Life

‘Homeless’ Benefactor ‘Lost in Translation’

By Gabrielle Birkner August 14, 2009

Last week, Hebrew University announced a posthumous $100,000 donation from a homeless concentration camp survivor, but did not release the benefactor’s name. Well, the donor has been identified as Ida Fischer. And as it turns out, Fischer wasn’t homeless; she was a frugal Midtown Manhattan resident who fled Hitler’s Europe with her family, but was not a concentration camp survivor, the New York Daily News reports. According to the newspaper, Hebrew U.’s spokesman is calling the misinfomation it dispersed “a mistake; something got lost in translation.”

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