Latest news with #Friedlander
Axios
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Aeronaut Allston will close in late June
This season will be the last for Aeronaut Brewing Company's Allston beer garden. Why it matters: Post-COVID economic headwinds have affected virtually every industry, including craft beer in Massachusetts. Brewing the news: The Allston space will close after June 28, ending a decade of bringing together artists, Harvard students and pet lovers on Western Avenue. "After the challenges of the past few years, we've made the bittersweet decision for this summer to be our final season," the Somerville-based brewery wrote on Instagram. Flashback: Aeronaut opened the Allston location in 2016, selling brews and hosting live music and art events for free. At their peak, they had 1,000 visitors on a Friday, says Ronn Friedlander, a co-founder. The COVID pandemic dealt the beer garden a blow it couldn't recover from, between the 2020 closures and the loss of regulars who left and didn't return to Allston. Looking back, Friedlander says those factors, as well as lower customer spending post-COVID and an increasing number of rain-outs kept the Allston space from bouncing back. Yes, but: Aeronaut is going all out for its farewell season. What they're saying: "We didn't want it to keep fizzling and die off in a sad way," Friedlander tells Axios. The goal for this summer became to "try to have more music, more programming and try to really get people to turn out every single day that we're open and try to end on a positive note." Zoom in: Their events lineup is packed with performances by local acts, from the Caribbean rave to the Femmes to Latin Americana singer Mercedes Escobar. They're also hosting a Pride pre-party, a "Survivor"-themed party and a Carnival-themed sendoff with food trucks and art vendors on June 28, says Deepa Chungi, Aeronaut's programming director. What's next: Aeronaut isn't ruling out a return to Allston in the future, whether it's an event… or even the resurrection of their beer garden.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Your Insurance Company May Be Using A Drone To Spy On Your Property From The Air
Every few years, I get a notice from my insurance company informing me that — usually unbeknownst to me — an inspector has strolled around my property looking for potential hazards or issues of concern to my insurer. The notice will sometimes include a list of things they want me to address, perhaps like a tree branch that's too close to the roof. Recently, I realized that my insurance company may be keeping tabs on my property in a way I never expected, by checking out my home from the air — and your insurance may be doing it, too. Some insurance companies are now using drones to do property inspections from the air. In some cases, insurers are using the results of these inspections to refuse to insure the property altogether. This may be especially concerning for property owners in certain areas at high risk of natural disasters, where insurance options may already be limited as insurers have been dropping customers. I talked to experts to find out why insurance companies are using drone inspections – and what you can do if an aerial inspection impacts you. The use of drones for inspections on a widespread basis is becoming more routine. 'Property insurers have been using drone technology for many years in assessing damage from natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires to process claims quicker,' said Mark Friedlander, senior director of media relations at the Insurance Information Institute. 'The technology is now being used by many national and regional insurers to inspect the exterior condition of homes in making underwriting decisions for the property.' For insurance companies, drone inspections offer several benefits. Friedlander noted that this approach is more efficient and precise than inspections performed by humans and avoids the risks or potential hazards involved when an inspector must physically walk around a property. When enlisting a drone to help with a property inspection, insurers are especially interested in checking out parts of the property that are difficult to see from ground level. In particular, this is a great way for an insurer to get a bird's eye view of the roof. 'They would see if there's any patches or cuts into the roof that will lead to a claim tomorrow,' Mike Koba, of Koba Capital Insurance Brokerage, said. Insurance companies have often used Google Maps to assess properties — but while those images may be several years old, a drone allows for real-time views of a property's current condition. Koba says insurers will sometimes perform an aerial inspection before deciding whether to insure a property at all — this is especially common with large commercial properties — but may also use this as part of the routine ongoing process to decide whether to renew an existing policy. In addition to checking out the condition of the roof or other major components, drone inspections can also reveal something on the property that your insurance company didn't know about. 'While the focus is primarily on roof condition, aerial inspections may also capture unreported additions to homes such as swimming pools, gazebos and trampolines,' says Friedlander. 