father came … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — One by one, the 40 descendants of a group of Israeli siblings leaned down and hugged the elderly Greek woman to whom they owe their very existence, as she sat in her wheelchair and wiped away tears streaking down her wrinkled face. Clutching the hands of those she hid, fed and protected as a teenager more than … Read More
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — In a musty basement hall of an unassuming building nestled among modern high-rises in the heart of Tel Aviv, a few hundred spectators are kindly requested to turn off their cellphones. What makes the typical scene surreal is that they are asked to do so in Yiddish — the playful, lyrical language of Diaspora European … Read More
RAMAT GAN, Israel (AP) — Under a fluorescent light, an archivist from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial snaps photos and scans into her mobile database the last remnant that a pair of elderly siblings have of their long-lost father — a 1943 postcard Samuel Akerman tossed in desperation out of the deportation train hurtling him toward his demise in the … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s off-hand comment in Warsaw about Poland and the Holocaust set in motion a diplomatic crisis that on Monday scuttled this week’s summit of central European leaders in Israel. Poland’s abrupt decision to cancel its participation in the planned Visegrad conference in protest blew up the gathering, which Netanyahu has touted as a major … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Sunday that his government would allocate the necessary funds to complete a long-promised museum honoring Jewish World War II veterans. The project has been bogged down in bureaucratic stalemate for more than a decade as donor money has dried up and the government has wavered on its degree of support. The … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warm welcome to Lithuania’s prime minister marks his latest embrace of an eastern European leader who has offered strong political support while promoting a distorted image of the Holocaust. Lithuania is among a slew of former communist nations swept up in a wave of World War II-era revisionism that seeks to diminish … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — As the world commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on International Holocaust Remembrance Day Sunday, death camp survivor Cipora Feivlovich marks her own personal milestone as she turns 92. Feivlovich has spent her most recent birthdays recounting to audiences in Israel and Germany her harrowing experiences in the camp, where her parents, brother and best … Read More