January 27
1695: Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Amhed II. Ahmed II had been born in 1643. During his reign he imprison Doctor Hayati Zadi in the Yedikule prison where he died. During the reign of Mustafa II, Belgrade was reconqured and the Jews were allowed to return to the city in 1690. Also, Doctor Nuh efendi, Doctor Levi, Doctor Tobias Cohen and Doctor Israel Koenigland were appointed palace doctors. Mustafa ruled until 1703.
1859: Birthdate of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm served as German emperor from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. Wilhelm played many complex roles in the lives of the Jews of Europe. He missed one opportunity to alter Jewish history by not supporting Herzl when he sought the Kaiser’s help in creating a Jewish state in EretzIsrael .
1864:During the American Civil War, the Richmond (VA) Examiner published an article today about those who have are deserting the southern Confederacy for the safety of the North with Jews being the only group identified by their religion. According to the paper, a “great underground route to the North is now open through to Washington, D.C, via the track of the York River Railroad. This route, so generously left open by the Confederate Government, is patronized daily by scores of the principal of substitutes in search of more healthful localities -- Jews and blockade-runners carrying out gold and running in goods…”
1869: Twelve year old Jacob Bibo, the younger brother of Isaac R. Bibo, who had been placed in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in March 1867 after his mother died, “left the institution” today “and went to work with a pawnbroker on the Bowery.
1873: In Russia, the recently promulgated Ukase concerning recruiting sailors and soldiers for the Czar’s military went into effect. Among the change in the new law was the termination of the exemption from service that had been given to Jews who had converted to Christianity. This is one of dozens of exemptions that were terminated. Now an exemption may be purchased upon payment of 800 silver rubles to the government.
1876(1st of Shevat, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1878: President Henry S. Herman presided over the opening session of District Grand Lodge No. 1 of the Independent Order of the B’nai Brit which was being held at the Nilsson Hall in New York City. District 1 includes New York States, all the states of New England and the Dominion of Canada.
1879: A Commission of Investigation was established to examine charges of immoral contact by Monsignor Thomas John Capel. Capel’s behavior would lead to his being sent to the United States where he became a popular speaker who delivered an address on patriotism to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.
1893: It was reported today that the average attendance during 1892 at the Hebrew Technical Institute was 138. Seventy-five percent of the 32 students who graduated “have obtained desirable positions.
1894: Approximately 200 delegates attended the opening session of the annual meeting of District Lodge No. 1 of B’nai B’rith a the Lexington Avenue Opera House where they heard an address from the retiring President, Judge Goldfogle of the Fifth Judicial District.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that over 2,000 frightened refugees, including many Jews, escaped the purges in East Germany and crossed over from East to West Berlin. Israel got an urgently needed one-year loan of $16 million from an American group of banks, headed by the Bank of America.
1955: “Plain and Fancy,” a musical comedy co-authored by Joseph Stein opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre for the first of 461 performances.
2002:In Great Britain, a Holocaust event, organized by the Holocaust Education Trust, takes place in Bridgewater Hall. Extracts of the event will be broadcast by theGranada group of television companies during the week following the event. The second UK Holocaust Memorial Day takes place in Manchester involving the participation of survivors from the Holocaust and victims of contemporary racism and prejudice, young people and a range of community representatives.
98: Trajan becomes Roman Emperor after the death of Nerva. The second of the three Jewish revolts against Roman authority took place at the end of Trajan’s reign. This second revolt took place in the Diaspora. It started in 115 and lasted until 117. The revolt began in Egypt and then spread to other parts of North Africa including Libya , Cyrenaica and the Island of Cyprus
661: The Rashidun Caliphate ends with death of Ali,the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. Begun in 632, the Caliphate marked a period of conquest that gave Islam control over a large swath of North Africa, the old Persian Empire and the modern Middle East. It was during this period that the forces of Islam defeated the Byzantines thus giving them control over Jerusalem.
1164(1st of Adar): Poet and philosopher Abraham ibn Ezra passed away
1186: Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, married Constance of Sicily. During Henry’s reign Jews would be massacred from the Rhine districts all the way to the Vienna.
1197(6th of Adar): Rabbi Samuel ben Natronai, a tosafist, was broken on the wheel and martyred today.
1349: The Jews were driven out of Burgundy and escorted as far as Montbozon.
1449: New Christians or Conversos were the targets of a riot in Toledo , Spain
1659: Cornelis Janss Plavier and his wife Geertje Andriesz, who were about to leave for New Amsterdam borrowed 1625 guilders, insurance included, from Amsterdam merchant Abraham Cohen Henriquez. The loan was to be repaid with the sale of beaver shipped in the autumn to Amsterdam. Merchandise and bills of lading for the beaver were to be kept by Asser Levy, or in his absence by Joseph d' Acosta, until proper security could be given by the couple for the shipment for which they were obligated. The borrowers were not Jewish; the others involved were.
1695: Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Amhed II. Ahmed II had been born in 1643. During his reign he imprison Doctor Hayati Zadi in the Yedikule prison where he died. During the reign of Mustafa II, Belgrade was reconqured and the Jews were allowed to return to the city in 1690. Also, Doctor Nuh efendi, Doctor Levi, Doctor Tobias Cohen and Doctor Israel Koenigland were appointed palace doctors. Mustafa ruled until 1703.
1785: Founding of the University of Georgia University of Georgia Georgia began paying full tuition to students with a 3.0 average or better in high school who kept a B average or better in college. So now the University of Georgia Maryland . Now the University of Georgia Hillel
1788: “The first of England ’s flotilla of convict transports dropped anchor at Sydney harbor, New South Wales .” There were eight Jews among the eight hundred prisoners one of whom was sixteen-year old Esther Abrahams of London, sentenced to an Australian penal farm for stealing a piece of lace.
1790: In France , active citizenship was extended to the "well born" Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux, who promptly bowed out of the fight for equal rights. They looked upon their poorer brothers in Alsace-Lorraine with contempt.
1791: The National Assembly grants civil rights to the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine completing the process of emancipation for French Jews.
1808: Jerome Bonaparte granted full civil rights to the Jews of Westphalia
1824: Birthdate of Dutch painter Jozef Israëls. “Descended from a poor Jewish family, Jozef Israëls started taking drawing lessons in 1835 at the Academy Minerva in Groningen ….In addition to fishermen scenes and portraits, he expanded his subject matter with peasant scenes, and later in his career he returned to the subject of death and old age, as well as treating Jewish and biblical themes.He traveled extensively and was much honored at home and abroad. Israëls was the most acclaimed Dutch painter in his time, eagerly sought after by collectors in Great Britain , the United States , and other countries. Hailed as a second Rembrandt, he participated in many exhibitions, and his work was disseminated through reproductions.”
