A U.S.-based Holocaust survivor was honored for his philanthropy to Czech causes. Alfred Bader, an 80-year-old Vienna-born philanthropist living in Milwaukee, was given the Via Bona Honorary Award for outstanding giving to the nonprofit sector Tuesday in Prague. Bader fled Vienna at 14 on a kindertransport train for London in 1938 and lost his family… More ▸
Ilona Blech remembers little from her childhood in Berlin: a teacher, an Orthodox synagogue, her parents’ clothing store. And she remembers Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when Nazis destroyed synagogues and Jewish property across Germany. Mostly, though, her impressions of the period are amorphous. So recently, Blech, 76, who lives with her 78-year-old husband, Samuel,… More ▸
Norbert Dikales, 75, walked down a pathway that goes 30 feet below ground and descended into a nightmare. For the first time in his life this week, Dikales, of Bethesda, Md., was visiting the notorious Belzec death camp in Poland, where his parents and most of his family were killed. They were among an estimated… More ▸
TEL AVIV — The trial of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian militia leader accused of orchestrating terrorist attacks that left scores of Israelis dead, opens in a Tel Aviv court. MONTREAL Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancels a speech at Montreal’s Concordia University after pro-Palestinian rioters wreak havoc. Police fire tear gas as protesters throw… More ▸
A British man who saved 669 Czechoslovak children from the Nazis was given a knighthood in Queen Elizabeth’s New Year’s Honors List. Nicholas Winton, 93, organized nine Kindertransport trains to bring the children from Prague to Britain in 1938-1939, but did not tell anyone about his activities for 50 years. More ▸
Fans of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski detective novels are used to following Vic, the hard-edged but soft-hearted Chicago private investigator, unravel interlocking stories of white collar crime and corruption. While there’s plenty of crime and corruption in “Total Recall,” the V.I. Warshawski novel recently released in paperback, there’s also something new: the story of Lotty… More ▸
A new pan-European organization will reach out to Jewish child survivors of the Holocaust who are not yet represented by other groups. The European Association of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, formed in Prague, will represent the interests of European child survivors in dealing with institutions such as the Claims Conference, and will encourage… More ▸
In December 1938, young British stockbroker Nicholas Winton received a phone call that was to change his life — and save the lives of hundreds of young Jewish refugees. The caller was a friend who asked Winton to drop everything and go to Prague to help thousands of refugees caught up in the wake of… More ▸
A Jewish-themed film was named best documentary feature at the Academy Award ceremonies. “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” chronicles the rescue of some 10,000 children from Nazi-dominated Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia before World War II, their reception in Britain and their lives after the war. More ▸
A Holocaust survivor, a legendary folk singer and a documentary on refugee children during the Nazi era were among the Jewish artists and themes sharing the spotlight during this year’s Academy Awards ceremonies. Branko Lustig, who was a child prisoner in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, won his second Oscar on Sunday night for co-producing best picture… More ▸
