I could almost see my mother sitting in a wing-tipped teak chair at the head of a familiar oval dining room table in a caramel shade of teak. “Go on. Treat yourself,” I heard her say in her clipped London accent, surrounded by vintage Danish modern teak furniture from my 1960s childhood. But that couldn’t…
(JTA) — The inhouse magazine for guests of a Japanese hotel chain contained an article with anti-Semitic statements written by the chain’s CEO. An article by Toshio Motoya of the APA Group in the February edition of Apple Town, the magazine for guests staying at the chain’s Canadian hotels, says that “Jewish people control American…
— A Jerusalem rabbi said he would seek royalties from Japan’s delegation to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro for its allegedly unauthorized use of a melody he composed. Rabbi Baruch Hayat, according to the Shirunt website of Israeli songs, composed the melody to the popular song “Kol Ha’Olam Kulo Gesher Tzar Me’od” to…
American Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas aren’t the only ones in Rio with a Jewish connection. On Tuesday, 16-year-old Sae Miyakawa of Japan performed her floor routine to a klezmer arrangement of the song “Kol HaOlam Kulo,” which was written by founder of the Hasidic Breslov movement Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Though the…
(JTA) — The story of Chiune Sugihara – the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania, who disobeyed his government’s orders in 1940 and issued transit visas through Japan to thousands of Jews seeking to flee war-torn Europe — wasn’t widely known until 1985, when Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial authority, honored him as one of the…
In honor of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s April 27th visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Arthur Berger Senior Advisor at the Washington D.C. Museum, invited me to join fellow Sugihara survivor Leo Melamed Chairman Emeritus of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, to participate in the visit. Melamed, a childhood friend, appears as a seven…
Japan’s prime minister at a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington honored the Japanese envoy who helped thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust. Shinzo Abe, who met with President Barack Obama on Tuesday, said while at the Holocaust museum on Monday, “As a Japanese citizen, I feel extremely proud of [Chiune] Sugihara’s…
(JTA) — In the auditorium of this country’s main Holocaust education center, a teenage actor explains the dilemma that faced a Japanese diplomat during World War II. “My conscience tells me I must act a certain way, but doing so means defying my commanders,” says the actor portraying Chiune Sugihara, the Empire of Japan’s wartime…
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