Latest news with #Shoah
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Even in the ghetto we ate something': Holocaust survivors say Gaza hostages endure a ‘second Shoah'
The comments follow the release of multiple Hamas videos showing emaciated hostages. Holocaust survivors interviewed by Israeli outlets on Sunday said the skeletal appearance of Israeli hostages shown in new Hamas videos is akin to what they themselves experienced in Nazi camps, warning that the captives are living through 'a second Holocaust' and demanding immediate government action. Eighty-four-year-old Dina Dega, who survived several concentration camps, toldWalla that the image of 24-year-old hostage Evyatar David 'skin and bones … is exactly what we looked like in the camps... only he is alone and no one comes.' She called the government's inaction 'a second Shoah on Israeli soil.' Miriam Shapiro, 90, said she can no longer stand in the weekly demonstrations at Tel Aviv's Hostages Square but her 'heart is there.' 'My whole family perished in Auschwitz. I will not allow anyone else in this country to be left alone,' she told the site. For 88-year-old Hannah Raanan, the latest footage was unbearable: 'Even in the ghetto we managed to eat something. The hostages look worse.' She accused the government of 'betrayal' and added that the Hamas guards 'are fat from the humanitarian aid while our children collapse.' The Walla report also carried the voice of an unnamed survivor who said, 'The hungry child in the forest still lives inside me. Every hollow face brings her back.' 'Silence is a moral stain' Speaking separately to Ynet, Naftali Fürst, 93, who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, said the hollow faces of David and fellow hostage Rom Braslavski 'take me back eighty years.' 'We got a slice of bread and thin soup—sometimes we ate grass. I know the humiliation,' he said, urging Israelis to 'raise our voices—silence is a moral stain.' Dvora Weinstein, who fled burning Serbian villages as a child, said she 'could hardly breathe' on seeing the video: 'For me October 7 was a second Shoah. Our war is just, but the suffering must stop—bring them home before it's too late.' Revital Yakin Krakovsky of the International March of the Living added that the images are a 'direct trigger' for survivors: 'Hunger is hunger, terror is terror, and Jew-hatred has not changed.' Israel believes about 20 hostages are still alive in Gaza nearly 22 months after the October 7 massacres. Families say the latest video proves Hamas is using food deprivation as psychological torture. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told relatives on Sunday that negotiations 'continue relentlessly,' while the Foreign Ministry again demanded Red Cross access. Survivors, however, say time is running out. 'We are living proof life can be rebuilt after the inferno,' Shapiro said, 'but healing, for them and for us, starts only when every hostage is home.'
Associated Press
24-06-2025
- General
- Associated Press
VIrtual Tikkun™ Transforms Torah Experience
Custom Tikkuns for unique Torah scrolls remove barriers to leyning (reading/chanting) Torah 'Virtual Tikkun blends traditional Torah practice with modern technology providing a custom, online tikkun for each unique Torah scroll'— David Bayer SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, June 24, 2025 / / -- Virtual Tikkun 1.0 'Where Words of Torah Take Flight™, the pioneering digital Tikkun designed to capture and accurately represent unique Torah scrolls, delivers high-resolution online images of every column in each Sefer Torah together with the Chumash text for each column. Each scroll is organized by parshiot (portions) and aliyot (readings) with in-line indicators, providing direct and intuitive navigation. Students and experienced readers alike learn and practice their readings using views of the same Torah from which they will leyn (read/chant) - including the handwritten Torah column image, Chumash text, and most importantly, the side-by-side Tikkun view. 'Virtual Tikkun blends traditional Torah practice with modern technology' said David Bayer, Founder and CEO, 'providing a custom, online tikkun for each unique Torah scroll that simplifies and accelerates the Torah experience for students and seasoned Torah readers so they can leyn with confidence.' Traditional Tikkuns provide only a standard set of images from one Torah scroll. However, every Torah scroll is handwritten by a Sofer (scribe) and can vary based on word spacing, line space, letter kerning, calligraphic script differences, and actual condition. This can lead to real-time surprises that create anxiety for students and seasoned readers, as well as burden clergy, teachers and tutors with demands for one-off Torah images (that are now provided by Virtual Tikkun) and in-person practice sessions. Virtual Tikkun also enables synagogues that are fortunate to have multiple Sifrei Torah to utilize more of their kosher Torah scrolls in ritual practice, especially pre-war scrolls saved from the Shoah that differ significantly from modern Vav Torahs. B'nai Mitzvah, adult students and Baalei Kria (Torah readers) can now learn and review their readings using the Virtual