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Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reportedly urged Trump to moderate Charlottesville stance

(JTA) – Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law, tried and failed to convince her father to moderate his comments on the white supremacist rally and subsequent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, The New York Times reported.

Citing unnamed sources, the Times reported Tuesday that the couple, vacationing in Vermont over the weekend, urged the president to reconsider a statement he made on Saturday in which he blamed “many sides” for the violence that erupted at the rally. [Read more…]

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Polish historian seeks to exhume bodies of Jews murdered by neighbours in 1941

(JTA) – A historian in Poland is seeking the exhumation of bodies of Jews murdered by Polish villagers, citing a witness whom he said claims that Germans organized the slaughter.

Krzysztof Krasowski, an economist and historian from Bialystok, wrote to the regional office of the Institute of National Remembrance, or IPN, last month with the request for exhumation in the village of Jedwabne, the PAP news agency reported Wednesday. Krasowski cited the testimony of an 89-year-old woman identified in the Polish media only as Antonina K. [Read more…]

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Boston Holocaust memorial vandalized for second time this summer

The New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was first vandalized on June 28, 2017. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was first vandalized on June 28, 2017. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

The New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was first vandalized on June 28, 2017. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

BOSTON (JTA) – A pane of glass was shattered Monday evening at the New England Holocaust Memorial, the second time in less than two months the Boston memorial was vandalized.

A 17-year-old male suspected of the vandalism is in custody, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department told JTA. Two passers-by tackled the suspect and held him until police arrived, according to the Boston Globe, which reported that the police are investigating whether it was a hate crime. [Read more…]

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This Holocaust monument in Belarus is haunting – and subversive

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"The Unbowed Man" statue at the Khatyn Memorial in Belarus commemoratesYuzif Kaminsky, a survivor of Nazi atrocities, and his slain son Adam. (John Oldale/Wikimedia Commons)
"The Unbowed Man" statue at the Khatyn Memorial in Belarus commemoratesYuzif Kaminsky, a survivor of Nazi atrocities, and his slain son Adam. (John Oldale/Wikimedia Commons)

“The Unbowed Man” statue at the Khatyn Memorial in Belarus commemoratesYuzif Kaminsky, a survivor of Nazi atrocities, and his slain son Adam. (John Oldale/Wikimedia Commons)

KHATYN, Belarus (JTA) – Even by Soviet standards, the massive memorial complex near Minsk to the victims of Nazi atrocities stands out for its immense scale and ambition.

Spread across half a million square feet – roughly the size of 10 football fields – the haunting Khatyn Memorial is essentially a graveyard not for people, but for entire villages wiped out by the Nazis in Belarus.  Byelorussia, as it was then known, was one of the few places in Europe where German brutality toward non-Jews matched their anti-Semitic savagery. [Read more…]

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How Curious George’s creators saved the beloved monkey from the Nazis

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Margret and H. A. Rey in Hamburg, Germany, May, 1973. (Ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Margret and H. A. Rey in Hamburg, Germany, May, 1973. (Ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Margret and H. A. Rey in Hamburg, Germany, May, 1973. (Ullstein bild via Getty Images)

(JTA) – Curious George – that curious little monkey – is beloved by millions of readers around the world. His adventures with the Man With the Yellow Hat impart important life lessons amidst silliness and mayhem.

But many people probably don’t know that the children’s book character was actually born during very dark times. His two Jewish creators, Margret and H.A. Rey, fled the Nazis in 1940 – on homemade bicycles, no less – carrying their unpublished manuscripts with them. [Read more…]

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Dutch historians find hidden marriage document of Jewish Holocaust victims

AMSTERDAM (JTA) – Historians in the Netherlands are searching for relatives of a couple murdered in the Holocaust, whose marriage certificate was found concealed inside a chimney.

Paul Harmens, a curator for the Overijssel Historical Center, told the Algemeen Dagblad daily last week that his institution has been searching for relatives of Siegfried de Groot and Bertha Lippers for weeks following the discovery earlier this year. [Read more…]

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Researchers find Jewish headstones at the Nazi killing site of Babi Yar

(JTA) – Before murdering tens of thousands of Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev, Nazi troops dumped at the killing site dozens of Jewish headstones they had stolen from Jewish cemetery, researchers in Ukraine discovered.

“The tombstones were removed from a local Jewish cemetery during the Holocaust and thrown into the same ravines where over 150,000 Jews, Roma people and Ukrainians were murdered during the Holocaust,” Marek Siwiec, a former Polish politician and current head of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, said in a statement earlier this week about the discovery. [Read more…]

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French memorial to young victims of the Holocaust vandalized

(JTA) – A French memorial to young victims of the Holocaust was vandalized.

The memorial, a plaque in Lyon bearing the names of 44 children and seven adults who were deported in 1944 from the Children’s Home of Izieu in eastern France, was knocked off its base in a public garden and smashed. Most of the children were killed in Auschwitz. Only one of their teachers, who were deported with them following a raid on the home by the Lyon Gestapo, survived the Holocaust. [Read more…]

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A T-shirt company tries to reclaim the swastika as a peaceful symbol

An American company claimed this T-shirt was an attempt to reclaim the swastika as a symbol of peace. (Screenshot from Twitter)
An American company claimed this T-shirt was an attempt to reclaim the swastika as a symbol of peace. (Screenshot from Twitter)

An American company claimed this T-shirt was an attempt to reclaim the swastika as a symbol of peace. (Screenshot from Twitter)

(JTA) – An American company is facing criticism for marketing T-shirts that frame the swastika as a symbol of “love” and “life.”

KA Designs was selling the shirts, which feature white swastikas on a rainbow-coloured background with the words “peace” or “zen,” on the U.S.-based clothing company Teespring’s website. [Read more…]

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