U.S. President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba, the first by a sitting U.S. president to the island in 88 years, was also a milestone for the small Cuban Jewish community of about 1,500 people. “We are living a transcendental, historic moment. We have hope and very high expectations following the restoration of diplomatic relations…
(Washingon Jewish Week) — Since being imprisoned in Cuba six years ago, Alan Gross says his life has been “surreal.” He feels disassociated from the causes of his five-year incarceration and from the resulting fame. He was locked up largely because of U.S.-Cuba relations, he says, and he is a public figure thanks to the…
HAVANA – The heirs of Jewish mob legend Meyer Lansky want compensation for his nationalized hotel, the Riviera, the seaside home to one of the last casinos built in swinging Havana of the 1950s. U.S. and Cuban officials on Tuesday opened talks about honoring legal claims against the respective governments that were dormant for half…
Alan Gross, who was imprisoned for five years in Cuba for his work connecting its Jewish community to the Internet, marked the one-year anniversary of his release pledging to advance warmer U.S.-Cuba ties. In a statement issued Wednesday, Gross thanked those who supported him while in prison and announced he will soon be a grandfather…
American former prisoner Alan Gross said remembering how his family survived the Holocaust helped him through five years of imprisonment in Cuba, where he was held on espionage charges, according to interview excerpts released on Friday. Gross, 66, spoke out in what CBS News said was his first interview since his release in December 2014…
When Alan Gross was released from a Cuban jail in December 2014, people would have forgiven him if all he wanted was to retire to his Maryland home for a quiet life with his wife, Judy. During his five years in captivity, he lost 100 pounds, considered committing suicide and missed saying goodbye to his…
Leon Rodriguez spread out a collage of black-and-white family photos he keeps in his Washington office. There was his father, surrounded by Jewish activists under a picture of Theodor Herzl in Havana; his grandparents smiling to the camera back in Turkey; his grandfather behind the sewing machine, making shoes. Next to the collage rests a…
(JTA) — Alan Gross, the Jewish-American government contractor who was jailed in Cuba for five years as a spy, was never debriefed after his release from prison and return to the United States, according to a new report. No U.S. government official has debriefed Gross since his release from prison in Cuba more than nine…
100% of profits support our journalism