Tikkun for each unique scroll to become comfortable with their reading. Overcoming these challenges was imperative for Rabbi Amanda Russell at Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco: 'To bring more of our Torah scrolls into rotation for regular reading use, including several saved from the Shoah, Virtual Tikkun delivers immediate, high-quality access to images of each scroll, with the customized side-by-side Tikkun view that makes learning and chanting Torah easy and accessible. This has empowered our B'nai Mitzvah and lay Baalei Kria across the board.' Virtual Tikkun uses artificial intelligence to optimize the high-resolution images, deskewing textual lines and optimizing contrast while maintaining contextual condition information. To create the traditional Tikkun view it intelligently reads the text in each unique Torah, automatically aligning the Chumash text correctly line-by-line and identifying parshiot and aliyot for the entire Torah to guide navigation. Users can easily download or print out their reading, as well as share locations with students and colleagues. As an internet-based application, Virtual Tikkun is available on-demand across a variety of digital devices. The audience using Virtual Tikkun extends from B'nai Mitzvah to seasoned readers. Together with clergy and their teachers they expect a high level of support for their Virtual Tikkun. 'What a pleasure this experience has been. The Virtual Tikkun team has been very easy to work with, very responsive to our needs and goals,' said Susan Simon, Director of Education at Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland CA, who leads an in-house team of lay Torah readers. 'They worked quickly and efficiently when photographing our Torah and listened closely to our feedback and suggestions for new application functionality, implementing them quickly. The intuitive interface of Virtual Tikkun has made our Torah readers very happy.' Virtual Tikkun v1.0 is available today. To ensure that all synagogues can avail themselves of Virtual Tikkun pricing is structured on a sliding scale. We will be exhibiting and previewing Virtual Tikkun at the ACC-GTM 2025 conference in Washington DC, June 29-July 2. Please visit or contact David Bayer at [email protected] for more details or to schedule a demo. ### About Virtual Tikkun: Virtual Tikkun strives to make the experience of chanting and hearing Torah vibrant and alive, shared by young and old alike, by delivering a Torah tikkun experience that accelerates learning while creating comfort and confidence. We leverage advanced technology to create custom, personalized tikkuns of your unique Sifrei Torah with detailed organization, robust capabilities, and flexible, on-demand delivery. Blending tradition with modernity, the Virtual Tikkun experience supports clergy and tutors, while empowering congregants and students to broaden the Torah experience community-wide. Virtual Tikkun, Where Word of Torah Take Flight, and the Virtual Tikkun logo are trademarks of Booksandart LLC. David Bayer Virtual Tikkun [email protected] Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after attack: 'We are better than this'
Barbara Steinmetz survived the Holocaust as a child, fleeing from one country to the next as her Jewish family was stripped of its citizenship. They left Italy for Hungary, then to France and finally Portugal before finding refuge outside of Europe in the Dominican Republic. The first five years of her life with her big sister Margaret and parents was a blur of escapes, never with anything more than what they could carry. The one thing that remained constant: their family stayed together. It's a message that resonates with her nearly 90 years later and why she was marching in Boulder on Sunday. She was part of a small group bringing attention to the Jewish hostages held by Hamas to bring them home when she was attacked. A man threw Molotov cocktails at the group, injuring 12 people. Steinmetz, 88, told NBC News earlier this week that she and other members of the group Run for Their Lives were peacefully demonstrating when they were attacked. "We're Americans. We are better than this,' she told the news outlet. They should be 'kind and decent human beings." Steinmetz spent much of her life trying not to talk about what her family endured. Her father's message to her was always to move to forward. In 1998, she sat down to share her story with the University of Southern California's Shoah project, which documents the lives of Holocaust survivors. In an interview stretching almost three hours, Steinmetz talked about her family's escape, the relatives who died in the war, and the lessons they learned. She was 61 when she did the Shoah interview, one of thousands of 52,000 stories recorded over eight years. 'Family is what's most important,' Steinmetz said. She was too young to remember much from her family leaving Italy in 1938 when Benito Mussolini stripped Jewish people of their citizenship at the direction of Adolf Hitler. What she remembers, she said in the interview, was an atmosphere of trauma. Boulder attack: Firebombing suspect Mohamed Soliman charged with 118 criminal counts Her father, who had run a hotel on the northern Italian coast after leaving Hungary, visited embassies and wrote letters to various countries to try to move his family as Hitler's power grew. Each time, their move was temporary. Each time, they brought only what they could carry. But each time, they stayed together. 