Free Republic

It is perhaps not every day that an Arab Muslim woman living in Paris contributes an article to a newspaper in Israel. But I can think of no better way to share my story. In late December, I happened across a New York Times article by Eva Weisel, an 83-year old Jewish woman from Los Angeles. The article told the story of Eva’s childhood during the Holocaust, a childhood interrupted by the yellow star, a home stolen by German soldiers, fear that the men in her family would not return from forced labor. By a stroke of luck, she and...

The controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II was recently reignited when... Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community, told [Pope Benedict] : "The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah still hurts because something should have been done." [snip] To what extent, if any, does the evidence back up these allegations, which have been repeated since the early 1960s? On April 4, 1933, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of state, instructed the papal nuncio in Germany to see what he could do to oppose the Nazis. On behalf of Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli drafted...

Pope Benedict XVI will travel to Ramallah during his inaugural trip to Jerusalem, where he will meet the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and pay a visit to the Aida refugee camp. The details, released yesterday by the Vatican, form part of a six-day tour that will see the pontiff meeting key figures from across the political and religious spectrum. His itinerary features stops at the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount and the Church of the Nativity. He will also greet faith leaders - including the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the...

Jewish history is rich in the stories of righteous gentiles who converted to Judaism and made tremendous contributions to Jewish life, culture and scholarship. Unfortunately, there have also been many instances when the convert was insincere in the conversion process to Judaism and great problems, both personal and national, resulted. Judaism views insincere conversions as personally damaging to the prospective convert. Judaism is not an exclusivist religion. One need not be Jewish to achieve immortal life after death. Thus, becoming Jewish places greater obligations on the person than before conversion. Jews are held liable for the non-observance of Shabbat, kashrut...

Many of the bitter controversies in every corner of the globe inevitably raise the same ancient question: why does the world hate the Jews? Whether it’s the angry international reaction to Israel’s efforts to defend itself in Lebanon, or Mel Gibson’s drunken rant in Malibu, the age-old specter of anti-Semitism refuses to disappear. With only 13 million Jews in the world – less than one fourth of one percent of the earth’s population – why does this tiny group inspire such bitter, widespread and often violent animosity? The answer is obvious to anyone who monitors anti-Semitic propaganda from all its...

Finding a Righteous Gentile, 60 years later Etgar Lefkovits, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 5, 2006 It was a cold wintry evening in January 1945 when someone knocked on Jana Sudova's door. The Czech woman, who was home alone with her three-year-old daughter, asked who it was. "A partisan," came the reply. Sudova opened the door, and the man asked if he could spend the night. After she answered in the affirmative, the man said he had a friend who wanted to spend the night as well. When the second man appeared at the doorstep, he too said he had a...

'Righteous gentile' who saved life of Jewish boy dies at 74 By Amiram Barkat Sim Yeryomin, one of the "righteous gentiles" who saved Jews during the Holocaust, died last weekend at his home in Beit She'an. Yeryomin, the son of farmers from the Kursk region of Russia, was 10 in April 1942 when he came upon Victor Feinstein, 13, who had collapsed as a result of malnutrition. Feinstein had escaped from the Cracow region after his mother and younger sisters were murdered by the Germans. Feinstein survived through the winter, wandering hundreds of kilometers, from village to village, until reaching...

Righteous Gentile Honored Posthumously in Yad Vashem 16:15 Feb 10, '05 / 1 Adar 5765 A ceremony posthumously honoring Giovanni Palatucci of Italy as a Righteous Gentile took place at Yad Vashem today. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu took part. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum reports that Giovanni Palatucci served as commissioner in the office for foreigners in the police headquarters of the north Italian town of Fiume (today located in Croatia). Beginning at the end of 1938, he tried to prevent the implementation of the race laws enacted against the Jews by the Italian fascist regime. In March...