A force for constructive communal consciousness
Anne Frank in 1942
(JTA) – Several hundred people gathered at a church in Frankfurt, the city of Anne Frank’s birth, on the occasion of the teenage diarist’s 90th birthday.
The event, organized Wednesday at the iconic St. Paul’s Church by the municipality of the German city and the Basel-based Anne Frank Foundation, featured an address by philosopher Agnes Heller, a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who was born one month before Frank. [Read more…]
Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess signs a guest book at Auschwitz, where the company runs an educational program for apprentices, Nov. 30, 2018. (Courtesy of Volkswagen)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Herbert Diess believes he has a special obligation to combat the rise of the far right in Europe because the company he leads was once quite literally its engine.
“Volkswagen has because of its history, and our history in the Second World War, we have an obligation to care about anti-Semitism and racism,” the Volkswagen CEO told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a rare interview this week. “We have more obligation than others. The whole company was built up by the Nazi regime.” [Read more…]
The courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris. (Wikimedia Commons)
(JTA) – France created a task force to return cultural artifacts taken from Jews during World War II to their owners and descendants.
The Culture Ministry said Wednesday that the project will look into such objects held by French museums, AFP reported. French institutions hold some 2,000 items brought from Germany whose owners have yet to be identified, according to the French news agency.
“This is our duty to the victims of plundering,” Culture Minister Franck Riester said. “It’s about memory and justice.”
(JTA) – Lithuanian soldiers and official attended the unveiling of a plaque honouring the late chaplain of what Nazi hunters say was a local unit of Holocaust-era murderers of Jews.
The municipality of Vitkija on May 13 hosted the unveiling of the plaque for Zenonas Ignatavičius, who was born in that town and served ibn 1941 in the 12th Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion. In October that year, its troops were responsible for the murder of more than 15,000 Jews in Belarus, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. [Read more…]
A defaced photo of a Holocaust survivor in Vienna. (Oskar Deutch/Twitter)
(JTA) – An exhibit of photos of Holocaust survivors lining a major street in downtown Vienna was vandalized with swastikas.
Some of the portraits also were damaged with knives, The Associated Press reported, citing the Austrian national broadcaster ORF.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called for an immediate investigation into what he called the “anti-Semitic desecration.”
I am dismayed by the anti-Semitic desecrations of the photos of Shoah survivors. I demand an immediate and complete clarification. Anti-Semitism does not have a place in Austria,” he tweeted.
Austrian Jewish leader Oskar Deutch in a tweet called the vandalism “an attack on all of Austria.”
(From left) Second generation Holocaust survivor Lou Greenbaum, fourth generation Holocaust survivor Kyle Goldenberg, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian Society for Yad Vashem National Executive Director Ester Driham light the first candle in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust at the National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, May 7, at the Canadian War Museum.
Although Yom HaShoah took place this year on May 1-2, the National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony presented by the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem (CSYV) was held at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa on May 7. The theme of this year’s ceremony was “Struggle for Survival: Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust.”
“While the vast majority of those who participated in resistance efforts against the Nazi regime did not outlive the Shoah, their acts of bravery remain a testament to the spirit of the people who endured,” said CSYV National Chair Fran Sonshine. [Read more…]
Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz (right) tells journalist Stephanie Levitz about Jewish life in Lithuania before the Second World War at Ottawa’s Yom HaShoah commemoration, May 1, at the SJCC. (Howard Sandler)
Young people today must “watch for hate” and be vigilant about who they listen to, says Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz.
Gotz, who was born in Lithuania in 1928 and now lives in Toronto, poignantly told his story at the Yom HaShoah commemoration presented by the Shoah Committee of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, May 1, at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre. He was interviewed by journalist Stephanie Levitz. [Read more…]
(JTA) – Volunteers in Belarus reburied the remains of more than 1,000 Holocaust victims whose bodies recently were discovered during construction work in the city of Brest.
The burial Tuesday was conducted by volunteers from the ZAKA Jewish search and rescue organization and overseen by a local Chabad rabbi, the news website Jewish.ru reported. The remains were put into several coffins and put into the ground in a religious Jewish burial ceremony. [Read more…]
Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem (David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – The International Tracing Service in Germany has published online more than 13 million documents from Nazi concentration camps with information on more than 2.2 million people.
The effort to put the archive online was undertaken in partnership with the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. [Read more…]
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visiting the Ulma Family Museum, which documents the fate of a Polish family that harbored Jews during World War II, Jan. 2, 2018. (Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) – Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki vowed that his government would never pay damages in connection with World War II.
“If today anyone says that Poland has to pay damages to anyone, then we disagree and will continue to do so and it will not happen as long as the country is ruled by Law and Justice,” Morawiecki said during an event Friday in Lodz. [Read more…]