A Jewish astronaut met the Holocaust survivor whose teddy bear replica he took into space. Mark Polansky, who commanded the space shuttle Discovery on its mission late last year to the International Space Station, met Tuesday with Sophie Turner-Zaretsky at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
Polansky called the Holocaust museum before his flight, asking for mementos to take into space. His father had died since Polansky’s last mission, in 2001, and he wanted to honor him. He took a replica of “Refugee,” a stuffed bear Turner-Zaretsky’s mother had given to her after World War II and which Turner-Zaretsky gave to the museum in 2002.
He also took with him a photo of a child in a Darfur refugee camp taken by a museum staff member. The museum has led consciousness-raising about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
