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Survivors
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News Faux pets help Holocaust survivors stave off loneliness
Gerda Weissfeld’s faux poodle sat in her lap and barked as she pet him. “You’re a good boy,” Weissfeld, 102, told the beige-and-white puppy as he continued to bark, seemingly in response to her touch. “He is an intelligent doggy. I call him Peter,” she said. “Sometimes you think he’s real.” Weissfeld, Great Neck, L.I.,…
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News How to celebrate the first Holocaust Survivors Day
The first Holocaust Survivor Day will be celebrated on Thursday to honor the world’s remaining 350,000 Holocaust survivors. Though there are three separate days each year to remember those who perished in the Holocaust, there had been none set aside for an annual recognition of survivors. Spearheaded by a group of Jewish community leaders and…
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News Herbert Karliner, outspoken survivor of the SS St. Louis, dies at 94
Herbert Karliner, one of the last survivors of the ill-fated SS St. Louis, which was forced to return to Europe in 1939 after being turned away from the United States, Cuba and Canada with more than 900 Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi Germany, died Tuesday in Aventura, Florida. He was 94. “We were so…
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Culture Why do we keep turning Holocaust survivor stories into self-help books?
On a recent segment of “The Today Show,” a cadre of well-coiffed hosts discussed the life of Eddie Jaku, a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor and the author of “The Happiest Man on Earth,” a memoir about his imprisonment in Auschwitz. Grainy photos of concentration camp prisoners alternated with clips from an interview with Jaku and videos…
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News Your guide to 2021 (virtual) Yom HaShoah commemorations
Despite a year of isolation and pandemic restrictions, Jewish communities around the country are finding ways to come together for Yom HaShoah, the annual commemoration to honor the more than six million Jews murdered by Nazis and Nazi collaborators during the Holocaust. From coast to coast, synagogues, cities, museums, Jewish community centers, and others are…
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News Why not a Holocaust Survivors Day?
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…
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News A rabbi moves Holocaust survivors to front of vaccination line
The COVID-19 vaccination clinic for Holocaust survivors in a local synagogue started out a bit ominously: A police cruiser was stationed outside and a bomb-sniffing German Shepherd was deployed inside, zealously looking for explosives. “Unfortunately, it’s because we’re Jewish,” said Rabbi Danielle Eskow, who organized the clinic Thursday at Congregation Kehillath Israel, a conservative synagogue…
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Culture Holocaust survivors are now receiving their first doses of the vaccine — and fame
Elderly Holocaust survivors are among the most susceptible to the current pandemic; 900 died of Covid in Israel alone. That is why it was heartening to see, on Twitter, one 97-year-old Holocaust survivor grinning because she had just beaten Covid, and another smiling after receiving her first dose of the vaccine. My 97-Year-old Great Grandma,…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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