1836: Birthdate of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch the Austrian author whose works included Jews and Russians and New Jewish Stories. “He faithfully described the manners of the Polish Jews but he feared that his affection for them might give the impression that he was an Israelite.”
1842: During the consecration of the first Reform Synagogue in London, Rabbi David Woolf Marks shocked the traditional Anglo-Jewish community by declaring. “We solemnly deny that a belief in the divinity of those traditions written in the Mishnah and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud is of equal obligation to the Israelite with the faith in the divinity of the Laws of Moses… These books are human compositions; and, though we are content to accept with reverence, advice and instruction from our post-biblical ancestors, we cannot unconditionally accept their laws. For Israelites there is but One immutable Law – the sacred volume of the Scriptures commanded by God to be written down for the unerring guidance of His people until the end of time.” Every Hebrew congregation must be authorised to take such measures as shall bring the divine services into consonance with the will of the Almighty, as explained to us in the Law and in the Prophets.”
1850: Birthdate of Samuel Gompers, first president the American Federation of Labor. When asked what does the American working man want, Gompers responded, “More!”
1859: Birthdate of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm served as German emperor from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. Wilhelm played many complex roles in the lives of the Jews of Europe. He missed one opportunity to alter Jewish history by not supporting Herzl when he sought the Kaiser’s help in creating a Jewish state in Eretz
1860: Birthdate of Sir Charles Solomon Henry, an Australian merchant and businessman who lived mostly in Britain and sat as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons from 1906-1918.
1863: Edward Robinson, the American biblical scholar who is considered the “Father of Biblical Geography” passed away. The American Protestant journeyed to Palestine with Reverend Eli Smith where they identified many of the sites described in the Bible. Among them was the tunnel dug during the reign of King Hezekiah. An arch dating back to Herod’s rebuilding of the Second Temple was named Robinson’s Arch in his honor. In 1839, Robinson became the first person to describe Tell el-Hesi., a site later excavated by Flinders Petrie.
1864:During the American Civil War, the Richmond (VA) Examiner published an article today about those who have are deserting the southern Confederacy for the safety of the North with Jews being the only group identified by their religion. According to the paper, a “great underground route to the North is now open through to Washington, D.C, via the track of the York River Railroad. This route, so generously left open by the Confederate Government, is patronized daily by scores of the principal of substitutes in search of more healthful localities -- Jews and blockade-runners carrying out gold and running in goods…”
1869: Twelve year old Jacob Bibo, the younger brother of Isaac R. Bibo, who had been placed in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in March 1867 after his mother died, “left the institution” today “and went to work with a pawnbroker on the Bowery.
1873: In Russia, the recently promulgated Ukase concerning recruiting sailors and soldiers for the Czar’s military went into effect. Among the change in the new law was the termination of the exemption from service that had been given to Jews who had converted to Christianity. This is one of dozens of exemptions that were terminated. Now an exemption may be purchased upon payment of 800 silver rubles to the government.
1876(1st of Shevat, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1878: President Henry S. Herman presided over the opening session of District Grand Lodge No. 1 of the Independent Order of the B’nai Brit which was being held at the Nilsson Hall in New York City. District 1 includes New York States, all the states of New England and the Dominion of Canada.
1879: A Commission of Investigation was established to examine charges of immoral contact by Monsignor Thomas John Capel. Capel’s behavior would lead to his being sent to the United States where he became a popular speaker who delivered an address on patriotism to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.
1885: Birthdate of Jerome (David) Kern, one of America 's foremost composers of music for the theatre and screen. He is best known as the composer of Broadway musicals like The Cat and the Fiddle (1931) and Roberta (1933). http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C67
1885: Birthdate of musician and composer Harry Ruby.
1887: Henry M. Stanley, the leader of the expedition to save Emin Pasha, the apostate Jew turned Christian, turned Moslem, arrived in Cairo.
1888: Birthdate of mineralogist and petrologist Victor Moritz Goldschmidt
1890: In St. Louis, Rabbi Rosentretter presided at the wedding of Fannie Miller, the daughter of A.A. Miller and Morris Elman.
1890: In Albany, NY, Davis S. Mann, a Jewish teller, was denied a promotion to cashier of the Albany County Banks.
1891(NS): Birthdate of Russian and later Soviet author, journalist and activist, Ilya Ehrenburg.
1891: Joseph Kline, the President of a Hebrew Cemetery Society “was put on trial” today “in the Union County charged with larceny and obtaining money under false pretenses from John Leece
1892: Birthdate of Ernst Lubitsch “a German-born Jewish film director” whose “urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director” which led critics to say that his films had “the Lubitsch touch".
1892: It was reported today that the recent charity ball hosted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music raised approximately $6,000 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
1893: It was reported today that the average attendance during 1892 at the Hebrew Technical Institute was 138. Seventy-five percent of the 32 students who graduated “have obtained desirable positions.
1894: Approximately 200 delegates attended the opening session of the annual meeting of District Lodge No. 1 of B’nai B’rith a the Lexington Avenue Opera House where they heard an address from the retiring President, Judge Goldfogle of the Fifth Judicial District.
1895: It was reported today that the 2,000 people who attended a charity ball in Brooklyn last week raised over $10,000 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
1895: “The Navigator Prince Henry” published today provides a detailed review of Prince Henry The Navigator: The Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery in which the author C. Raymond Beazly draws on the accounts of Benjamin of Tudela.
1896: It was reported today that Mrs. Wallenstein has been re-elected as President of the Hebrew Infantile Asylum Association. Mrs. Reiser has been re-elected as Vice President.
1896: Sarah Bernhardt appeared in the role of Marguerite in “La Dame aux Cemelias” at the Abbey Theatre.
1897: Opening session of the Fifth Annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society took place in Baltimore , MD.
1897: The Jewish Messenger published a complete report about Henry Herzberg’s speech, “The Soul of Judaism.”
1897(24thof Shevat, 5657): Dr. Solomon Deutsch, a leading philologist, passed away today in New York. Deutsch was born in Silesia in 1816 and came to the United States in 1857 after completing his education. He served as a rabbi in several cities including Philadelphia and Hartford before retiring to purse an academic career that included the authorship of Hebrew Grammar, Medical German and Biblical History.
1897: The Hebrew Union Veteran Association held its annual reception at the Lenox Lyceum in New York City.
