The Holocaust

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Holocaust Survivors and the Establishment of the State of Israel (May 14, 1948)

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, most survivors felt there was no future for Jews in Europe. They desired a homeland where Jews would no longer be a vulnerable minority. Those hopes were realized on May 14, 1948, when the modern State of Israel was established. Jews have had historical and religious connections to the Land of Israel for thousands of years.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/postwar-refugee-crisis-and-the-establishment-of-the-state-of-israel?

ps:This was a very interesting article for me, because my Father was going to go to Israel to fight at this time. He was in one of these Displaced Persons (DP) camps, as a Holocaust Survivor and my Mom was one of the people who were taking care of the Holocaust survivors. She was not an RN by the way!!

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Auschwitz museum begins emotional work of conserving 8,000 shoes of murdered children

OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — In a modern conservation laboratory on the grounds of the former Auschwitz camp, a man wearing blue rubber gloves uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of small brown shoes worn by children before they were murdered in gas chambers.

https://apnews.com/article/auschwitz-holocaust-childrens-shoes-conservation-c82a8e54e60050fa3667302e610736dd?

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This Bronx bakery and its Holocaust survivor founder have been making cheesecake the same way for 63 years

(New York Jewish Week) — Near the northern terminus of the 1 train, just south of Van Cortlandt Park, an unassuming Bronx storefront has been producing thousands of dense, delectable cheesecakes each day for more than 60 years.

https://www.jta.org/2023/05/22/ny/founded-by-a-holocaust-survivor-a-bronx-bakerys-kosher-cheesecake-is-as-tasty-as-ever-after-6-decades?

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Wikipedia disciplines editors in Holocaust distortion dispute but sidesteps debate over Polish complicity

(JTA) — Wikipedia has banned three editors from working on articles related to Jewish history in Poland during World War II, in a bid to resolve editing disputes and safeguard its credibility.

https://www.jta.org/2023/05/22/united-states/wikipedia-disciplines-editors-in-holocaust-distortion-dispute-but-sidesteps-debate-over-polish-complicity?

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Book Burning

Beginning on May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups carried out public burnings of books they claimed were “un-German.” The book burnings took place in 34 university towns and cities. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers ended up in the bonfires. The book burnings stood as a powerful symbol of Nazi intolerance and censorship.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning?parent=en%2F11510?

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The Unsung Jewish Women Soldiers of WWII

Profiles of 8 Jewish servicemembers.

https://aish.com/the-unsung-jewish-women-soldiers-of-wwii/?

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Holocaust Survivor Reunited with Daughter After 80 Years

Due to the war, Gerda Cole was forced to give up her daughter. The 98-year-old was reunited for the first time with her 80-year-old daughter.

https://aish.com/holocaust-survivor-reunited-with-daughter-after-80-years/?

ps:That's pretty awesome! What a Blessing that is, after so many years!! Praise the Lord!!

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Pride Month: Defying the Nazi Campaign to Control Sexuality

Berlin was known as the gay capital of the world until Nazis began terrorizing LGBTQ+ people and shut down the Eldorado Club in 1933.

https://www.facebook.com/holocaustmuseum/videos/985797179242221

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Anne Frank’s Childhood Friend Recalls Their Years Before the Holocaust

Generations have learned about the Holocaust from Anne Frank, a teenage girl whose extraordinary diary, first published in 1947, documented her two-year experience hiding from the Nazis. Countless readers, deeply moved by Anne’s courage, have wondered about the life of this brilliant German Jewish girl before her seclusion. Now My Friend Anne Frank, by Hannah Pick-Goslar, sheds new light on those poignant early years.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/anne-frank-childhood-friend-recall-years-before-holocaust-180982113/?

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This Humble Lithuanian Hero Saved 13 Jews in the Holocaust

Because risking your life for strangers is “the right thing to do.”

Journeying through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania where Jewish communities lived and flourished before Holocaust, my husband and I chanced upon the most unforgettable meeting in a small Lithuanian village called Ziezmariai, about 60 kilometers from Vilnius.

https://aish.com/this-humble-lithuanian-hero-saved-13-jews-in-holocaust/?

