Holocaust Deja Vu

By Karen Alexander
Published on November 25, 2004

There was a time when Dora Apsan Sorell could have really used the $3,043 she received from the German government last summer. The check was meant to compensate Sorell for her slave labor during the Holocaust.

But the 83-year-old Auschwitz survivor and retired doctor who lives in Berkeley gave the money away as soon as it arrived. She donated it to the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), which is among a handful of Jewish organizations trying to aid desperate refugees from the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Charoset to Please Any Palate

By Judy Zeidler
Published on March 25, 2004

On the table at every Passover seder is a plate arranged with foods symbolic of the holiday. Of these, the only one that requires a recipe is charoset.

The Trials of Ted Deutsch

By Michael Aushenker
Published on March 14, 2002

Auschwitz survivor Tibor (Ted) Deutsch will never forget the dark day in 1944 that forever shaped his life. Deutsch was only 16 when he and his older brother, Georg, were among the 1,000 Jews assigned to slave labor at a Trzebinia subcamp assigned to the service the venerable German construction company Hochtief.

Rough Justice

Published on September 23, 1999

Some advice for the new year: Don't get into trouble in New Jersey. The judges there are really tough.
How tough? Well, they've got Barry Fisher rattled, and that isn't easy. A Los Angeles human-rights lawyer, Fisher has tussled with some of the toughest of the tough. But those New Jersey judges are something else.

Last week, two federal judges in Newark separately decided to throw two Holocaust-related lawsuits out of court. Kaput. Both cases were class-action lawsuits by Holocaust survivors against German companies that used them as slave laborers. Both judges decided, for different reasons, that the cases couldn't be tried in court. This could be trouble.

Laborers File Suit for Wartime Injustices

By Tom Tugend
Published on March 11, 1999

Jews who worked as slave laborers during the Nazi era are one step closer to receiving some measure of compensation for their ordeal.

Torah Portion

By Rabbi Ed Feinstein
Published on January 22, 1998

The Nazis took my uncle Henry at the beginning ofthe war. He survived more than five years as a slave. Young andstrong, he was a carpenter, and they needed carpenters. At first,they moved him from camp to camp, including a stay at Pleshow, whereSchindler's people were kept. And, finally, Auschwitz. A slavelaborer, he built parts of the camp. When the Allies advanced, he wastaken on the infamous Death March from Poland into Germany. He wasliberated from Buchenwald by the U.S. Army in 1945.