(JTA) — A Belgian town is removing from a local square most of its references to a group of Latvian soldiers who were part of Nazi Germany’s SS forces, following allegations that the square honored them. Briviba Square in Zedelgem, a small town 70 miles west of Antwerp, contained a statue of and a plaque Continue Reading »
Columbia, South Carolina, is now only one of four places in the world, and the only one on this continent, where people can physically walk through the story of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. The University of South Carolina’s Anne Frank Center, announced Tuesday, aims to use the story and famous diary of the late, German/Jewish girl Continue Reading »
On Aug. 8, 2021, officials in Edmonton unveiled the first sculpture of Anne Frank anywhere in Canada. The world’s newest memorial to her—a life-sized bronze sculpture gifted by a Dutch-Canadian group based in Alberta—now sits in a park in Edmonton. It’s is a replica of one that stands in Utrecht, Netherlands.
(JTA) — In the woods of northern Ukraine, construction workers have built an island in time: a shtetl. That’s the Yiddish word for the type of old-fashioned Jewish towns that existed throughout Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. This new shtetl, comprising 18 buildings on more than an acre of land near the lakeside town Continue Reading »
BERLIN (JTA) – As Germany prepares to put a 100-year-old man on trial for Nazi war crimes, public prosecutors in several German states have announced that they are investigating more than a dozen other suspects. Most of the cases involve concentration camp guards who may be charged as accessories to murder following the precedent-setting conviction Continue Reading »
(JTA) — A 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard has been indicted in Germany for being an accessory to murder in 3,500 cases. The defendant, who was not named in the German media, is scheduled to go on trial in October in the Neuruppin district court for his service at Sachsenhausen, Reuters reported Sunday. Court sessions Continue Reading »
(JTA) — The British government has approved a contested plan for a prominent Holocaust memorial center outside Parliament in London. Friday’s decision by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government means that the ambitious project has cleared its final major bureaucratic hurdle about five years after its inception. The plans include 23 large bronze sculptures and Continue Reading »
(Chalkbeat via JTA) — “Hey, I did have one question …” That was the tentative opening to an email I recently received from a high school teacher. The Ninth Candle, the Holocaust education organization I founded, had led some educational programs for her students, and the teacher and I had been trading emails for a few weeks. Even Continue Reading »
(JTA) — The creative director of the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony has been fired after a Holocaust joke he made during a 1990s comedy skit drew attention this week. Kentaro Kobayashi, a popular comedian and actor, joked during a television appearance in the 1990s, “Let’s play the genocide of the Jews,” according to a video Continue Reading »
(JTA) — David Mermelstein started a group for Holocaust survivors in the Miami area in the 1950s simply because it was so hard communicating with others — even fellow Jews — about the horrors they had experienced. Like so many other survivors, as he aged, Mermelstein overcame his reluctance to speak about it and made Continue Reading »
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