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Fast Forward Polish Prosecutor Cleared of Refusing To Try Swastika Case
A Polish prosecutor who in June 2013 refused to go forward with legal proceedings against a vandal who painted a swastika was acquitted by a disciplinary court. Promotion of fascism in Poland is illegal and is punishable by up to two years in prison. The graffiti, including a swastika, found in Bialystok was reported to…
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Fast Forward Polish Town Plans Memorial on Jewish Cemetery Site
An organization in Wronki, Poland, is creating a lapidarium-style memorial at the site of a destroyed Jewish cemetery in town. The project of the Wronki Jewish Lapidarium Association involves about 800 Jewish gravestones or fragments recovered several years ago from two cemeteries razed by the Nazis during World War II. It aims to piece together…
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Fast Forward Polish Jews Split Over Exhuming Nazi Massacre Victims
(JTA) — In September 1941, a group of villagers wielding axes and other tools descended upon the homes of their Jewish neighbors and murdered every last one, according to testimonies gathered by Holocaust scholars. Not much else is known about the massacre in Wasosz, a village 100 miles east of Warsaw, including basics like the number…
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Fast Forward Memorial Planned in Warsaw Honoring Poles Who Saved Jews During Shoah
Organizers have announced a design competition for a memorial in Warsaw to Poles who saved Jews during World War II. Polish-born Holocaust survivor and philanthropist Sigmund Rolat, of the Remembrance and Future Foundation, announced the competition at a news conference in Warsaw on Monday. Rolat said the designs would be judged by an international jury…
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Fast Forward Amulet Created By Son For His Mother in Lodz Ghetto Recovered
The existence of an amulet created in the Lodz Ghetto by a son for his mother was recently discovered. “With love to Mom, from Avram. Lodz Ghetto. March, 1943,” reads the inscription on the amulet, made from two old coins. The son apparently created the amulet for his mother so she would not forget him…
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Fast Forward Polish City Marks First Rabbinical Ordination Since World War II
In the city’s first rabbinic ordination since before World War II, four rabbis and three cantors were ordained at a ceremony in the White Stork synagogue in Wroclaw, Poland. Germany’s foreign minister and other dignitaries attended the ceremony Tuesday. The new clergy graduated from the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, Germany, a Reform rabbinic seminary…
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Culture Travels in Poland and Israel, Between Old Wars and New
As I travel through Poland and Israel, watching, discussing and writing about films, I find myself tracing the continuities, as well as the tensions, of Jewish identity. The only child of Polish Holocaust survivors, I am returning to Poland for the first time in 25 years, exploring what Judaism means there now. My mother, who…
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Fast Forward 50 Polish Righteous Cited as ‘Lights in Darkness’
U.S. Ambassador to Poland Stephen Mull called 50 Holocaust-era rescuers of Jews “a light in the darkness” at a Warsaw reception in their honor. The reception at Warsaw’s Marriott Hotel was hosted by the New York-based Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, which provides material assistance to hundreds of people who aided Jews during the war….
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish מחשבֿות פֿון אַן אַהיים־געקומענעם (אַ מלחמה־טאָגגבוך)Reflections of a soldier after returning home (a wartime diary)
דער מחבר איז אַ סטודענט אינעם ירושלימער העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט, אינעם צווייטן יאָר ייִדיש־לימוד
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
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Opinion Is JB Pritzker’s very Jewish toughness the key to fighting Trump?
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