1897: “Condition of the Poor” published today included Superintendent N.S. Rosenau’s of the United Hebrew Charities description of the “suffering among the poor Jewish people on the east side” which is made all the worst with the combination of bad weather and economic depression. The Jewish fund is “broke” having provided half a million dollars to the destitute “In the three years from October 1893 to the close of 1896.”
1897: During today’s debate on the proposed Immigration Bill being considered by the House of Representative’s, Ohio Congressman Henry Grosvenor said “he would not vote for a measure framed specialty to restrict the Russian Jews” because such a vote would leave him open to charges that he had voted “against a man on account of his religion.”
1898: It was reported today that a lady was wounded by accident when a Spaniard fired at a French non-commissioned officers during today’s anti-Jewish riots in Algiers.
1899: A trial opened in the Assize Court in Paris today Mme. Henry, has sued Joseph Reinach, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and the editor of the Republic Fracaise for libeling her late husband by calling him “a traitor.” Mme. Henry is the widow of the late Lt. Col. Henry who committed suicide after having confessed to forging documents used against Alfred Dreyfus.
1899: In Detroit, Leo Franklin “preached his first sermon as Rabbi of Bethel at the Washington Boulevard Temple” today.
1900: Birthdate of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover was the father of the atomic and later nuclear powered Navy. He, more than any other single individual, was responsible for the creation of the submarine fleet that gave America its strategic edge over the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
1902: Birthdate of Yosef Sapir, the native of Jaffa who served as mayor of Petah Tikva , an MK and a member of the government that guided Israel through the Six Day War.
1904: Herzl received a telegram from Leopold Greenberg that described a definitive offer from the British Government that would allow for a Jewish homeland in Nandi, a territory in the colony of Kenya. Greenberg advised immediate acceptance and the sending of an expedition. Greenberg was a British Zionist and publisher of the Jewish Chronicle.
1912: In New York City , President Taft attended a ball sponsored by the Daughters of Jacob, an organization established in 1895 to fund a home for aged Jewish citizens.
1917: As World War I drags on for a third year it is reported that not one home in the Jewish quarter of Belgrade remains standing undamaged. Large numbers of Jews have immigrated to Greece from various areas in the Balkans. The Americans sent $55,000 to help with relief in Serbia and Greece, after receiving a cablegram for help from the Chief Rabbi of Salonica, Jacob Meir.
1924: Birthdate of Harvey Irwin Shapiro, the Chicago born poet who became an editor of the New York Times (As reported by Margalit Fox)
1926: Birthdate of journalist, broadcaster and humorist Fritz Spiegl. Born and educated in Austria, Spiegel and his family fled when the Nazis annexed Austria. He settled in England where he lived and worked until his death in 2003.
1929: Birthdate of Richard Ottinger, a New York Democratic Party leader who served in the House of Representatives and then pursued a career with the Pace University School of Law.
1930: According to reports published today, “there are more than 213,000 volumes in the Hebrew University Library.” During 1929, 22,000 volumes were added to the library’s collection. The library includes the ‘only medical library of note in the entire region.’” The Library has expanded its locations as well as it collection. Based on the demand of physicians in Palestine, the library has established a branch medical library at the Nathan Straus Health Center in Jerusalem and another such facility in Tel Aviv.
1931: Birthdate of author Mordecai Richler. A native of Montréal many Americans know him as the author The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz which was later turned into a film of the same name. His first novel, The Acrobats (1954), is about a young Canadian painter in Spain with a group of expatriates and revolutionaries. Richler was a sharp cultural critic, and his books The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959), St. Urbain's Horsemen (1971), and Joshua Then andNow (1980) all deal with greed and success. He wrote a collection of humorous essays titled Notes on an Endangered Species and Others (1974), and a series of children's books. He said, "Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials."
1938: The Palestine Postreported on the plight of the Jews in Romania. Under the new restrictions over 200,000 Jews had lost their trading licenses and one hundred thirty Jewish lawyers at Yassy had been expelled from the bar.
1938: The Palestine Postreported that Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach opened a picturesque garden on the seven-dunam oval island at Zina Dizengoff Circle.
1940(17th of Shevat, 5700): Based on information that became public in the 1990’s, today is the day on which author Isaac Babel was shot to death after being found guilty of belonging to an anti-Soviet Trotskyite organization and with spying for France and Austria during a 20 minute trial that had been held the day before. Babel had been arrested by Stalin’s NKVD in 1939 and shipped off to a Siberian labor camp. Two of Babel’s more famous works were Red Cavalry based on his experiences as a cavalry officer fighting against the Whites and Odessa Tales which describes the richly textured Jewish society of Odessa. Babel was rehabilitated in the 1950’s by Khrushchev.
1943: Members of the 'Amitié Chrétienne’ held an emergency meeting at the home of Swiss Protestant pastor Roland de Pury to try and find a way to warn Jews that the Gestapo was watching the offices of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF),where they were going to get false documents. They decided to have Germaine Ribière pose as a cleaning lady, who, while cleaning the stairs would warn the Jews not to end the building. Germaine Ribière was a Catholic member of the French Resistance who was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for her efforts to save Jews from the Nazis. The 'Amitié Chrétienne’ was founded in Lyon, France, in 1941 with the goal of saving Jews and others from the Nazis and the Vichy Governments
1944:SS Morris Hillquit, a liberty ship named after the Jewish Socialist who opposed the United States entering World War I, was launched today. Like so many other supply vessels that survived the war, it would be sold to a private entity in 1947 and finally be scrapped in 1968. Not bad for a ship that was built in 34 days.
1945: The Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered
1945: The Red Army entered Birkenau and found it almost entirely empty of human inhabitants. One survivor found in the hospital was Anne Frank's father, Otto. Anne had died there months earlier from decease. (Otto would return to Amsterdam to find the famed diary.) Though most of the storage facilities were already destroyed, the Russians discover 836,255 women's dresses, 348,000 sets of men's suits and 38,000 pairs of men's shoes.
1945: After Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz today Salamo Arouch, a Greek-born Jewish boxer who survived the death camp by winning fight after fight against fellow prisoners, began searching other liberated camps for any family members who might have survived. During the search he found Marta Yechiel, a girl from his home in Greece. The two moved to Palestine, married and raised a family that included four children and 12 children at the time of his death.