'Things were not important, people are important. What you have in your brain and in your heart that is the only thing that's important,' she said. 'And that's totally transportable.' In the past few years, Steinmetz has told her family's story at Holocaust remembrance events and classrooms, libraries and churches. She wants people to understand history to understand that Jewish people are being targeted again. 'Hitler basically took (my father's) life, his dream away…. The rest of life was chasing, running, trying to make a living,' she said. The family eventually settled in Sosúa where the Dominican Republic Resettlement Association (DORSA) had established a refugee camp for Jewish people. Life was difficult there, she said, as her family and had to learn to build houses, farm the rocky terrain, and raise their families. Steinmetz and her sister, three years older, were soon sent to a Catholic school, where only the head nun knew they were Jewish. A nun used to let her change the clothes of the Baby Jesus figurine at the church, and for a few minutes each day, she felt like she had a doll. She remembers sleeping next to her sister, and crying inconsolably. 'I never cried again. Years and years and years later, when something happened, my mother and father died, I had a hard time crying. And to this day, I have a hard time crying,' she said. "It is just something I don't do.' The family didn't speak of these moves for years, she would say. "They couldn't help where they were living, it was the only thing they could do to stay alive." The family settled in Boston in 1945, and soon learned much of their family in Europe had died, some in the war, others after. The family would move several times again as her father found different jobs, and she and her sister began going to Jewish summer camps. It was there, she said, that she "fell into the Zionist spirit. I loved the feeling that there would be a state of Israel." She finally felt like she had a community, she said. "These were my people,"she said. "This group was very tight. I was very welcome there. It was a really important part of my life." Her life, she said, was shaped by the war. "It was an experience that affected everything we did," she said, lessons she and her husband, who died in 2010, passed to their three daughters. In all the years of moving from place to place, she remembers they never went to sleep without saying a prayer for their family in Europe, to "bless Aunt Virgie, Emra and Oscar and Pearl... our grandparents." When she met some of this family again in the mid 1950s, "I knew them. They had been part of my everyday life … they were part of my vocabulary." At the end of telling her story, of two hours and 54 minutes of mostly emotionless factual testimony, the interviewer for the Shoah project asks if there is anythingshe hopes people could take away from her story. "We need a broader picture of all of humanity," she said. "We need to educate ourselves and always need to be on top of what is going on in the world and be alert and be responsive to it." And it's why she continues to tell their story, to warn about antisemitism ― even as hate against Jews soars to historic levels. Just last year, Steinmetz showed up to a Boulder City Council meeting in support of her local Jewish community. A woman sat down next to Steinmetz, she recounted in a video interview in June 2024. The woman had a Palestinian flag and a sign that read, "from the river to the sea," a phrase that can be used to promote antisemitism. Steimetz turned to her and said: "Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?'" The woman just turned away. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars," Steinmetz said. People are taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house, she said. But in the following breath, Steinmetz rejected the notion that silence is ever an option. "It is up to each of us to say something, to say something and do something. 'You can say no; I'm a human being just like that other person. We are all humans.'" This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after antisemitic attack
The Herald Scotland
06-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after antisemitic attack
