JERUSALEM (AP) — Simcha Rotem, an Israeli Holocaust survivor who was among the last known Jewish fighters from the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis, has died. He was 94. Rotem, who went by the underground nickname “Kazik,” took part in the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, the Warsaw ghetto uprising … Read More
KFAR SABA, Israel (AP) — While most of his fellow Jews were being killed or brutalized in Nazi death camps and ghettos, Baruch Shub and his friends were hiding in the forests of the former Soviet Union, trying to undermine the Nazis by derailing trains, burning bridges, sabotaging communication lines and killing the occasional collaborator. “You couldn’t really fight the … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli politicians accused Poland’s prime minister of anti-Semitism Saturday for equating the Polish perpetrators in the Holocaust to its supposed “Jewish perpetrators,” setting off a new chapter in an angry dispute over Poland’s new bill criminalizing the mention of Polish complicity in the Nazi-led genocide. Yair Lapid, head of the centrist opposition Yesh Atid party, said Israel … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli leaders angrily criticized pending legislation in Poland that would outlaw blaming Poles for the crimes of the Holocaust, with some accusing the Polish government of outright denial Saturday as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposed law “baseless” and ordered his country’s ambassador to Poland to meet with Polish … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Staring at grainy video footage of Jewish children marching to their freedom though the barbed-wire fences of the Auschwitz death camp, 79-year-old Vera Kriegel Grossman excitedly points a finger at the screen upon identifying a dark-haired girl in a dirty striped uniform as her 6-year-old self. “I can’t believe that happened to me,” she said Wednesday. “I … Read More
KFAR SABA, Israel (AP) — Eliahu Pietruszka shuffled his 102-year-old body through the lobby of his retirement home toward a stranger he had never met and collapsed into him in a teary embrace. Then he kissed both cheeks of his visitor and in a frail, squeaky voice began blurting out greetings in Russian, a language he hadn’t spoken in decades. … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — President Donald Trump paid a short visit to Israel’s national Holocaust memorial on Tuesday, calling the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews “the most savage crime against God and his children” during the most sensitive stop on his two-day visit to Israel. Trump had come under criticism in some quarters for planning just a brief half-hour stop … Read More
LATRUN, Israel (AP) — Two years after Israel’s prime minister vowed to complete the establishment of a museum honoring Jewish World War II veterans, funds have dried up and an abandoned construction site is all that remains of the grand project. The story of the 1.5 million Jews who fought the Nazis — and the 250,000 who died in battle … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Against an empty white wall in a nondescript Jerusalem law office hangs an impressionist work of art that encapsulates 80 years of tragedy, conflict, mystery and redemption. Max Liebermann’s “Basket Weavers” is set to return to the American heirs of its original Jewish owner after it was confiscated by the Nazis, jockeyed by an unscrupulous German art … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — A prominent Polish historian presented evidence Wednesday about Polish villagers’ widespread killing of Jews fleeing Nazis during World War II, touching a raw nerve in a country still grappling with its role during the Holocaust. The research is likely to irk the nationalist Polish government, which has taken aim at those seeking to undermine its official stance … Read More
RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (AP) — Surrounded by more than 100 fellow Holocaust survivors and young volunteers, a blind Ernest Weiner sat in his wheelchair with a puffy crown on his head as the crowd sang happy birthday and showered him with hugs and greetings. The widowed and childless 92-year-old Weiner lives on his own and the cheerful gathering offered him … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — For the first time in Yad Vashem’s 63-year history, live music echoed through the halls of Israel’s national Holocaust memorial in a somber tribute to the works of musicians who created a vibrant cultural life in the Terezin concentration camp before they were sent to their deaths. Standing upon replicas of train tracks and against a backdrop … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — While the European refugee crisis has captured the world’s attention, Sol Messinger is one of the few who can personally relate to the harrowing images of desperate families fleeing to safety by sea. The 84-year-old retired pathologist from Buffalo was aboard the SS St. Louis, the famed trans-Atlantic liner carrying nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees from Germany in … Read More
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Seventy years after the most daring attempt of Jewish Holocaust survivors to seek revenge against their former tormentors, the leader of the plot has only one simple regret — that to his knowledge he didn’t actually succeed in killing any Nazis. Joseph Harmatz is one of the few remaining Jewish “Avengers” who carried out a … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — Elie Wiesel never lived in Israel, but on Sunday the country mourned the death of the esteemed author and Nobel peace laureate as though it had lost a national icon. A frequent visitor who was fluent in Hebrew, Wiesel was a confidant of prime ministers and a towering cultural figure so revered that two premiers considered nominating … Read More