'In some cases, this type of discovery could result in a premium adjustment or disqualify your property from being insured if it no longer meets the carrier's underwriting criteria.' If your insurer notifies you that a drone inspection revealed an issue, that doesn't necessarily mean you should panic or prepare for higher insurance premiums. Koba says insurance companies will typically give the property owner a short period of time — often around 45 days — to correct the issue. If you believe the insurance company's information is incorrect, you can also present evidence or documentation to prove the accurate condition of the property. If you're like me, the idea of a drone checking out your property without your knowledge might give you Big Brother vibes, but experts say it is most likely perfectly legal for an insurer to inspect your property this way. Candise Shanbron, managing partner of Cernitz Law, says there are a variety of federal, state and local laws regarding the use of drones which in some cases prohibit drone users from conducting surveillance that would violate a reasonable expectation of privacy without the property owner's consent. However, she notes that there are often exceptions for licensed business entities that have a legitimate interest in the property — which would typically include insurance companies and insurance adjusters. While laws about what — if any — disclosures or advance warning an insurer must provide about drone inspections are in many cases vague and vary by location, Shanbron says insurers will often make customers aware of this possibility out of an abundance of caution to avoid any legal liability. Unfortunately, if an insurer decides to raise your premiums or cancel your policy based on issues found via a drone inspection, there's probably not much you can do about it from a legal standpoint, Shanbron said, as long as the insurer complies with any applicable laws regarding rates and coverage. If, however, an insurer tries to deny coverage of a claim based on a drone inspection (or any other grounds), she does encourage property owners to consult with an attorney specializing in insurance claims. Homes Are Becoming Harder To Insure Thanks To Climate Change Read This Before You Let Your Car Insurance Track Your Driving For Cheaper Rates Another Insurance Company Halts Florida Home Policies Amid Worsening Storms
eNCA
10-05-2025
- General
- eNCA
Margot Friedlaender, Germany's voice of Holocaust remembrance
NEW YORK - German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlaender, who has died at the age of 103, won plaudits at home and abroad for her tireless efforts to foster reconciliation and understanding. Born and raised in Berlin, Friedlaender's family were among the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz over the course of World War II. Friedlander herself was interned at the camp in Theresienstadt in the modern-day Czech Republic, but survived the end of the war and emigrated to the United States. The death of her husband, Adolf Friedlaender, and a memoir writing course at a community centre in New York propelled her back to her hometown. Friedlander's prodigal return to Germany, where she dedicated herself to sharing her story with young people, made her one of the most prominent witnesses to the horrors of Adolf Hitler's regime. For her work promoting historical memory, she was given awards and showered by praise from political leaders from both sides of the Atlantic. "Perhaps the generation now that hears me in schools will say something to their children. I have no idea how far that will go," Friedlaender told German broadcaster ARD in 2021. Friedlaender preached for mutual empathy as an antidote to the world's evils. "Don't look at what separates you. Look at what unites you. Be human. Be reasonable," she said in 2024. - 'Try to make your life' - Born Margot Bendheim in 1921 to a family of button makers, young Margot had trained as a fashion illustrator. The family had lived through Hitler's rise to power and witnessed the Kristallnacht pogroms against Jewish businesses in 1938 but remained in Berlin. Friedlaender was 21 in 1943 when the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, came for her 17-year-old brother Ralph. Arriving home, Friedlaender spotted a stranger by the entrance to their building. The young girl covered her Jewish Star of David, passed the man and knocked on a neighbour's door. Soon after, she learnt that her brother had been taken and her mother, Auguste Bendheim, had turned herself in to the police to be by her son. She left Friedlaender a note: "Try to make your life." The invocation would stay with Friedlaender, as would the amber necklace left to her by her mother. Auguste Bendheim and brother Ralph were deported to Auschwitz and killed. Friedlaender's father, she would learn much later, was also murdered in the gas chambers at the camp. Friedlaender lived for more than a year in the underground, dying her hair red, submitting to nasal surgery to appear less Jewish. The people who protected her "risked everything to share a bed or their food with me", she told the Hamburger Abendblatt in 2010. Eventually, she was stopped and asked for her papers. Friedlaender confessed to her Jewish identity and was deported to Theresienstadt. - 'Stay careful' - At the concentration camp, she found Adolf Friedlaender, who she had known through the Jewish community in Berlin. After the Red Army liberated the camp in 1945, he asked her to marry him. A year later, the couple emigrated to the United States and settled in the New York borough of Queens. Adolf worked for Jewish organisations in the city, while Margot worked as a seamstress and a travel agent. AFP | JOHN MACDOUGALL In 1997, Adolf passed away and Friedlaender began taking classes at the 92nd Street Y, where he had worked, including a memoir writing course. At the centre, she met the German producer Thomas Halaczinsky, who, on hearing her recollections, wanted to return with Friedlaender to Berlin to film a documentary. Friedlaender returned to Germany in 2003 for the first time since she left, a step her husband had never been willing to contemplate. The resulting documentary was released in 2004 and her