The one thing that remained constant: their family stayed together. It's a message that resonates with her nearly 90 years later and why she was marching in Boulder on Sunday. She was part of a small group bringing attention to the Jewish hostages held by Hamas to bring them home when she was attacked. A man threw Molotov cocktails at the group, injuring 12 people. Steinmetz, 88, told NBC News earlier this week that she and other members of the group Run for Their Lives were peacefully demonstrating when they were attacked. "We're Americans. We are better than this," she told the news outlet. They should be "kind and decent human beings." Steinmetz spent much of her life trying not to talk about what her family endured. Her father's message to her was always to move to forward. In 1998, she sat down to share her story with the University of Southern California's Shoah project, which documents the lives of Holocaust survivors. In an interview stretching almost three hours, Steinmetz talked about her family's escape, the relatives who died in the war, and the lessons they learned. She was 61 when she did the Shoah interview, one of thousands of 52,000 stories recorded over eight years. "Family is what's most important," Steinmetz said. She was too young to remember much from her family leaving Italy in 1938 when Benito Mussolini stripped Jewish people of their citizenship at the direction of Adolf Hitler. What she remembers, she said in the interview, was an atmosphere of trauma. Boulder attack: Firebombing suspect Mohamed Soliman charged with 118 criminal counts Her father, who had run a hotel on the northern Italian coast after leaving Hungary, visited embassies and wrote letters to various countries to try to move his family as Hitler's power grew. Each time, their move was temporary. Each time, they brought only what they could carry. But each time, they stayed together. "Things were not important, people are important. What you have in your brain and in your heart that is the only thing that's important," she said. "And that's totally transportable." In the past few years, Steinmetz has told her family's story at Holocaust remembrance events and classrooms, libraries and churches. She wants people to understand history to understand that Jewish people are being targeted again. "Hitler basically took (my father's) life, his dream away.... The rest of life was chasing, running, trying to make a living," she said. The family eventually settled in in Sosua where the Dominican Republic Resettlement Association (DORSA) had established a refugee camp for Jewish people. Life was difficult there, she said, as her family and had to learn to build houses, farm the rocky terrain, and raise their families. Steinmetz and her sister, three years older, were soon sent to a Catholic school, where only the head nun knew they were Jewish. A nun used to let her change the clothes of the Baby Jesus figurine at the church, and for a few minutes each day, she felt like she had a doll. She remembers sleeping next to her sister, and crying inconsolably. "I never cried again. Years and years and years later, when something happened, my mother and father died, I had a hard time crying. And to this day, I have a hard time crying," she said. "It is just something I don't do." The family didn't speak of these moves for years, she would say. "They couldn't help where they were living, it was the only thing they could do to stay alive." The family settled in Boston in 1945, and soon learned much of their family in Europe had died, some in the war, others after. The family would move several times again as her father found different jobs, and she and her sister began going to Jewish summer camps. It was there, she said, that she "fell into the Zionist spirit. I loved the feeling that there would be a state of Israel." She finally felt like she had a community, she said. "These were my people,"she said. "This group was very tight. I was very welcome there. It was a really important part of my life." Her life, she said, was shaped by the war. "It was an experience that affected everything we did," she said, lessons she and her husband, who died in 2010, passed to their three daughters. In all the years of moving from place to place, she remembers they never went to sleep without saying a prayer for their family in Europe, to "bless Aunt Virgie, Emra and Oscar and Pearl... our grandparents." When she met some of this family again in the mid 1950s, "I knew them. They had been part of my everyday life ... they were part of my vocabulary." At the end of telling her story, of two hours and 54 minutes of mostly emotionless factual testimony, the interviewer for the Shoah project asks if there is anythingshe hopes people could take away from her story. "We need a broader picture of all of humanity," she said. "We need to educate ourselves and always need to be on top of what is going on in the world and be alert and be responsive to it." And it's why she continues to tell their story, to warn about antisemitism - even as hate against Jews soars to historic levels. Just last year, Steinmetz showed up to a Boulder City Council meeting in support of her local Jewish community. A woman sat down next to Steinmetz, she recounted in a video interview in June 2024. The woman had a Palestinian flag and a sign that read, "from the river to the sea," a phrase that can be used to promote antisemitism. Steimetz turned to her and said: "Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?'" The woman just turned away. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars," Steinmetz said. People are taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house, she said. But in the following breath, Steinmetz rejected the notion that silence is ever an option. "It is up to each of us to say something, to say something and do something. 'You can say no; I'm a human being just like that other person. We are all humans.'"