1946:Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle to attend the wedding of Holocaust survivors Lilly and Ludwig Friedman’s wedding. Lily wore a wedding gown that had been created from a parachute acquired from a former Nazi pilot by an unknown seamstress. For Lilly “the dress symbolized the innocent, normal life she and her family had once led before the world descended into madness.” The dress would eventually go on display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
1947: As part of “Aliya Bet,” the Chaim Arlozoroff set sail from Trelleborg, Sweden, carrying 664 survivors of the European death camps. Most of those on board, who labeled illegal immigrants by the British, were women. When the ship finally arrived in Haifa, a struggle ensued at the end of which the British transferred the former camp inmates to detention camps at Cyprus.
1952: Birthdate of Brian Gottfried, Baltimore born tennis star who won the Wimbledon Doubles in 1976
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that over 2,000 frightened refugees, including many Jews, escaped the purges in East Germany and crossed over from East to West Berlin. Israel got an urgently needed one-year loan of $16 million from an American group of banks, headed by the Bank of America.
1955:At the Boston Medical Library an exhibit of Jewish medical leaders, including medieval manuscripts and awards presented to Jewish physicians.
1956: U.S. release date for “The Court Jester,” a musical comedy starring Danny Kaye
1959: Birthdate of Keith Olbermann former TV sportscaster and former MSNBC host.
1964(13th of Sh'vat, 5724): Lieb Glantz, famed chazzan and composer, passed away at the age of 65
1961: "Sing Along with Mitch" featuring Mitch Miller premiered on NBC TV
1965:Up the Down Staircase, a best-selling novel written by Bel Kaufman was published today. Writing must be in her blood since she is the granddaughter of Shalom Aleichem, something not mentioned in any of the education classes that I took where this book was mandatory reading. http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/27/1965/bel-kaufman
1968: A radio station in Nicosia, Cyprus, received a distress call on the frequency of the INS Dakar's “emergency buoy, apparently from south-east of Cyprus, but no further traces of the submarine were found.”
1969(8th of Shevat, 5729): Nine Jews were publicly executed in Damascus Syria
1971(1st of Shevat, 5731) Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1973(24th of Shevat, 5733): Actor John Banner passed away. Best known for his portrayal of Sgt. Schultz in the television hit “Hogan’s’ Heroes,” Banner was born on this date in 1910.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt embarked on a massive diplomatic effort to explain why it had broken off peace talks with Israel.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Jerusalem Municipality had begun the installation of a sewerage network at the Anatot Refugee Camp, despite UNRWA's objections that this would violate the camp's protected status as a "refugee camp of implicitly temporary nature." UNRWA had previously objected to the installation of such a network, despite the 1970 cholera outbreak. (This should provide a slightly different slant on the "refugee problem" and how these poor souls are being exploited.)
1982: In an example of “The Bible on Broadway,” "Joseph & the Amazing Dreamcoat" opened at the Royale in New York City for the first of what would be a total of 747 performances.
1986(17thof Shevat, 5746): Eighty-one year old American artist Edward Biberman passed away.
1991:In the midst of Iraqi attacks on Israel 74 year old Alexander Goldberg, a retired aeronautical engineer from Hempstead, Long Island, will join more than 100 other Americans, both Jews and Christians, for a flight tonight to Israel, where they will be put to work at army bases, hospitals and collective settlements, or kibbutzim. Some will pick fruit or help maintain army tanks; others will work in a factory that makes protective gear for chemical warfare. In the midst of Iraqi attacks on Israel
1992:Singer Ofra Haza and the Amka Oshrat Yemenite Dance Troupe appear in concerted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
1993: During the Intifada, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian terrorist.
1994(15th of Shevat, 5754): Tu B'Shevat
1996(6thof Shevat, 5756): Eighty-six year old Israel Eldad the native of Galicia who became a leading member of the Irgun and winner of the Bialik Prize passed away.
1996: Germany observed its 1st Holocaust Remembrance Day
1997: It was revealed that French museums had nearly 2,000 pieces of art that were stolen by the Nazis.
1999: Moshe Arens begins serving as Defense Minister.
2001:Survivors of Auschwitz have gone on a poignant march past the gas chambers which claimed their fellow prisoners as Europe marked Holocaust Memorial Day. Today, Shabbat, 700 people, including camp survivors and local Jewish leaders, walked from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp's Gate of Death to its giant memorial wall, past the remains of the gas chambers and the crematoria. The Nazis killed 1.5 million people in Auschwitz , the highest number at any camp, before hastily retreating from an advancing Soviet army which liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 19 45London to Lithuania marked the 56th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp's liberation. Britain and Italy held their first-ever Holocaust memorial days, while survivors, spiritual leaders and politicians across the continent pledged to remember a grim historical lesson about the consequences of intolerance.
"Not everyone who survived has the strength to share," said Auschwitz survivor Hedi Fried, speaking at a forum in Stockholm , Sweden Britain observed its first national Holocaust Memorial Day with ceremonies across the country and a London service that also honours victims of other 20th-century genocides. The guest list for the memorial at Westminster Central Hall in London included Prince Charles, Prime Minister Tony Blair, the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster and Britain 's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. The ceremony included tributes to survivors of violence in Cambodia , Bosnia and Rwanda . In Germany , where a sharp rise this year in violent attacks on minorities gave the annual Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism added resonance, Parliament president Wolfgang Thierse issued a warning about the dangers of neo-Nazism. Germans must show "commitment to democracy and against raging right-wing extremism," he told Deutschland Radio. "This isn't about remembrance without consequences."
Six million Jews and five million others, including communists, homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally retarded, perished under the Nazi regime. Italy also marked Holocaust Memorial Day for the first time, with a ceremony in Milan organised by Italian unions and a moment of silence during evening soccer games. Padua, in northern Italy, was honoring Giorgio Perlasca, a butcher credited with saving more than 5,000 Italian Jews by pretending to be a Spanish diplomat. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi acknowledged Italy 's blame in the Holocaust, calling Benito Mussolini's racial laws a betrayal of the country's founding principles.
"But numerous Italians knew how to further the demands of their conscience against the violence of the dictator," he said. About 7,000 Jews were deported from Italy during the Holocaust, and 5,910 of them died. Lithuanian Jews gathered in Vilnius to mark the anniversary, and in Sweden , Prime Minister Goeran Persson was attending a ceremony at a Stockholm synagogue. The Jewish Museum planned a lecture, music and a reading from Anne Frank's diary.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was to give the keynote speech in Sweden on Monday at an international conference on ethnic and religious intolerance.
2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish author and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Responseby Bernard Lewis and Beyond the Last Village Asia 's Forbidden Wildernessby Alan Rabinowitz.