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Toronto’s first Holocaust museum looks to the post-survivor era

(JTA) — Toronto is home to one of the world’s largest Jewish communities, nearly half of the 335,000 Jews in Canada. But until last week, the city did not have a dedicated Holocaust museum.

https://www.jta.org/2023/06/13/global/torontos-first-holocaust-museum-looks-to-the-post-survivor-era?

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A German museum curator is personally returning art looted by the Nazis to the descendants of Holocaust victims

(JTA) — For descendants of Jews persecuted by the Nazis, reclaiming art that was allegedly looted from their families can involve years-long court battles or negotiations with European officials.

https://www.jta.org/2023/06/14/global/german-museum-curator-personally-returning-art-looted-by-the-nazis-to-the-descendants-of-holocaust-victims?

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WJC President Inaugurates New Entrance Hall at Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial and Museum

Oświęcim--World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder was on hand at the Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial and Museum for the inauguration of the site’s new Visitor Services Center which took place during the commemoration events marking 83 years since the first transport of Poles to the former death camp.

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wjc-president-inaugurates-new-entrance-hall-at-auschwitz-birkenau-memorial-and-museum

Balkan Jewish Communities Sign Memorandum of Understanding on Holocaust Legacy

The history of the Balkan peninsula was a history of thousands of years of different nations and minorities living together. In those centuries we, as peoples, saw big conflicts that led to incredible human tragedies and at the same time examples of co-existence, tolerance and care for each other. 

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/balkans-jewish-communities-sign-memorandum-of-understanding-on-holocaust-legacy

The other side of Bulgaria's Holocaust history is needed

With a new, pro-European Bulgarian coalition government installed in Sofia after 30 months of political instability, now is the time for a sharp U-turn in Sofia regarding Bulgaria's historical responsibility for the deportation and ultimate murder of 11,343 Jews from Bulgarian-controlled Macedonia, Thrace and the formerly Serbian district of Pirot.

https://euobserver.com/opinion/157134

Why it Matters that IHRA is Meeting in Croatia

This week, representatives of more than 40 countries as well as international organizations, Jewish communities, academic institutions and civil society gathered in Dubrovnik for the first plenary meeting of the Croatian presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). In a time of rising antisemitism and intolerance around the world, this meeting could not have been more timely.

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/why-it-matters-that-ihra-is-meeting-in-croatia

EU to co-finance new Yad Vashem section for Holocaust remembrance

the new exhibit will use new state-of-the-art technology, sound and light technology as part of an "immersive experience," Yad Vashem said.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-745780

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A Jewish Boy Survives in Hiding: Not Far from Anne Frank's Annex

Leo Ullman survived the Holocaust in hiding with strangers as a toddler—in Amsterdam, the same city where Anne Frank hid and was later discovered. His parents were told nothing about his caretakers or his location in order to help keep him safe.

https://www.facebook.com/holocaustmuseum/videos/1198965470788428

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The Double Life of Josephine Baker

We remember Josephine Baker as a singer and dancer, who had to leave her native country to find freedom and fame. What fewer know is that when Nazism threatened that freedom she so treasured, Baker also turned her talents toward defending it — as a spy.

https://medium.com/memory-action/the-double-life-of-josephine-baker-ad35134af8dd

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An American Couple Spent World War II in Europe Helping Refugees

Roswell and Marjorie McClelland were ordinary Americans who took extraordinary action during the Holocaust to save Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.

https://medium.com/memory-action/an-american-couple-spent-world-war-ii-in-europe-helping-refugees-69a9d117c14b

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Landmark exhibits shed light on life in German displaced person camps after the Holocaust

BERLIN (JTA) — Rachel Salamander was born in an in-between time and place: The time was just after the end of the Holocaust, when no one knew what the future would bring for the remnants of European Jewry.

https://www.jta.org/2023/07/12/global/landmark-exhibits-shed-light-on-life-in-german-displaced-person-camps-after-the-holocaust?

ps:In one of these displacement camps is where my Dad met my Mom. After he went home to Poland to find any family that was still alive, he went back to Germany and stay at one of these camps!!

