Category: World News

(JTA) — Adolfo Kaminsky, the French-Jewish photographer, forger, smuggler and resistance fighter who saved thousands of people during the Holocaust as part of the French underground, died at 97 in his home in Paris on Monday. Kaminsky’s improbable and heroic story was detailed in a book by his daughter, written in his voice, and in […]

(JTA) — An exodus of Jews from Russia since President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine has drawn widespread attention over the last year. But according to statistics released recently by Russia’s official statistics bureau, the country’s Jewish population had fallen sharply long before the tanks began rolling. The statistics, published last month by Russia’s Federal […]

(JTA) — Construction workers renovating an old tenement house in Lodz, Poland, unearthed a surprising find: an untouched cache of hundreds of Jewish artifacts believed to have been hidden in advance of the Nazi occupation of the city. The trove — which included menorahs, kiddush and ritual washing cups and items from everyday life, all […]

(JTA) — Renowned broadcaster Chris Berman and a German Jew who once said hockey “saved me and my family from the Holocaust” are among the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame’s annual class of inductees. The 2023 class, shared exclusively with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, includes athletes and sports figures from across sports and around the […]

(JTA) — The zoo in Cologne, Germany, has gotten its first check from the $26 million gift promised by the widow of a Holocaust survivor who credited the city’s residents for saving him during the war. Elizabeth Reichert willed the funds to the Cologne Zoological Garden in 2017 in honor of her husband Arnulf, who […]

(JTA) — British Jews are mourning Rabbi Abraham Levy, who led London’s historic Spanish and Portuguese community for decades, building up multiple institutions serving Sephardic Jews in the process. Levy died Dec. 24 at age 83, a decade after becoming emeritus spiritual head of the S&P Sephardi Community in London, following a 32-year period serving […]

IZMIR, Turkey (JTA) — Prague has the dubious honor of being chosen by Adolf Hitler to be a record of what he hoped would be the vanquished Jews of Europe. The Nazis left many of the city’s synagogues and Jewish sites relatively intact, intending to showcase them as the remnants of an extinct culture. That […]

(JTA) — Just a few years ago, Oman was expected to be next in line after Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to sign onto the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with Israel. On Friday, the country’s parliament voted to criminalize any relations or interactions with “the Zionist entity.” While the exact details have […]

(JTA) — Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth — commonly referred to as the United Kingdom’s chief rabbi — can now add a “Sir” to his title.  Mirvis will be named a “knight commander of the order of the British Empire,” according to King Charles’ New Year […]

(JTA) — Pinchas Goldshmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow who fled the country earlier this year, said other Russian Jews should leave before it’s too late in an interview with the Guardian.  “When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the […]