2002:In Great Britain, a Holocaust event, organized by the Holocaust Education Trust, takes place in Bridgewater Hall. Extracts of the event will be broadcast by the
2003: In the United Kingdom the main Holocaust Memorial Day event took place in Edinburgh with a theme of “Children and the Holocaust.
2003:Polls published today affirmed that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is likely to retain his post in elections on Tuesday, and then to face the complex challenge of assembling a durable coalition from a fragmented Parliament. Although corruption scandals dented the commanding lead of Mr. Sharon's right-of-center Likud Party and almost 30 parties took part in the campaign, it has generally been pallid -- a reflection, politicians said, of the dismal economy and voter cynicism that any leader can achieve peace with the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon's promises of peace and security remain unfulfilled, but Israelis generally place their trust in him and the blame elsewhere.
2004: An event on establishing January 27 as memory day for Greek Jews and Holocaust victims was held at the Athens Concert Hall's convention center today, under the auspices of the foreign ministry. Greece 's Parliament had unanimously adopted recently a relevant legislation. Today’s event was attended by Parliament President Apostolos Kaklamanis, Foreign Minister George Papandreou, Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou, Deputy Interior Minister Nikos Bistis, the New Democracy party's Parliamentary representative Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the Communist Party of Greece's Parliamentary representative Achilleas Kantartzis, Coalition of the Left party Deputy Fotis Kouvelis, a representative of Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Christodoulos and many ambassadors in Athens. Papandreou said in a speech that the unanimous ratification by Parliament of the bill setting a Holocaust anniversary date is ''confirmation of the collective sensitivity of the Greeks and of the fact that Greece is an open society, a society of tolerance and of respect of all its citizens.'' He added that ''democracy must defend the citizen. Exclusion of any kind constitutes our moral failure. The decision we took honors us all. It helps us to keep historical memory alive and it will serve as valuable help for the generations to come.'' Emerging from the Concert Hall, the foreign minister said ''we must remember the past and be taught by it'' and reiterated the need for ''respect for the right to be different.''
2004:Israel honored 9 Greeks for their efforts to save Jews during WWII. Today, Israel’s ambassador to Athens presented that country’s influential “Righteous Among the Nations” award to nine Greek nationals who saved persecuted Jewish compatriots during the Nazi occupation of Greece (1941-44). Ambassador Ram Aviram presented the awards the same day as the recently enacted Greek Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan. 27), with a relevant event held at the Athens Concert Hall (Megaron) as well. According to a press release by the Israeli embassy in Athens , the “Righteous among the Nations” awards are given by “Yad Vashem”, an institute created by the Israeli state to perpetuate the memory of the six million victims of the Holocaust. They are bestowed to individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during the Second World War. More than 200 Greek citizens have been honored by the Yad Vashem Institute, including the late Archbishop of Greece during the occupation, Damaskinos, the Greek chief of police at the time, Angelos Evert, the Metropolitans of Zakynthos and Dimitrias at the time, Chrysostomos and Loakeim, respectively, the one-time mayor of Zakynthos, Loukas Karrer, and many other unsung Greek heroes of World War II. This year’s awardees are Dimos and Theodora Vevelekos, Michalis and Eleni Mavridis, Smaragda Sarafianou, Ioannis and Tasia Spentzos as well as Ilias and Angeliki Kazantzis. The president of the Central Board of Greek Jewish Communities, Moses Konstantinis, also participated at the ceremony.
2005: The Fourteenth Annual New York Jewish Film Festival comes to an end.
2005: Arno Lustiger, the historian who documented “Jewish resistance under Nazi rule” and Wolf Bierman whose father was a member of the resistance who was murdered because he was Jewish spoke before the German Bundestag.
2005: At a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the former Foreign Minister of Poland Władysław Bartoszewski delivered a speech in which he paid honor to Jan Karski when he said, "The Polish resistance movement kept informing and alerting the free world to the situation. In the last quarter of 1942, thanks to the Polish emissary Jan Karski and his mission, and also by other means, the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the United States were well informed about what was going on in Auschwitz.” (While his comments about Karski are true, there are those who would say he provided a distorted picture of the Polish Resistance movement’s treatment of the Jews.)
2005: Holocaust Memorial Day in Great Britain. Holocaust Memorial Day is a national event in the United Kingdom dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. It was first held in January 2001, and has been hold on 27 January every year since. The chosen date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union in 1945. This year’s major event took place in London with a theme of “Survivors, Liberation and Rebuilding Lives.
2006: The following column in the Jerusalem Post explains the importance of the First annual "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.
Last November the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 as an annual "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust." With 104 co-sponsors, including Israel, the historic UN resolution selected that date as it is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. During the 1950s the Knesset debated which date to establish as Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Chief Rabbinate had already designated the 10th of Tevet - an existing fast day marking the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem that culminated in the destruction of the Temple - as the date of "General Kaddish" for Holocaust survivors who did not know the date of death of their fallen family members. The ultra-Orthodox rabbinate suggested adding - as had been done to signify the destruction of Jewish communities by marauding Crusaders - additional piyyutim (liturgical poems) relating to the Holocaust to the lamentations recited on Tisha B'Av itself, the solemn fast day commemorating the destruction of the first and second Temples. While incorporating the Holocaust within existing fast days marking national calamities reflected the traditional view that the Holocaust was yet another chapter in a long story of Jewish suffering through the ages, others argued that the Holocaust needed to be commemorated on its own.After long debate, the Knesset established the 27th day of Nisan as "Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevura," literally "Holocaust and Heroism Day." The date marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which in fact began on the 15th day of Nisan (April 19, 1943). Since the actual beginning of the uprising coincided with Pessah, the Knesset, as a compromise, chose a date that falls a week after the end of Pessah and a week before Yom Hazikaron, our Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, and Independence Day - but within the span of the nearly month-long uprising. As a further compromise, the legislation provided that if the 27th day of Nisan impinged upon Shabbat (i.e. fell on a Friday or a Saturday), the commemoration would be moved to the following Sunday. In effect, both sides of the debate in Israel in the 1950s wanted to place the Holocaust within an established context, either the traditional suffering of the Jew or the heroic Zionist model of the "new" Jew. Neither wanted to face the enormity and senselessness of the tragedy, especially in the first decade after World War II.In its infancy, Israel could not bear the image of Jews as victims being "led like sheep to the slaughter" and, accordingly, latched on to the heroic (if doomed) resisters in the Warsaw Ghetto as the proper "Israeli" model on which to base Holocaust remembrance. Moreover, the placement of Holocaust Memorial Day as a prelude to Independence Day conveyed the "Israel-centric" message that the Holocaust was a stepping stone in the founding of the State of Israel, the proverbial "darkness before the light" of national redemption. But this focus on the perceived heroic aspects of the Holocaust to fit our tough (but vulnerable) sabra self-image, together with the implicit message that the Holocaust's true significance lies in its happy ending - Israel's establishment - has had unfortunate repercussions. Sadly, most Israelis don't mark Yom Hashoah in any meaningful way.
