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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

Debunking Holocaust denial claims

Debunking Holocaust denial claims

Published April 25, 2023

This content first appeared on ADL.org and is republished here with permission. Holocaust deniers use a range of myths to “prove” the validity of their claims. They share these lies in the texts of pseudo-academic journals, antisemitic...

Key tropes in Holocaust denial

Key tropes in Holocaust denial

The Anti-Defamation League, Special To The Jewish LightPublished April 24, 2023

This content first appeared on ADL.org and is republished here with permission. Trope: Details of the Holocaust Have Been Exaggerated Some so-called Holocaust “revisionists” claim they don’t deny the Holocaust happened,...

A short history of Holocaust denial in the United States

A short history of Holocaust denial in the United States

The Anti-Defamation League, Special To The Jewish LightPublished April 23, 2023

This content first appeared on ADL.org and is republished here with permission. The movement to deny that the Nazis murdered approximately six million Jews during World War II — the historical event known as the Holocaust — emerged...

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., Nov. 9, 1943. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration.

How 80 years ago today the U.S., Great Britain abandoned the Jews of Europe

Dr. Rafael Medoff, Special To The Jewish LightPublished April 18, 2023

The name “Bermuda” conjures up a variety of images. Tourists think of it as a tropical vacation site. Scientists ponder the disappearance of ships in the Bermuda Triangle. But for those concerned with the history of the Holocaust, Bermuda is remembered...

Photos: 'Voice of Resistance' heard loud and clear at Sunday's Yom HaShoah ceremony

Photos: ‘Voice of Resistance’ heard loud and clear at Sunday’s Yom HaShoah ceremony

Bill Motchan, Special to the Jewish LightPublished April 17, 2023

United Hebrew Congregation hosted the 2023 Yom HaShoah Holocaust remembrance ceremony on April 16. It marked the first in-person gathering since the pre-Covid 2019 Yom HaShoah. During the ceremony, survivors and descendants lit candles in memory of...

Jews being led to Umschlagplatz; photo taken from a window of St Zofia Hospital at the corner of Żelazna and Nowolipie Streets, most likely (to be confirmed) overlooking Nowolipie Street; author’s comment noted after the war at the back of the print held in the USHMM archive in Washington, DC:
”Scenes from the evacuation of the ghetto, ca 20 April 1943”
Photo: Z. L. Grzywaczewski / from the family archive of Maciej Grzywaczewski, son of Leszek Grzywaczewski / scan of the negative: POLIN Museum, Archaeology of Photography Foundation

A look at never-before-seen Warsaw Ghetto Uprising photos

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 16, 2023

April 19, 2023, marks the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. On that day in 1943, on the eve of Passover, 50,000 people were still imprisoned in the area of the Warsaw ghetto—among them 20-year old Mietek Pachter, 21-year...

Samuel Willenberg, the last survivor of the Treblinka uprising, poses for a picture at his art studio in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2010.
AP Photo/Oded Balilty

Defying the Holocaust didn’t just mean uprising and revolt: Remembering Jews’ everyday resistance

Chad Gibbs, College of Charleston, Special To The Jewish LightPublished April 14, 2023

Richard Glazar insisted that no one survived the Holocaust without help. To this Prague-born Jewish survivor, who endured Nazi imprisonment at Treblinka and Theresienstadt, plus years in hiding, it was impossible to persevere without others’ support....

Studio portrait of Sara Fogelman and her three children in prewar Radomsko, Poland, shortly before the war.Pictured are Pola (left), Genia (bottom), Abraham Joseph (far right), and their mother Sara (top.) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Pola Spitzer

How to view rare film depicting Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 11, 2023

In January, construction workers renovating an old tenement house in the city of Lodz, Poland made an unusual discovery. They unearthed hundreds of Jewish artifacts that were hidden before the Nazis occupied the city. The cache included menorahs, kiddush...

Benjamin Ferencz

Ben Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor dies aged 103

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished April 10, 2023

Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials had died. According to St. John’s University law professor John Barrett, who runs a blog about the Nuremberg trials, Ferencz died Friday evening in Boynton Beach, Florida. "I am deeply...

Holocaust survivor Larisa Graypel lights a candle of remembrance at the 2019 Yom HaShoah Community Commemoration organized by the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center of St. Louis and held at Congregation Shaare Emeth.  

Yom HaShoah 2023 commemoration will return to in-person format

Published March 21, 2023

This year’s Holocaust commemoration, Yom HaShoah 2023: Voices of Resistance, will be presented at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 16 at United Hebrew Congregation. As in past years, this program will honor the victims, remember the survivors, and educate...

The Nazis made the yellow badge infamous around the world, but its roots are much older. Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Wash U professor traces the long history of antisemitic badges

Flora Cassen, Washington University in St LouisPublished March 16, 2023

Growing up in Belgium, I’d hear the story of how my grandparents married during the Nazi occupation. It was not a time for celebrations, particularly for Jewish families like theirs. Naively, though, they thought marriage would protect them from being...

Jodi Picoult and her daughter Samantha Van Leer pose at the opening night of the musical "Between The Lines," July 11, 2022 in New York City. (Bruce Glikas/Getty Images)

Florida school bans Holocaust novel by Jodi Picoult, other Jewish authors too

Andrew Lapin, JTAPublished March 13, 2023

(JTA) – A Holocaust-themed novel by bestselling author Jodi Picoult was among dozens of books removed from a South Florida school district library’s circulation last month, in the latest example of books with Jewish themes getting swept up amid a...

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