autobiography, whose title reused her mother's words, was published in 2008. In 2010 at the age of 88, Friedlaender decided to move permanently to Berlin and recovered her German citizenship. "I only got back what belonged to me," she said at the time. After her improbable return home, Friedlaender became a voice of moral authority in a country still trying to make amends for the atrocities of the Nazis. AFP | John MACDOUGALL Friedlaender was garlanded with awards, including Germany's federal order of merit, and graced the cover of the German edition of fashion magazine Vogue in 2024. On a visit to Berlin, then US President Joe Biden emotionally told the survivor of the Holocaust he was "actually honoured to be in your presence". In Germany, she dedicated herself to speaking to young people, touring schools and answering questions on her life. "I don't want to know what people's parents or grandparents did," Friedlaender told German weekly Die Zeit around her centenary. "I concentrate on telling them: stay careful, watch that something like that never happens again. Not for me, but for yourselves." Her last public engagement was just a few days before her death, at Berlin city hall, to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. "Be human! That is what I ask you to do: be human!," she said.
Belfast Telegraph
10-05-2025
- General
- Belfast Telegraph
German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander dies aged 103
Her death was announced by the Margot Friedlander Foundation in Berlin on its website. Details about where she died, as well as the cause of death, were not immediately made public. She died in the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. After spending much of her life in the United States, Ms Friedlander returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honoured with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. 'What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak,' Ms Friedlander said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. 'I would like to say that I don't just speak for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed – innocent people,' she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through there in her life. Mr Steinmeier said the country cannot be grateful enough for her gift. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive but 70% of them will be gone within the next 10 years. Ms Friedlander was born Margot Bendheim on November 5 1921. Her father, Artur Bendheim, owned a shop in Berlin. He had fought for Germany and had been decorated in the First World War. Ms Friedlander recalled that, after the Nazis took power, her father initially said that 'they don't mean us; We're Germans'. She added that 'we didn't see it until it was too late'. Ms Friedlander wanted to design clothes and started an apprenticeship as a tailor. After her parents divorced in 1937, Ms Friedlander, her mother and younger brother went to live with her grandparents. In 1941, they had to move to a so-called 'Jewish apartment', and Ms Friedlander was forced to work nights at a metal factory. In January 1943, just as the family was planning to flee Berlin, Ms Friedlander returned home to discover that her brother, Ralph, had been taken away by the Gestapo. A neighbour told her that her mother had decided to go to the police and 'go with Ralph, wherever that may be'. She passed on her mother's final message – 'Try to make your life,' which would later become the title of Ms Friedlander's autobiography – along with her handbag. Ms Friedlander went into hiding, taking off the yellow star that Jews were obliged to wear. She recalled getting her hair dyed red, reasoning that 'people think Jews don't have red hair'. She said that 16 people helped keep her under the radar over the next 15 months. That ended in April 1944 when she was taken in by police after being stopped for an identity check after leaving a bunker following an air raid. She said she quickly decided to tell the truth and say that she was Jewish. 'The running and hiding was over,' she said. 'I felt separated from the fate of my people. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them.' Ms Friedlander arrived in June 1944 at the packed Theresienstadt camp. In the spring of 1945, she recalled later, she saw the arrival of skeletal prisoners who had been forced on to death marches from Auschwitz ahead of that camp's liberation. 'At that moment, we heard of the death camps, and at that moment I understood that I would not see my mother and my brother again,' she said. Both were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Her father had fled in 1939 to Belgium. He later went to France, where he was interned, before being deported in 1942 to Auschwitz, where he was also killed. Shortly after the camp's liberation, she married Adolf Friedlander, an acquaintance from Berlin whom she met again at Theresienstadt. He had a sister in America, and – after months in a camp for displaced persons – they arrived in New York in 1946. Ms Friedlander stayed away from Germany for 57 years. She and her husband became US citizens; she worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency. Adolf Friedlander died in 1997, aged 87. Margot returned to Germany for the first time in 2003, when she was received at Berlin's City Hall along with others who had been pushed out by the Nazis. In 2010, she moved back to the German capital, where she told her story to students and was decorated with, among other things, the country's highest honour, the Order of Merit. She was made a citizen of honour of Berlin in 2018. Noting that there were few Holocaust survivors still alive, she told an audience that year: 'I would like you to be the witnesses we can't be for much longer.'
