A woman from Cork has become Ireland’s first hero named Righteous Among the Nations. Mary Elms risked her life during World War II to help protect Jewish children, helping “a large number” escape deportation to the Rivesaltes camp in France in the summer of 1942. Elms, who died in 2002, was in France at the time with the Quaker group the Religious Society of Friends. She was just 34 when she began shielding the persecuted children from arrest. Ronald Friend, one of the children saved by Elms, …More

Construction workers near the sole surviving synagogue in Oswiecim turned up a postcard that sheds light on prewar Jewish life in the Polish town. Oswiecim, the site of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, had a majority Jewish population before World War II. The postcard, stained and crumpled, came to light this week during construction work to shore up a retaining wall of the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot synagogue. A lawyer in Paris named Georges Lewinsky sent the postcard on July 17, 1935 to a Jewish client in Oswiecim …More

Jeffrey F. Barken, JNS.org “How people perished in the ghetto—that I understand; what I cannot understand is how they lived there,” writes Second World War refugee and esteemed Yiddish poet, Chaim Grade. When Canadian author Menachem Kaiser arrived in Vilnius two years ago to begin a Fulbright Scholarship focused on Holocaust research, he observed firsthand the stark reality behind Grade’s statement. “There is literally no trace of the ghetto left in Vilnius,” Kaiser tells …More

A Bronx school is earning international attention for its newest addition—a professionally crafted Holocaust center. The Bronx High School of Science established the Holocaust Museum and Studies Center in its basement with the help of a now-deceased teacher who promoted Holocaust education among his students. Stuart Elenko worked at the Bronx school until his death in 2009, teaching a Holocaust Leadership Class. While teaching, he shared his extensive collection of Holocaust artifacts with his pupils. In …More

A production of Richard Wagner's "Tannhauser" opera in Dusseldorf that was harshly criticized for staging Nazi atrocities was canceled after less than a week. Performances of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein company's production at the Dusseldorf Opera House are still scheduled despite the cancellation. The company had considered making changes to the staging, set in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust, but its director, Burkhard Kosminski, refused for artistic reasons, the BBC reported Thursday. "After …More

Coca-Cola has personalized its cans with common Hebrew, Arabic, and English names. [Tablet] A Jewish women’s Greek cuisine offers a Shavuot-themed recipe. [Jewcy] The Bronx High School of Science now houses a hands-on, professionally designed Holocaust museum. [Times of Israel] Budapest’s historic Jewish quarter hosts memorials to the tragedies and re-building it has seen since Jews first arrived in Hungary in the 12th century. [Times of Israel] Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu continue to …More

Corrie ten Boom was a remarkably brave woman who helped save the lives of countless Jews in World War II. The ten Boom family, Christians themselves, worked as watch repairers by trade in the town of Haarlem, in the Netherlands. Though a larger family, by the 1940’s it was just Corrie, her father Casper, and her sister Betsie living in the family home. Corrie’s mother Cornelia died in 1921 and her brother Willem and sister Nollie had already moved out of the house. The Nazis invaded the Netherlands …More

Peter L. Rothholz, JNS.org Born in Canada into an immigrant Jewish family in 1915, Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow had a traditional Jewish upbringing, which included Torah study, Talmud, and Hebrew. Yet Rabbi David Wolpe observes that Bellow had an ambivalent relationship with Judaism. “It was part of who he was, but he didn’t want to be thought of as a ‘Jewish’ author,” Wolpe, who has been the top-ranked rabbi on the Newsweek “50 Most Influential Rabbis in …More

“There’s a Jewish freethinker’s saying about Paris,” Saul Bellow wrote in the novel “Ravelstein,” “wie Gott in Frankreich [“like God in France”]. Meaning that even God took his holidays in France. Why? Because the French are atheists and among them God himself could be carefree, a flâneur, like any tourist.” Paris is one of the most touristy cities in the world, and for good reason. As a tourist you might stroll the narrow streets of the Marais in …More

Tzipi Livni joined a score of leaders at Mauthausen Sunday, commemorating the 68th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation. "We who weren't there cannot and may not forget. The numbers engraved on the arms in Auschwitz are engraved on each of our souls," the Israeli justice minister said. "I came today as justice minister of the Jewish state to say together with you ‘never again.’” Livni added: "It is not for us that we do not want the world to forget, it is for the future of …More

The fourth most wanted Nazi criminal was arrested in Germany yesterday. Hans Lipschis, 93, was taken into custody for allegedly aiding in the deaths of 1.5 million prisoners at Auschwitz. "[The suspect] appeared before a judge and was taken into custody,” said the prosecutor's office in Stuttgart. "The indictment against him is currently being prepared." Lipschis was deported from the US in 1983 for covering up his Nazi past, though he has long maintained he worked only as a cook at Auschwitz from 1941 …More

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, was made Australia's first honorary citizen. At a ceremony Monday at Government House in Canberra, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said it was "entirely fitting" that "this man of moral courage and heroic example” be named as Australia's first honorary citizen. Among the guests was Frank Vajda, who faced near-certain death from a firing squad in 1944 when Wallenberg arrived to secure his release. Also present was …More