Category
soviet
World leaders join last survivors in recalling Auschwitz
World leaders joined around 300 Auschwitz survivors at the site of the former Nazi death camp on Tuesday to mark 70 years since its liberation by Soviet troops, an anniversary held in the shadow of war in Ukraine and a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe.
Auschwitz survivors urge a troubled Europe not to forget
Auschwitz\’s last survivors urged the world not to forget the horror of the Holocaust 70 years after the Nazi death camp was liberated in the final throes of World War Two, an anniversary that finds Europe again confronted by intolerance.
Iranian denies plan to attack Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan
An Iranian man arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on the Israeli embassy in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan denies the allegation, an Iranian diplomat said on Thursday.
Putin: First Soviet government was mostly Jewish
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that at least 80 percent of the members of the first Soviet government were Jewish.
Sharansky wins second term as head of Jewish Agency
Natan Sharansky was elected to a second term as chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Kennedy seen as giant on domestic issues, Soviet Jewry
U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) is being remembered in the Jewish community for his huge impact on domestic issues such as education and health care, but also as a giant in the Soviet Jewry movement.
Jews laud Boris Yeltsin’s legacy
Russian Jewish leaders agree that the community should remember Boris Yeltsin, who died Monday at age 76, primarily as the man who ended decades of state-sanctioned anti-Semitism in Russia.
Hollywood and the Holocaust
One wet night 15 years after the end of World War II, in the student union of my university in Northern Ireland, I watched a documentary film made up of home movies taken by Soviet troops at the liberation of the concentration camps. Unlike some similar Allied footage, the Soviets, interested in the propaganda value of the material, had made no attempt to sanitize it for public consumption. They wanted the film to be every bit as hellish as the reality.
Lighten Up
With the demise of the former Soviet Union and the fall of communism in the early \’90s, the story of Soviet Jewry\’s battle for survival appears to be ancient history. Yet one of the truly remarkable books of our time is the autobiography of one of the famous refuseniks, Yosef Mendelevitch, who struggled valiantly for his right to be Jewish in Communist Russia. Mendelevitch titled his autobiography \”Mevzah Hatunah,\” which translates from Hebrew as \”Operation Wedding.\”