Skip to Main Content
A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

The Holocaust

Oskar Jakob and Suzanne Rico

How this St. Louis Holocaust survivor and a Nazi descendant found each other to share their stories

Bill Motchan, Special to the Jewish LightPublished May 13, 2024

Five hundred rivets—that was Oskar Jakob’s goal. Failure to meet the quota in a 12-hour shift meant severe punishment. “If I didn’t make the minimum, I got beaten,” Jakob said. Oskar Jakob, 94, is a Jewish St. Louisan and Holocaust...

Dee Dee Simon and Governor Mike Parson

Missouri Governor honors Holocaust survivors, educators

By Bill Motchan, Special to the Jewish LightPublished May 7, 2024

Dear Mrs. Feldman, You recommended that everyone always stand up against prejudice, discrimination and stereotypes. What you said connects to everything that I learned at the Holocaust museum. You defined something I can do in today's time to help people...

ADL teams up with Jewish TikTok stars to fight Holocaust denial

ADL teams up with Jewish TikTok stars to fight Holocaust denial

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished May 6, 2024

In an effort to combat the rising tide of Holocaust denial and misinformation, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) launched a new campaign targeting Gen Zers on social media platforms, particularly TikTok. Launching on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the new...

Fran Poger.

St. Louis remembers, reflects and renews commitment to ‘Never Again Is Now’ on Yom HaShoah

Bill Motchan, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished May 5, 2024

The St. Louis Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Day service at Congregation Shaare Emeth on Sunday, May 5 took on special significance this year. The theme was “Never Again Is Now,” in recognition of the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack...

Women’s auxiliaries and SS officers enjoy music not far from the barracks of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Hidden in this picture, the murder of 1.1 million Jews

By PJ Grisar, The ForwardPublished April 24, 2024

In 2006, Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, was paging through a newly submitted photo album from an anonymous donor. The album contained images from Auschwitz, but they were not what she expected. “I...

Peacock’s ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ tackles a Holocaust love story based on real events

Peacock’s ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ tackles a Holocaust love story based on real events

Shira Li Bartov, JTAPublished April 22, 2024

(JTA) — A Holocaust romance, sparked when a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau is forced to tattoo a number on another prisoner’s arm and they fall in love at first sight, sounds almost implausibly uplifting for a story set in a concentration camp. But...

Oskar Jakob and Suzanne Rico

St. Louis Holocaust survivor meets Nazi descendant in unprecedented conversation

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished March 29, 2024

History and humanity are set to converge in an unprecedented upcoming conversation between a St. Louis Holocaust survivor and a descendant of a Nazi engineer. On May 16, Oskar Jakob, who survived five Nazi camps before being liberated by the British,...

Joey King, as Halina, and Logan Lerman, as Andy, in a scene from "We Were the Lucky Ones." (Hulu)

The story behind the new series ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ and a Jewish family’s buried past

Shira Li Bartov, JTAPublished March 28, 2024

(JTA) — Georgia Hunter was 15 when she discovered that her grandfather was Jewish. The revelation took place a year after his death, while Hunter was interviewing her grandmother for a school project. “A high school English teacher said, ‘Go...

The historical drama ‘The Zone of Interest’ focuses on the SS Nazi Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss  who lives with his family in a home next to the concentration camp.

‘Zone of Interest’ producer calls Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech a ‘distraction,’ as Auschwitz memorial defends it

Andrew Lapin, JTAPublished March 17, 2024

(JTA) — A Jewish executive producer of the Oscar-winning Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” said he disagreed with director Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the Academy Awards ceremony criticizing Israel, while the Auschwitz Memorial issued a statement...

Neidorff family hosts Pulitzer winning author on Pope Pius XII and Hitler for vitural event

Neidorff family hosts Pulitzer winning author on Pope Pius XII and Hitler for vitural event

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished March 10, 2024

In late October 1941, a bishop in Slovakia wrote to Pope Pius XII  to alert him that the country’s Jews “are simply being shot, systematically murdered, without distinction of sex or age.” This was the first credible account of the pope learning...

St. Louis premiere of 'Four Winters' unveils Jewish women's armed resistance during Holocaust

St. Louis premiere of ‘Four Winters’ unveils Jewish women’s armed resistance during Holocaust

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished March 4, 2024

For more than a decade, filmmaker Julia Mintz meticulously crafted her award-winning documentary “Four Winters” to challenge existing myths surrounding Jewish survival during World War II, offering a new and differing portrayal...

Found diary helps retell tragedy of SS St. Louis victims in new graphic novel

Found diary helps retell tragedy of SS St. Louis victims in new graphic novel

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished February 21, 2024

The story of the SS St. Louis is a tragic chapter in the history of the Holocaust. The St. Louis was a German ocean liner carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in 1939. The ship sought asylum in Cuba but was denied entry. It then attempted...

Load More Stories