In 1933, Helen Keller’s “How I Became a Socialist” was placed on a list of books set for burning by a group of German students. The historic activist was none too pleased with the news. Keller’s work made it onto the list for being “un-German,” an unattractive quality in 1930’s Nazi Germany. Keller’s response? She decided to write a letter personally to the student body, taking the young “advocates” to task for trying to “kill …More

Boruch Spiegel, a Warsaw Ghetto hero and one of the last remaining fighters from the famous uprising, died earlier this month at the age of 93. Spiegel was one of an estimated 750 Jewish fighters that rose up against the Nazis in the spring of 1943. The resistance held off Nazi forces for a month, a surprising feat for the poorly armed Jewish prisoners. While the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was ultimate unsuccessful, it remains today as one of the most iconic instances of Jewish-led Nazi resistance. Spiegel is …More

Fragments from dozens of Jewish tombstones were discovered during renovations in a Polish town near the former Nazi death camp Treblinka. The fragments were found last week in the eastern town of Sokolow Podlaski as work began on a terrace leading to the shops located at a marketplace there. “We are in contact with the mayor and the ‘matzevot’ [headstones] will return to the cemetery,” Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich said. One idea for returning them is to embed the fragments in a …More

A replica of Warsaw’s Great Synagogue was unveiled Friday on the site where it was torn down by Nazis 70 years ago. The miniature reproduction is a 1:10 scale mock up made of plywood, featuring the original synagogue’s columns, towers and detailing. The Great Synagogue was demolished after SS General Juergen Stroop ordered it blown up in 1943. Friday’s ceremony took place exactly 70 years and one day after that order. "Looking at the replica, Jurgen Stroop must be turning in his grave," …More

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

Israeli leaders and groups around the world marked the 68th anniversary of VE Day yesterday, a commemoration of Nazi Germany’s surrender. Each year, the anniversary is marked in the Jewish state by parades and celebrations, where Jewish vets come out to remember the victory. “I call on you, young people standing here today: Look toward these fighters, look into their eyes and know that they are role models,” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said yesterday at one such rally. Hundreds marched in the …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

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

The descendants of a renowned Parisian art collector are in a dispute with a Norwegian museum over ownership of a valuable, Nazi-looted Matisse painting. Paul Rosenberg purchased “Woman in Blue in Front of Fireplace” in 1937, the same year Henri Matisse painted the work. It was confiscated by Nazi forces in 1941, just one of an estimated 160 pieces—including Picassos, Renoirs and Cezannes—that SS guards were sent to seize from Rosenberg. Rosenberg fled to the US to escape deportation to …More