For its part, the ultra-Orthodox community has always opposed, on halachic grounds, the imposition of a day of mourning during the joyous month of Nisan, which commemorates the birth of the Jewish nation and its exodus from bondage in Egypt. Sandwiched between Pessah and, to most Israelis, the more significant Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel's Wars and Independence Day, Holocaust Memorial Day has traditionally not been given the undivided attention it deserves. The Holocaust deserves to be viewed honestly and in depth as a unique historic event. Adopting January 27 as Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day would:
signify Israel's appreciation of the unusual step taken by the UN; ensure that the worldwide Holocaust Memorial Day will not be a passing fad since Israel's annual ceremonies can serve as the focus of global attention and as a model for other national commemorative events; indicate that Israel has "grown up" since the 1950s to appreciate that Jewish victimhood in the Holocaust is not something shameful that must be obscured in the celebration of Jewish heroism; unite the Jews in Israel, both observant and secular, to commemorate, discuss and ponder in an unhurried and thoughtful manner the manifold aspects of a tragedy that does not easily fit into any previous category of Jewish or world history. The UN has finally acknowledged the global historical significance of the Holocaust. Israel should support this development for its own good as well as that of the world.
2006: In Poland, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day observances a 1940’s tram marked with the Star of David - like the ones that used to travel through the ghetto - is seen again on the streets of Warsaw. It is empty, with nobody getting on or off. It will be empty. Nobody will get on or off.
2006:Rick Recht takes Cedar Rapids by storm as he leads the Jewish Community in a celebration of “Shabbat Alive.”
2007: “Dirty Girl,” a play based on the experiences of Ronnie Koenig, the former editor in chief of Playgirl Magazine, finished its initial run in New York City.
2007: In the UK , the main National Holocaust Memorial Day event is hosted at Newcastle with a theme of “The Dignity of Difference.”
2008: In “The Capa Cache,” Randy Kennedy described the discovery of “three flimsy cardboard valises that “contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom.”
2008: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Alfred Kazin: A Biography by Richard Cook. “Whenever anyone writes about the “New York intellectuals” — the group of male Jewish writers who came to prominence in the years after the Second World War — Kazin’s name is near the top of the list. And yet he wasn’t a typical member of the tribe. If you were drawing a composite sketch of a model New York intellectual, you’d make him an atheist, largely unconcerned with spiritual questions; a partisan of European literary modernism; and a creature whose political thinking had been forever marked by 1930s debates about socialism and Communism. Kazin, by contrast, was God-haunted (“I want my God back” is the next-to-last sentence of his 1978 memoir, “New York Jew”); unquenchably fascinated by American literature and American history; and politically radical, but in a fashion that owed less to Marx than to Whitman — Kazin’s radicalism was democratic, generous, angry and thoroughly in the American grain.”
2008: International Holocaust Memorial Day – light a light, kindle a candle – Holocaust Memorial Trust website http://www.hmd.org.uk/
2009: In Manhattan ’s East Village
2009:As part of Holocaust Remembrance Day, The Centro Primo Levi, the Consulate General of Italy and the Italian academic institutions in NY under the auspices of the United Nations present Giorno della Memoria (Day of Memory)including areading the names of the Jews deported from Italy and the Italian territories on Park Avenue at 68th Street in front of the Consulate General of Italy and a discussion of the Fascist Racial Laws and the socio-political conditions, the indifference, and collaborationism that allowed their promulgation in 1938.
2009: In his new book We Must Rise From Its Ashes, Avraham Burg advocates commemorating the Holocaust three times during the year. “By observing it on January 27, the international day of Holocaust remembrance, Israelis would never lose sight of the fact that the Shoah was a crime against humanity, not just against the Jews, and that preventing further genocide is the business of the entire world. Commemorating it May 9, the day on which the former Soviet republics — and Israel ’s immigrants from those countries — mark the victory over Nazi Germany, would symbolically embrace the many immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish under Jewish law. Finally, celebrating it on the Ninth of Av would express the Jewish particularity of the genocide, while incorporating the Shoah into that day’s remembrance of the destruction of the Temples would place it within the historical continuum of Jewish suffering rather than consider it wholly unprecedented.
2009: Former Agriprocessors official Sholom Rubashkin can be released from jail, a federal judge ruled. Judge Linda Reade of U.S. District Court in Northern Iowa ruled today that although Rubashkin is a flight risk, reasonable measures could be taken to ensure his appearance at trial, the Des Moines Register reported. Reade required that Rubashkin post $500,000 bail and confine himself to Allamakee County , Iowa
2009:The Massachusetts attorney general’s office said today that it planned to conduct a detailed review of Brandeis University Rose Art Museum New England .
2010: Sara Hurwitz was given the title of “rabbah,” (sometimes spelled “rabba”) the feminine form of rabbi
2010: Dorit “Beinisch was moderately hurt when a 52-year-old man named Pinchas Cohen hurled his sneaker at her during a hearing on medical marijuana, hitting her between the eyes, breaking her glasses and knocking her off her chair.”
2010:The recently discovered 29 blueprints depicting the layout of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in chilling detail, with gas chambers, crematoria, delousing facilities and watch towers drawn to scale are scheduled to go on display in Jerusalem today.
2010:Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to be at Auschwitz to take part in a ceremony marking the 65th liberation of the death camp by the Soviet Red Army.
2010: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to meet at Temple Judah where attendees will discuss Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. De Rosnay's novel is set against a backdrop of the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, and then transported to Auschwitz.
2010: International Holocaust Memorial Day.