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Bad Example

Turns out America -- and Christians -- helped inspire some of the worst kinds of Nazi thinking. Shawn Boonstra explores some of the lesser-told stories of the Third Reich -- and why Christians should care.

https://www.voiceofprophecy.com/authentic/episode/s1e09

ps:After watching, does it sound familiar? And then guess who's favorite book Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is??

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Researchers say Japan has exaggerated the story of Chiune Sugihara, the ‘Japanese Schindler’

YAOTSU, Japan (JTA) — Three years before the Olympics began in 2021, Tokyo was already developing the national image it would display as the world looked on.

https://www.jta.org/2023/07/19/global/researchers-say-japan-has-exaggerated-the-story-of-chiune-sugihara-the-japanese-schindler?

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Smuggling

By 1941, Jewish people in Belgium no longer received food ration stamps. The only way to obtain food was to buy it on the black market. Mama started to smuggle food across the border from northern France, where food was still more easily obtained and less expensive. Part of the food Mama bought was sold and some of it kept for the four of us—Mama, my two younger sisters, and me. Also, with the proceeds, we were able to buy perishables like milk and eggs, as well as some vegetables and fruit. During Mama’s trips, I stayed home to care for my two younger sisters, Charlotte and Betty, which was quite a responsibility for one not quite 11 years old.

https://www.ushmm.org/remember/holocaust-reflections-testimonies/echoes-of-memory/smuggling?

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Florida woman who stole nearly $3 million from Holocaust survivor gets over 4 years in prison

NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida woman who drained an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor’s life savings by posing as a love interest and then lived lavishly off the $2.8 million she got was sentenced Thursday to over four years in prison.

https://apnews.com/article/peaches-dating-holocaust-sentencing-07bd9ac239712eafb3f17be841b6e954?

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German football team joins San Diego Jewish school in commemorating children murdered in the Holocaust

(JTA) — The German football team Borussia Dortmund joined students at the San Diego Jewish Academy on Friday to participate in a project to commemorate children who were killed in the Holocaust.

https://www.jta.org/2023/08/01/sports/german-football-team-joins-san-diego-jewish-school-in-commemorating-children-murdered-in-the-holocaust?

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? The next Holocaust museum

The world's next Holocaust museum is being built inside one of the planet's most popular video games, Fortnite.

• The virtual building, called the Voices of the Forgotten Museum, will let players walk its halls to read plaques describing the genocide against Jews in Nazi Germany, Axios' Stephen Totilo writes.
• They'll also see photos of resistance fighters and heroes who sheltered Jews.

Screenshot: Luc Bernard

"I feel a responsibility to make sure those who died are still remembered," independent game designer Luc Bernard, who has been building the virtual museum with a colleague, tells Axios.

• "It's time to adapt," he says. "Millions of dollars are being put into museums which I believe are important, but we are ignoring most of the population, and even worldwide."

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Mikvah discovered in basement of former strip club in Poland

(JTA) — Before the Holocaust, the population of the town of Chmielnik, Poland, was around 80% Jewish. Sephardic Jews, having been expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, settled in Chmielnik and eventually built a synagogue in 1638.

https://www.jta.org/2023/08/22/global/mikvah-discovered-in-basement-of-former-strip-club-in-poland?

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A ‘Passover sweater’ made this Holocaust survivor a sensation. Now, a new play makes Helena Weinrauch’s story come alive.

(New York Jewish Week) — Holocaust survivor Helena Weinrauch survived imprisonment at three concentration camps and a forced death march. And yet the 99-year-old Manhattanite is, by all accounts, a force of nature. Time and again she has stared down unbelievable darkness. And yet she continues to exude a palpable joie de vivre.

https://www.jta.org/2023/08/24/ny/a-passover-sweater-made-this-holocaust-survivor-a-sensation-now-a-new-play-makes-helena-weinrauchs-story-come-alive?