When more than 200 survivors gathered last year at the former Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, it struck Jonathan Ornstein that there were three days each year to remember Nazi victims but no day to celebrate the lives of Holocaust survivors. “Seeing all those survivors in Auschwitz…
At the entrance to the temporary exhibition in Esterka’s House, a branch of the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków, there is a photograph of the collections storage of the Warsaw State Ethnographic Museum. The photograph shows rows of densely populated shelves: in the space of just a few cubic meters, hundreds of hand-carved figurines are consorting….
“Traitor!” Each baseball season, I occasionally get this slightly amusing accusation from a few friends and my younger sisters. After all, I have lived in Baltimore for almost 18 years, and I still cannot bring myself to root for the Orioles. Instead, I am a huge Red Sox fan. This is true even though I…
(JTA) — Seventy-five years after the Nazis deported Krakow Jews to concentration camps, descendants of survivors opened the Polish city’s first post-Holocaust kosher hotel. Hotel Polin opened last month but will have an official launch on Saturday. The 38-room hotel has an in-house synagogue and elevators programmed for use on Shabbat without breaking Jewish Orthodox…
KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — Michal Zielinski, a 47-year-old from this city, grew up unaware of his Jewish roots. Thirty years after discovering that his paternal family is Jewish, following the death of his grandmother, Zielinski and his wife, Elizabeth are active members of the Jewish Community Center of Krakow, participating in programs with their 3…
KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — The JCC of Krakow has received a $500,000 grant from the New York City-based Eric and Erica Schwartz Family Foundation, the largest single grant awarded to a Polish Jewish organization in the last 20 years, The funds will support the creation of an Early Childhood Center at JCC Krakow located in…
WARSAW, Poland — Hundreds marched through the streets of Krakow to commemorate the centuries-old Jewish presence in the city in an event organized by local Christian organizations. Marchers waved Polish and Israeli flags at the “memory march” held Sunday. Among those on hand was the Krakow bishop, Grzegorz Rys. The aim of the march was…
(Reuters) — Hollywood director Steven Spielberg said on Monday he hoped that the Holocaust commemorations taking place in Poland on Tuesday will be a warning for future generations, in light of a rising tide of anti-Semitism and intolerance against Jews. Spielberg was talking to Holocaust survivors in the southern Polish city of Krakow, ahead of…
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