2010:Bundled tightly against the cold and snow, elderly Auschwitz survivors walked among the barracks and watchtowers of Auschwitz and Birkenau on today, many clad in scarves bearing the gray and blue stripes of their Nazi prison garments decades ago. Moving later into a heated tent to escape the minus 12 Celsius (10 Fahrenheit) temperatures, they heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vow that his country would never allow anyone to erase the memory of the victims of Nazi Germany's death camps. ''We sit in a warm tent and remember those who shivered to death, and if they didn't freeze to death, they were gassed and burned,'' Netanyahu said in a solemn ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army. Some 150 Auschwitz survivors and European leaders were on hand for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, one of scores around the world marking the global day of commemoration established by the United Nations in 2005. ''From this damned ground of Auschwitz and Birkenau and the other death camps rise the voices of millions of our brothers and sisters of our people who were suffocated, burned and tortured in a thousand different and unusual deaths,'' Netanyahu told the crowd in Hebrew. After brief remarks in English, Netanyahu switched into Hebrew, saying he wanted to use ''the newborn language of the people whom the Nazis sought to exterminate'' and chanting the first line of the Jewish prayer for the dead. ''My murdered brothers and sisters and brothers who survived the inferno, I came here today from Jerusalem to say to you we will never forget,'' Netanyahu said. ''We will not allow Holocaust deniers and desecrators of grave stones to erase or distort the memory.'' Netanyahu's remarks were a clear reference to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad, who has called for Israel's demise and questioned the extent of the Holocaust. In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation's supreme leader, predicted the destruction of Israel in comments posted on his Web site Wednesday, in some of his strongest remarks about the Jewish state in years. ''Definitely, the day will come when nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime,'' Khamenei was quoted as saying. ''How soon or late (Israel's demise) will happen depends on how Islamic countries and Muslim nations approach the issue.'' President Barack Obama, in a video message, thanked Holocaust survivors for finding ''the strength to come back again, so many years later, despite the horror you saw here, the suffering you endured here, and the loved ones you lost here.''''We have a sacred duty to remember the twisted thinking that led here -- how a great society of culture and science succumbed to the worst instincts of man and rationalized mass murder and one of the most barbaric acts in history,'' Obama said. Obama also thanked Polish leaders and the people ''for preserving a place of such great pain for the Polish people, but a place of remembrance and learning for the world.'' Poland's President Lech Kaczynski recalled the pain of the Polish nation, which was occupied by Nazi Germany throughout the war, but also acknowledged the unique suffering of Jews, who were targeted for extermination. ''Jews were being murdered only because they were Jews,'' said Kaczynski, a strong supporter of Poland's reviving Jewish community. ''Many others were killed only because they were Poles or Russians, Ukrainians or Belarusians. But there was no death sentence for the whole nation.'' Survivors passed under a replica of the infamous sign at the main entrance to Auschwitz, which bears the Nazi slogan ''Arbeit Macht Frei'' -- or ''Work Sets You Free.'' The original sign was stolen last month but recovered by police in a nationwide hunt after three days. The thieves had cut the sign into three pieces, however, and it is undergoing repairs. Jadwiga Bogucka, an 84-year-old non-Jewish Pole, was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 for taking part in the Warsaw uprising against the Germans. Before the ceremony, she told The Associated Press that Wednesday's weather was similar to that on Jan. 27, 1945, when she woke up and found the Nazis had fled the camp. ''It was all covered in snow and it was very cold. There was no gong as usual for breakfast that morning, but the previous night there had been the usual terror, or even worse -- the roll call, the screaming of the SS men,'' said Bogucka, who was 19 at the time. ''I left the barrack to see what was going on (and) there were dead bodies everywhere, because the Germans had shot anyone still able to move or who tried to flee,'' she said. The Nazis opened Auschwitz as a concentration camp in the summer of 1940 after they invaded and occupied Poland. Its first prisoners were non-Jewish Poles and others. Because of its central location, Germany soon turned it into a center for implementing the ''Final Solution,'' the plan to kill Europe's Jews. By the end of World War II, at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and others, had died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau or from starvation, disease and forced labor. Some 6 million Jews overall were killed in the Holocaust. In other commemorations, German-born Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the Vatican of ''the horror of crimes of unheard-of brutality that were committed in the death camps created by Nazi Germany.'' Israeli President Shimon Peres addressed the German parliament, calling for the surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust to be brought to justice. ''Across the world, survivors of the Holocaust are gradually departing from the world of the living,'' Peres said. ''At the same time, men and women who took part in the most odious activity on earth -- that of genocide -- still live on German and European soil, and in other parts of the world,'' he added. ''My request of you is: Please do everything to bring them to justice.'' In Hungary, government officials promised to pursue efforts to criminalize Holocaust denial and drew parallels between the rise of pro-Nazi groups in the 1930s and the current strengthening of far-right parties. ''The struggle against extremists begins with remembrance,'' said Csaba Molnar, head of the prime minister's office. Historians say about a third of those killed in Auschwitz were Hungarians.
2010(12 Shevat, 5770):J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died today at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.
2010 (12 Shevat, 5770):Howard Zinn, historian and shipyard worker, civil rights activist and World War II bombardier, and author of “A People’s History of the United States,” a best seller that inspired a generation of high school and college students to rethink American history, died today in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Auburndale, Mass.
2011: The Seventh Annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival is scheduled to open tonight “with three episodes from Season 2 of Srugim, the very popular Israeli television series about the lives and loves of five young Jewish singles living in the hip Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, as they navigate the frequently contradictory worlds of contemporary Israeli romance and traditional observance.”
2011: ASF is scheduled to present “Behind the Scenes: An Intimate Video Visit to Morocco”which is part of the year-long series, "2,000 Years of Jewish Life in Morocco: An Epic Journey", presented Under the High Patronage of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, and made possible through the generous support of the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation.
2011:A program entitledThe Holocaust and Justice: How Do You Prosecute Unprecedented Crimes is scheduled to be held at the University of Iowa Law School. The program will included a screening of the film “Night and Fog” followed by a discussion by UI Law Professor Mark Osiel
2011: International Holocaust Memorial Day
2011: In Italy, observance of Giorno della Memoria (Day of Memory)
2011: Holocaust Memorial Day (UK)
2011:The memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II was honored around the world today, the day which marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. German President Christian Wulff paid his respects on a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of the biggest Nazi concentration camp, where about a million Jews were murdered during the war, accompanied by World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder and his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski. "On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jewish community and the survivors of the Shoah welcome the fact that President Wulff - who has only been in office for a few months and has already been to Israel - is visibly giving the issue of the Holocaust remembrance such a high political priority,” Lauder declared ahead of the ceremonies in Auschwitz and Birkenau. “Clearly, Germany's political leaders have learnt the lessons of the past, but much remains to be done throughout Europe to keep the memory of the darkest chapter in history alive, in order to prevent a future Holocaust.” Wulff's official delegation also comprises several Holocaust survivors, the leaders of Germany's Jewish community, and members of parliament. Together with his Komorowski, Wulff will visit the International Youth Meeting Center at Auschwitz. Events were held in capitals across the world. In Rome, a ceremony was set to take place this evening at Rome's Great synagogue, organised by the local Jewish community and Jewish youth movements including World Bnei Akiva. At least 1000 people, Jews and non-Jews, participated including Rome's Mayor, Minister and Representatives of the Italian Prime Minister will participate, together with the Chief Rabbi and Jewish community leaders. At the same time, a study published today that showed Israeli, Polish and German citizens believed that Israel should take part in funding the preservation of the former Nazi camp, whose buildings and artifacts are in need of restoration. “All the participants were very supportive of preservation,” Gila Oren of the College of Management said. “Both Israelis and non-Israelis believe Israel should take part in the preservation, which to date it has not even though former Prime Minister Yitzhack Rabin promised NIS 100,000 years ago and that’s been forgotten. The question is whether Israel should or shouldn’t have to pay to preserve the former Nazi concentration camp, and that’s an interesting question.” The data was collected from a survey of 310 participants in major cities in Israel, Poland and Germany. In particular, the study attempted to identify financial aspects relevant to the site preservation. Additionally, the findings highlight participants’ positive response towards personally donating towards the site's preservation. The average amount of money people are willing to donate is close to $10. Israelis are willing to donate up to $16, while Germans and Polish are willing to donate on average $ 8.5.