USA Today
06-06-2025
- General
- USA Today
Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after attack: 'We are better than this'
Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after attack: 'We are better than this' "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars." Show Caption Hide Caption Boulder community honors attack victims, condemns antisemitism The Boulder Jewish Community Center hosted a vigil for community members to come and support victims of a fire-bomb attack. Barbara Steinmetz survived the Holocaust as a child, fleeing from one country to the next as her Jewish family was stripped of its citizenship. They left Italy for Hungary, then to France and finally Portugal before finding refuge outside of Europe in the Dominican Republic. The first five years of her life with her big sister Margaret and parents was a blur of escapes, never with anything more than what they could carry. The one thing that remained constant: their family stayed together. It's a message that resonates with her nearly 90 years later and why she was marching in Boulder on Sunday. She was part of a small group bringing attention to the Jewish hostages held by Hamas to bring them home when she was attacked. A man threw Molotov cocktails at the group, injuring 12 people. Steinmetz, 88, told NBC News earlier this week that she and other members of the group Run for Their Lives were peacefully demonstrating when they were attacked. "We're Americans. We are better than this,' she told the news outlet. They should be 'kind and decent human beings." Steinmetz spent much of her life trying not to talk about what her family endured. Her father's message to her was always to move to forward. In 1998, she sat down to share her story with the University of Southern California's Shoah project, which documents the lives of Holocaust survivors. In an interview stretching almost three hours, Steinmetz talked about her family's escape, the relatives who died in the war, and the lessons they learned. She was 61 when she did the Shoah interview, one of thousands of 52,000 stories recorded over eight years. 'Family is what's most important,' Steinmetz said. She was too young to remember much from her family leaving Italy in 1938 when Benito Mussolini stripped Jewish people of their citizenship at the direction of Adolf Hitler. What she remembers, she said in the interview, was an atmosphere of trauma. Boulder attack: Firebombing suspect Mohamed Soliman charged with 118 criminal counts Her father, who had run a hotel on the northern Italian coast after leaving Hungary, visited embassies and wrote letters to various countries to try to move his family as Hitler's power grew. Each time, their move was temporary. Each time, they brought only what they could carry. But each time, they stayed together. 'Things were not important, people are important. What you have in your brain and in your heart that is the only thing that's important,' she said. 'And that's totally transportable.' In the past few years, Steinmetz has told her family's story at Holocaust remembrance events and classrooms, libraries and churches. She wants people to understand history to understand that Jewish people are being targeted again. 'Hitler basically took (my father's) life, his dream away…. The rest of life was chasing, running, trying to make a living,' she said. The family eventually settled in Sosúa where the Dominican Republic Resettlement Association (DORSA) had established a refugee camp for Jewish people. Life was difficult there, she said, as her family and had to learn to build houses, farm the rocky terrain, and raise their families. Steinmetz and her sister, three years older, were soon sent to a Catholic school, where only the head nun knew they were Jewish. A nun used to let her change the clothes of the Baby Jesus figurine at the church, and for a few minutes each day, she felt like she had a doll. She remembers sleeping next to her sister, and crying inconsolably. 'I never cried again. Years and years and years later, when something happened, my mother and father died, I had a hard time crying. And to this day, I have a hard time crying,' she said. "It is just something I don't do.' The family didn't speak of these moves for years, she would say. "They couldn't help where they were living, it was the only thing they could do to stay alive." The family settled in Boston in 1945, and soon learned much of their family in Europe had died, some in the war, others after. The family would move several times again as her father found different jobs, and she and her sister began going to Jewish summer camps. It was there, she said, that she "fell into the Zionist spirit. I loved the feeling that there would be a state of Israel." She finally felt like she had a community, she said. "These were my people,"she said. "This group was very tight. I was very welcome there. It was a really important part of my life." Her life, she said, was shaped by the war. "It was an experience that affected everything we did," she said, lessons she and her husband, who died in 2010, passed to their three daughters. In all the years of moving from place to place, she remembers they never went to sleep without saying a prayer for their family in Europe, to "bless Aunt Virgie, Emra and Oscar and Pearl... our grandparents." When she met some of this family again in the mid 1950s, "I knew them. They had been part of my everyday life … they were part of my vocabulary." At the end of telling her story, of two hours and 54 minutes of mostly emotionless factual testimony, the interviewer for the Shoah project asks if there is anythingshe hopes people could take away from her story. "We need a broader picture of all of humanity," she said. "We need to educate ourselves and always need to be on top of what is going on in the world and be alert and be responsive to it." And it's why she continues to tell their story, to warn about antisemitism ― even as hate against Jews soars to historic levels. Just last year, Steinmetz showed up to a Boulder City Council meeting in support of her local Jewish community. A woman sat down next to Steinmetz, she recounted in a video interview in June 2024. The woman had a Palestinian flag and a sign that read, "from the river to the sea," a phrase that can be used to promote antisemitism. Steimetz turned to her and said: "Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?'" The woman just turned away. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars," Steinmetz said. People are taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house, she said. But in the following breath, Steinmetz rejected the notion that silence is ever an option. "It is up to each of us to say something, to say something and do something. 'You can say no; I'm a human being just like that other person. We are all humans.'"
