Shoah

Jerusalem – The evening gowns shone under the spotlights and the tiaras sparkled, but this beauty pageant was like no other: all the contestants are Holocaust survivors.

VIENNA — Hundreds of Holocaust survivors in Austria and Slovakia were poised to get their first coronavirus vaccination Wednesday, acknowledging their past suffering with a special tribute 76 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, where the Nazis killed more than 1 million Jews and others.

Berlin — The prosecution’s closing arguments will be heard on Monday in the trial of a 93-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 people during World War II.

BERLIN — Austria broke ground Monday on a new memorial to the country’s 65,000 Jews killed during the Nazi era.

TEL AVIV – Twenty-five years after he passed away, some 50,000 people gathered at the burial site in Queens, New York, of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to pay their respects.

TEL AVIV – Thirty-one artworks said to have been painted by Adolf Hitler will be auctioned for sale on Saturday in Nuremberg, with the highest starting price set at more than $50,000. 

French Jews have reacted in horror at reports President Emmanuel Macron will honor Marshal Philippe Pétain, the disgraced Nazi collaborator who authorised the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to death camps.

Pope Francis recalled the importance of remembering the Shoah Monday, insisting that anti-Semitism must be eradicated from the planet.

CORTE MADERA, California — Sonia Orbuch, who survived the Holocaust as a teenager in eastern Europe by joining a resistance group that was sabotaging the Nazis, has died in Northern California, a newspaper reported. She was 93.

JERUSALEM — German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off the second day of her two-day visit to Israel on Thursday with an emotional tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum.

BERLIN — Germany’s jailed “Nazi grandma” Ursula Haverbeck, 89, on Friday lost a challenge before the country’s highest court, which reaffirmed that constitutional free speech guarantees do not cover Holocaust denial.

TEL AVIV – Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem on Wednesday slammed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for claiming the Jews were responsible for their own demise in the Holocaust because of their financial activities , and that the Nazi atrocities had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday stressed the importance of accurately portraying the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people during World War II, subtly admonishing Warsaw for advancing a law that would criminalize accusing the Polish nation of complicity in Nazi crimes.

Israel on Thursday condemned the Polish Parliament’s passing of a law that would criminalize those accusing the Polish nation or state of complicity in the Holocaust, but stopped short of taking any concrete measures.

WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s Senate has backed legislation that will regulate Holocaust speech, a move that has already strained relations with both Israel and the United States.

The world’s oldest living man, Yisrael Kristal, died on Friday one month before his 114th birthday. In 2016 Kristal, born September 15, 1903, had been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest man.

A Holocaust survivor had a particularly happy 92nd birthday this week.

The death of World War Two concentration camp survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel was mourned on Sunday by admirers worldwide who honored his life-long fight for millions of Holocaust victims.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at Iran Sunday for staging a Holocaust-themed cartoon contest that mocked the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews during World War II and said the Islamic Republic was busy planning for another one.

DETMOLD, Germany (AP) — A 94-year-old former SS sergeant admitted in court Friday that he had served as an Auschwitz death camp guard, apologizing to Nazi Holocaust survivors looking on in a German courtroom that even though he was aware Jews were being gassed and their corpses burned, he did nothing to try to stop it.

A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard on trial in Germany over accusations that he was an accessory to the murder of at least 170,000 people is on Friday expected to have a statement read out by his lawyers in court. Holocaust

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Croatia’s Jewish community has confirmed that it will boycott an official Holocaust commemoration to protest government’s alleged inaction to curb the surge of neo-Nazi sentiments in the country. The Coordinating Committee of the Jewish Communities of

The Independent reports: He was gay, Jewish, and a high-profile German state prosecutor in 1960s West Germany. But it was his dogged determination to bring Hitler’s henchmen to justice that meant Fritz Bauer was ostracised by politicians, feared denunciation as

BERLIN (AFP) – Two former SS men will go on trial this month for their alleged complicity in the murder of thousands of people at Auschwitz, as Germany accelerates its bid to prosecute ageing Third Reich criminals. Reinhold Hanning, 93, faces court

The Jerusalem Post reports: Knesset Finance Committee chairman MK Moshe Gafni is up in arms after learning of a recent decision by the Dutch government to cease paying benefits to Holocaust survivors who have immigrated to Israel. Speaking in the

TEL AVIV – Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day by posting a video on his website questioning the reality of the Holocaust, the U.S. and Europe’s supposed suppression of freedom of speech for Holocaust deniers, and

The New York Times reports: JERUSALEM — After he was convicted and sentenced to death in Israel for his role in the annihilation of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany, Adolf Eichmann pleaded for his own life. “There is a need

On a world day of commemoration of the Shoah, Pope Francis spoke of the history of the people of Israel and God’s special bond of love toward them. In his weekly audience Wednesday, Pope Francis compared God’s love for the

The Jerusalem Post reports: BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the biggest exhibition of Holocaust art outside Israel in Berlin on Monday, after pledging to take concerns about rising anti-Semitism seriously. The “Art from the Holocaust” show features 100 works

On Sunday afternoon, Pope Francis became the third pontiff to visit the Major Temple in Rome, the most important synagogue in the city, and was met with a standing ovation after he recalled the sufferings of the Jewish people at

Texas does not necessarily come to mind when one thinks of Holocaust survivors. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and other eastern seaboard cities with larger populations do; but the Jewish community thrives in Texas. Dallas, Houston and El Paso all have Holocaust museums — each mindful of their dwindling Holocaust (Shoah) populations.

On Sunday, Pope Francis denounced “the great powers” of the time for not stopping the Holocaust out of “self-interest,” by failing to bomb the railroads heading to concentration camps when they knew what was going on there.

Current “anti-Semitic trends in Europe” are a cause for worry, said Pope Francis Monday morning, as are accompanying “acts of hatred and violence.”