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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

Blue Bus Productions

Two Holocaust survivors, reunited after 80 years apart

Published December 5, 2023

(New York Jewish Week) — In March 2022, Jack Waksal thought he recognized Sam Ron, the keynote speaker at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual South Florida dinner in Boca Raton. But he couldn’t quite place him — after all, at 97, Waksal...

The Boxcar

St. Louis artist shares story behind this haunting piece of Holocaust art

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished November 27, 2023

As a young boy growing up in St. Louis, metal sculpture artist Dale Dicker, 74, was surrounded by many family members who survived the Holocaust. His grandfather, Joseph Barg, saw the rise of Nazism early on and successfully got his wife Yetta's family...

From “Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust.:" Romani activist demonstrate in front of a USHMC meeting in Washington D.C. in 1984.

Revealing the forgotten ties between Jews and Romani victims of Nazi atrocities

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished November 13, 2023

In 1989, then Washington University Chancellor William H. Danforth created the Holocaust Memorial Lecture series. Since then, the series has been held annually on or near the date of Nov. 9, the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms in Nazi Germany. The...

The Bornplatz Synagogue in Hamburg, Germany once held 1,200 congregants before it was destroyed in Kristallnacht.

St. Louis Holocaust Museum labels Hamas attack a ‘pogrom’ on anniversary of Kristallnacht

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished November 9, 2023

In a powerful statement issued on the 85th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum is labeling the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel as a "pogrom," drawing chilling parallels between the darkest chapters...

An image from the Holocaust history virtual reality experience being developed by the Conference of Jewish Claims Against Germany.

From virtual reality to digital synagogues, tech adds new dimension to Kristallnacht commemorations in Germany

Toby Axelrod, JTAPublished November 9, 2023

(JTA) — Nov. 9 marks several historical anniversaries in Germany, including Adolf Hitler’s failed putsch in 1923 and the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. But the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 eclipses them all, in terms of public significance. In Germany...

The Bornplatz Synagogue in Hamburg, Germany once held 1,200 congregants before it was destroyed in Kristallnacht.

On 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Holocaust survivors say they fear familiar antisemitism

Philissa Cramer, JTAPublished November 9, 2023

(JTA) — The comparisons are easy to draw: broken glass, burned buildings, shuttered businesses, dead Jews. Eighty-five years after Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish riots that marked a brutal turning point in the Nazi campaign of persecution in Germany,...

A group from Explore St. Louis visits the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum’s Impact Lab in late October.

St. Louis Holocaust Museum celebrates one year anniversary

Bill Motchan, Special To The Jewish LightPublished November 8, 2023

One year ago, St. Louis became a major hub of Holocaust awareness and education when the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum opened. The 36,000-square-foot facility began welcoming visitors on Nov. 2, 2022, following a 2½-year, $21 million renovation...

Sami Steigmann

Man who survived cruel Nazi medical experiments as baby, brings story to Maryville University

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished October 4, 2023

Born just two months after the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Sami Steigmann's family lived in Romania. By 1941, the 2-year-old Steigmann was living in a labor camp in Ukraine, where he was subjected to cruel Nazi medical experiments. At one point, Steigmann...

U.S. Army good conduct medal, awarded to Gunther N. Kohn ca. 1945.

OSS agent Gunther Kohn’s U.S. Army medal

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished October 2, 2023

Starting this month, the Jewish Light and the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum are partnering to share stories about artifacts inside the museum, that may not necessarily be on display. This month's artifact feature is a U.S. Army good conduct...

Pavel Haas

Composer murdered at Auschwitz gets his due from the St. Louis Symphony

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished September 10, 2023

Pavel Haas was a Czech composer born to a Jewish family in Brno in 1899. A prodigy, Haas produced his first formal composition by the age of 14. In 1938, his successful career was turned upside down with the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland, which eventually...

Documents on the pontificate of Pope Pius XII are seen at the Vatican Secret Archives in Vatican City, Vatican, February 27, 2020. The Vatican Apostolic Library opened the Holy See’s wartime archives on the pontificate of Pope Pius XII between the years 1939 to 1958.

Newly discovered document lists more than 3,000 Jews the Catholic Church sheltered from Nazis

Published September 7, 2023

(JTA) – Newly uncovered documentation appears to confirm that Catholic convents and monasteries sheltered more than 3,000 Jews from the Holocaust following the Nazi takeover of Rome in 1943. The papers, which have yet to be made public, were discovered...

During her lifetime, Miriam Barr instilled a love of learning into her son, Eliav, and his three siblings.

Couple pledges $1 million to WashU Libraries in honor of Holocaust survivor Miriam Barr

By Emma Dent, Washington UniversityPublished August 31, 2023

Before Miriam Barr was an adult, she was a survivor. Born in 1937 to Jewish parents living in present-day eastern Ukraine, she was only a toddler when her father died. When Barr was four, the Nazis apprehended her and her mother and put them on a train...

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