Jewish History

Avi Davidson, a student at the University of South Florida in Tampa, overcame injuries that left him in a wheelchair and cost him his arm to open his first photo exhibition on campus on Sept. 4. The showing, To Bear Witness, documents his experiences visiting Poland, including the concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz. Alexander (Avi) Davidson was always obsessed with...

The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF), together with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and Geder Avos Jewish Heritage Group, Inc., held a historic unveiling ceremony on Aug. 26 of a new preservation project at the Jewish cemetery in Lubavitch, Russia, the small village where the Chabad Chassidism was based for more than 100 years, and where some of its major rabbis...

The conventional narrative of Jewish America begins in the 1880s, with the massive influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe to New York and other cities. Their descendants indeed make up the majority of today’s American Jews, but the real story begins much, much earlier and continues across centuries of skirmishes (and at least one riot) over how to be...

In recent months, the Rhine city of Mainz captured worldwide headlines for the murder and rape of one of its Jewish members, 14-year-old Susanna Feldmann, allegedly at the hands of an Iraqi asylum-seeker, now in German custody. In the news coverage of Susanna’s murder and the ensuing heated parliamentary debate over Germany’s refugee policy, few pointed to Mainz’s significance as...

In August 1941, just months after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, leaders of the Soviet intelligentsia gathered in Moscow to form the Jewish Antifascist Committee. Among them were Yiddish writers such as Dovid Bergelson, Dovid Hofshteyn, Peretz Markish, and luminaries such as Sergei Eisenstein and Yiddish actor Shloyme Mikhoels. Their mission was to appeal to...

The Białystok Ghetto uprising against the Nazi German occupation authorities during World War II was launched on the night of August 16, 1943 and was the second-largest ghetto uprising organized in Nazi-occupied Poland after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April–May 1943. It was led by the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation (Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa), a branch of the Warsaw Anti-Fascist Bloc. The revolt began upon the German announcement of mass deportations from the Ghetto. The main objective...

Following Qotbi’s visit, Wednesday, July 18, to the Jewish Cemetery of Fez and the Batha Museum with the wali (governor) of Fez-Meknes, the governor of Fez prefecture, Essaid Zniber and the mayor of Fez, Driss Azami Idrissi, he announced that discussions are underway to determine the progress of the project. The project is in line with FNM’s strategy which...

The ornate colonial building on a bustling alleyway fits right in with the neighborhood. To enter, visitors don’t need to pass through any security checks or barriers — increasingly commonplace around the world, given rising attacks. The Musmeah Yeshua is the only synagogue in Yangon, Myanmar, and its doors are open, which is a source of pride for the...

“This is giving in to the Polish narrative, an attack on the memory of the Holocaust, and a danger to any future independent research that people might want to conduct in Poland,” says eminent Holocaust historian and Israel Prize laureate Professor Yehuda Bauer. Bauer, 92, spoke in response to a joint statement issued by the governments of Israel and Poland this week...

An exhibition of works by 35 Turkish Sephardic artists has opened for art lovers in London to honor the journey of tens of thousands of Sephardic Jews to Turkey in the 15th century. The exhibit celebrating the historic immigration "also honors the flagship Göke, which transferred 90,000 to 150,000 Sephardics to the Ottoman Empire, through the heroic actions of Admiral...