Irish Examiner
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander dies aged 103
Margot Friedlander, a German Jew who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and became a high-profile witness to Nazi persecution in her final years, has died aged 103. Her death was announced by the Margot Friedlander Foundation in Berlin on its website. Details about where she died, as well as the cause of death, were not immediately made public. Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander, centre, stands as members of the European Parliament applaud after an address in the plenary chamber at the European Parliament in Brussels in 2022 (Virginia Mayo/AP) She died in the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. After spending much of her life in the United States, Ms Friedlander returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honoured with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. 'What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak,' Ms Friedlander said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. 'I would like to say that I don't just speak for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed – innocent people,' she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through there in her life. Mr Steinmeier said the country cannot be grateful enough for her gift. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive but 70% of them will be gone within the next 10 years. Margot Friedlander shows the Mevlude Genc Medal after it was awarded to her at the Bode Museum in Berlin in June 2024 (Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa via AP) Ms Friedlander was born Margot Bendheim on November 5 1921. Her father, Artur Bendheim, owned a shop in Berlin. He had fought for Germany and had been decorated in the First World War. Ms Friedlander recalled that, after the Nazis took power, her father initially said that 'they don't mean us; We're Germans'. She added that 'we didn't see it until it was too late'. Ms Friedlander wanted to design clothes and started an apprenticeship as a tailor. After her parents divorced in 1937, Ms Friedlander, her mother and younger brother went to live with her grandparents. In 1941, they had to move to a so-called 'Jewish apartment', and Ms Friedlander was forced to work nights at a metal factory. Margot Friedlander accepts the applause after being awarded the Mevlude Genc Medal at the Bode Museum in Berlin in June 2024 (Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa via AP) In January 1943, just as the family was planning to flee Berlin, Ms Friedlander returned home to discover that her brother, Ralph, had been taken away by the Gestapo. A neighbour told her that her mother had decided to go to the police and 'go with Ralph, wherever that may be'. She passed on her mother's final message – 'Try to make your life,' which would later become the title of Ms Friedlander's autobiography – along with her handbag. Ms Friedlander went into hiding, taking off the yellow star that Jews were obliged to wear. She recalled getting her hair dyed red, reasoning that 'people think Jews don't have red hair'. She said that 16 people helped keep her under the radar over the next 15 months. That ended in April 1944 when she was taken in by police after being stopped for an identity check after leaving a bunker following an air raid. She said she quickly decided to tell the truth and say that she was Jewish. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them 'The running and hiding was over,' she said. 'I felt separated from the fate of my people. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them.' Ms Friedlander arrived in June 1944 at the packed Theresienstadt camp. In the spring of 1945, she recalled later, she saw the arrival of skeletal prisoners who had been forced on to death marches from Auschwitz ahead of that camp's liberation. 'At that moment, we heard of the death camps, and at that moment I understood that I would not see my mother and my brother again,' she said. Both were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Her father had fled in 1939 to Belgium. He later went to France, where he was interned, before being deported in 1942 to Auschwitz, where he was also killed. Shortly after the camp's liberation, she married Adolf Friedlander, an acquaintance from Berlin whom she met again at Theresienstadt. Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander appears for an event with US secretary of state Antony Blinken at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin in June 2021 (Andrew Harnik, Pool/AP) He had a sister in America, and – after months in a camp for displaced persons – they arrived in New York in 1946. Ms Friedlander stayed away from Germany for 57 years. She and her husband became US citizens; she worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency. Adolf Friedlander died in 1997, aged 87. Margot returned to Germany for the first time in 2003, when she was received at Berlin's City Hall along with others who had been pushed out by the Nazis. In 2010, she moved back to the German capital, where she told her story to students and was decorated with, among other things, the country's highest honour, the Order of Merit. She was made a citizen of honour of Berlin in 2018. Noting that there were few Holocaust survivors still alive, she told an audience that year: 'I would like you to be the witnesses we can't be for much longer.'