2011: “Copenhagen”a (high) drama with considerable comedy concerning the two Nobel physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg and Bohr's wife Margrethe, opened tonight at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The play features performances by Steve and Barbara Feller, pillars of the Temple Judah community.
2011:Four hundred rabbis will submit a letter today, demanding Fox News sanction host Glenn Beck for his repeated airing of Nazi and Holocaust imagery, and for putting on his show attacks on WWII survivor George Soros, Reuters reported. The letter also urged Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp which owns Fox, to get an apology from Roger Ailes, the Fox News. In the letter, which the rabbis paid $100,00 to have published in News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal, the rabbis claimed that Beck unfairly attacked Soros, a billionaire financier who grew up in Nazi-occupied Hungary. According to the rabbis, Beck has made "literally hundreds of on-air references to the Holocaust and Nazis when characterizing people with whom he disagrees," calling American politicians he disagrees with Nazis and saying that putting the "common good" first leads to "death camps.""You diminish the memory and meaning of the Holocaust when you use it to discredit an individual or organization you disagree with," the letter said. "That is is what Fox News has done in recent weeks, and it is not only 'left-wing rabbis' who think so."
2011:In excerpts of Ehud Olmert’s new memoirs that were published today, the former Jewish leaders says that he and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, were very close to a peace deal two years ago, but Mr. Abbas’s hesitation killed the deal. According to Olmert, at their last meeting, Abbas “said that he could not decide and that he needed more time.” (As reported by Ethan Bronner)
2011(22nd of Shevat, 5771): Ninety-year old Joseph Lefkowoitz a native of Patterson, NJ, a World War II veteran who had retired from the Social Security Administration passed away today in Crossville, TN.
2012: “With a French Flavor” featuring the wind and string Ensembles from the Buchmann Mehta Music School at Tel Aviv University is scheduled to begin at noon in the Ein Kerem Music Center.
2012: Jack Lew completed his service as Director of the OMB began serving as the 25th White House Chief of Staff
2012: Today, "I Honor Wall" - Online virtual event on Yad Vashem's Facebook page, invites people to honor the Righteous Among the Nations. When particpants agree to attend the online event, their names and Facebook profile pictures will be automatically connected to the name and story of a Righteous Among the Nations.
2012: International Holocaust Memorial Day
2012:Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a "surgical" military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
2012:Israeli officials and academic experts think that Iran’s threats of retaliation to a possible strike against it are a bluff, the New York Times reported today.
2012: Today, authorities leveled additional charges against a teenager accused in the firebombings of two New Jersey synagogues, saying he had plotted a similar attack on a Jewish community center and had conducted Internet searches for building Molotov cocktails and instructions on blowing up buildings.
2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Insurgents: David Patraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War by Fred Kaplan and the recently released paperback edition of Shalom Auslander’s first novel, Hope: A Tragedy
2013(16th of Shevat, 5773): Eighty-seven year old Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and historian Stanley Karnow passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
2013: “The Jews of Algeria,” an exhibition that retraces the history of the Algerian Jews since Antiquity, is scheduled to come to a close at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme
2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to sponsor “Superman at 75: Celebrating America’s Most Enduring Hero” who was the creation of Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel.
2013:In Recognition of the International Day of Holocaust Remembrance, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present “ I'm Not Leaving: The Power of Presence, Our Most Valuable Weapon.”
2013: Rabbi Sidney Kleiman of Congregation Adereth El in Murray Hill turned 100
2013: The World Zionist Organization’s Department for Activities in Israel & Countering Anti-Semitism is scheduled to mark the International Day for Countering Anti-Semitism (International Day for Commemorating the Holocaust) with a special conference on countering Anti-Semitism which will take place at the Mediatheque Theater in Holon.
2013: International Holocaust Remembrance Day
2013: In the UK, observance of Brent Holocaust Memorial Day.
2013:The IDF confirmed the deployment of Iron Dome missile defense batteries in the North today, amid an escalation in the Syrian civil war and concerns over Syria’s sizeable chemical weapons falling into radical Islamic hands.
2013: Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi triggered outrage from Italy's political left today with comments defending fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini at a ceremony commemorating victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Speaking at the margins of the event in Milan, Berlusconi said Mussolini had been wrong to follow Nazi Germany's lead in passing anti-Jewish laws but that he had in other respects been a good leader.
2014: While she celebrates the arrival of her grandchild, the friends and family of Debbie Rosenbloom including her husband David Levin celebrate the natal day of the Director of Programs for Jewish Woman International
2014: As it has every year since 2006, the United Nations is scheduled to remember the Holocaust that affected many people of Jewish origin during World War II on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.
2014: As part of the 2014 observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust” is promoting “The Path to Nazi Genocide” a film “using rare footage that examines the Nazi’s rise and consolidation of power in Germany and explores their ideology, propaganda and persecution of the Jews.
2014: “Documents from the Nuremberg Trials recently found in a flea market in Israel are to go on display at the Chabad Jewish Educational Center in Berlin as part of events marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.” (As reported by JTA and Times of Israel)
2014: “The largest ever delegation of Knesset members will convene overseas, on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau, together with Holocaust survivors, for a historic gathering on combating anti-Semitism and preservation of death camps.
2014: As a way to observe International Holocaust Memorial Day, the Reform Movement recommends visiting The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity in the Holocaust,”