Four swastikas and “Hitler” were found on the former Mauthausen concentration camp. The graffiti was written with a felt pen and carved onto walls at the former camp, the Upper Austria State Police said Monday in a statement, according to Austrian news reports. An investigation was launched into the incident at Mauthausen, which is now…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. John McCain called President Barack Obama’s relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the worst that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.” “And that in itself is a tragedy because it’s the only functioning democracy in the entire Middle East,” McCain (R-Ariz.) told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview broadcast Sunday….
The massive Jewish social service agency FEGS is shutting down, Crain’s New York Business reported on Friday. The Forward reported December 12 that the agency had discovered it lost $19.4 million in its last fiscal year. FEGS had an annual budget of $252 million, and claimed to aid over a hundred thousand New Yorkers per…
A 93-year-old woman in Hamburg is under investigation for her role as an SS guard during a Nazi death march. The investigation of Hilde Michnia was announced Monday by the Hamburg prosecutors’ office. Also Monday, prosecutors in the city of Luneburg said they will try former Waffen-SS member Oskar Groening, 93, in April for his…
Cleveland Jewish News columnist Violet Spevack is retiring after nearly 50 years with the weekly newspaper. Spevack, 98, is believed to have written the longest continuously published weekly column in the country, according to the Cleveland Jewish News. She announced her retirement on Jan. 30 in her final column. Spevack began her popular “Cavalcade” column…
Jordan will return its ambassador to Israel, three months after withdrawing him over tensions on the Temple Mount. Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al–Momani told Reuters his country would return Amb. Walid Obeidat to Tel Aviv after noting that Israel had worked since November to ease tensions and to lift restrictions on Muslim worshippers. “We noticed…
Unknown vandals defaced the fence of a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, considered to be one of the largest in Europe. The attack on the Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw was discovered on Saturday. Burials still occur in part of the cemetery. The vandals wrote on the fence with red spray paint: “Jews for…
Israel Police arrested about 40 haredi Orthodox protesters in the southern city of Ashdod during a demonstration on behalf of four yeshiva students arrested for missing their army induction. Hundreds of haredi men and boys protested Monday in Ashdod, Jerusalem and at major intersections in the area against the arrest of the yeshiva students, who…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused United Nations peacekeepers on Sunday of failing to enforce a resolution barring Hezbollah guerrillas from smuggling weapons into Lebanon. In a phone call with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Netanyahu blamed Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, for Wednesday’s flare-up that killed two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper in the worst…
The Brooklyn warehouse building in Brooklyn destroyed by a seven-alarm fire this weekend was home to over 300 boxes of archival material belonging the UJA Federation. The warehouse also once housed a trove of documents belonging to the American Jewish History Society, but these were moved over a year ago, AJHS Executive Director Rachel Lithgow…
The White House and the State Department criticized Israel for reissuing tenders for the construction of 450 housing units in the West Bank. The tender announcement will “further isolate Israel internationally,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at Friday’s press briefing. “We believe that settlements are illegitimate and are counterproductive to achieving a two-state outcome,”…
