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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

Gerda Cole, 98, reunited with her daughter, Sonya Grist, 79, after eight decades apart. Cole, who was a Jewish refugee in England during World War II, gave her newborn daughter up for adoption because she couldn't care for her. (Published with permission courtesy of Revera)

This Holocaust survivor reunited with the daughter she never knew

Evelyn Frick, KvellerPublished June 3, 2022

On May 7, 2022, Holocaust survivor Gerda Cole attended her 98th birthday party. The recreation room at Revera Kennedy Lodge Long Term Care Home in Toronto, where Gerda lives, was decorated in blue — her favorite color — and she wore a crown and...

Sharon Berry speaks during a ceremony April 8, 2021 to give her father's bracelet to the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum.

Holocaust Museum receives long-lost bracelet secretly crafted in concentration camp

By Eric Berger, Associate EditorPublished April 9, 2021

When Sharon Berry was reviewing her emails in July 2018, she paused at one from the organization that oversees a memorial at the former Buchenwald concentration camp and thought, “This must be a sick joke,” she recalled recently.It was about a bracelet...

Holocaust Survivor to speak at Hillel’s Kristallnacht commemoration

Holocaust Survivor to speak at Hillel’s Kristallnacht commemoration

Published November 6, 2020

Holocaust Survivor Eva Perlman will share her extraordinary life story at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10. Her talk is hosted by Hillel at Washington University and the Hillel Leadership Council in commemoration of Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass). ...

Elsie Hirsch Levy in a 2011 Jewish Light file photo.  Photo: Kristi Foster

Holocaust survivor Elsie Hirsch Levy celebrates 100th Birthday

Published July 26, 2017

Holocaust survivor Elsie Hirsch Levy, a Holocaust survivor now residing in St. Louis, marked her 100th birthday on July 2, 2017.  She was the subject of an article in the May 25, 2011 issue of the St. Louis Jewish Light regarding her recovering some...

Letters to the Editor: July 19, 2017

Published July 20, 2017

Editorial off-base I am appalled at your June 28 editorial headline, “Bibi’s Biggest Blunder,” about the Israeli prime minister’s cancellation of plans for a pluralistic prayer site at the Western Wall. Women in Judaism are far from being considered...

Jerry Koenig

Jerry Koenig, Holocaust survivor who shared his painful story, dies at 87

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished June 21, 2017

Jerry Koenig, a Holocaust survivor who shared his harrowing story with a multitude of audiences in the bistate area, died Monday, June 11. He was 87 and a longtime resident of Chesterfield. The cause of death was complications from abdominal surgery and...

Nelly Tagar (left) and Joy Rieger star in ‘Past Life’ as sisters in late-1970s Jerusalem who investigate a taboo topic: the mystery of their difficult father’s experiences in Poland during the Holocaust. 

Complex Holocaust mystery comes to light in ‘Past Life’

By Cate Marquis, Special to the Jewish LightPublished June 1, 2017

“Past Life” is a tense and moving Israeli mystery based on a true story about a Holocaust survivor and his two daughters.Directed by award-winning Israeli writer/director Avi Nesher, the film begins in 1977. The younger daughter, Sephi Milch (Joy...

Sara Najman Wolf

Sara Najman Wolf, ‘Matriarch’ of local survivors, dies at 89

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished May 22, 2017

Sara Najman Wolf, described as the “Matriarch of the survivor community” by Jean Cavender, director of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum, and who worked with her late husband Leo to help establish the museum, died May 12.  She was 89, and a longtime...

Stacey Newman is Missouri state representative of the 87th District, which includes Clayton and parts of Brentwood, Ladue, Richmond Heights and University City.

Reflections on Holocaust by a Jewish state legislator

Published April 27, 2017

St. Louis, along with numerous U.S. and Israeli cities, observed Yom Hashoah, the “Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust” this past week.  Signed into formal law by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1953, it is a yearly reminder for each of us to...

 

Rose Safar Rosen, Auschwitz survivor, and longtime St. Louisan, dies at 95

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished April 6, 2017

Rose Safar Rosen, formerly of St. Louis, who as a young girl imprisoned at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp was literally pushed out of the line of those marked for certain death, and who after the war met her husband at a Displaced Persons camp in Europe,...

Eva Schloss (third from bottom left), a Holocaust survivor and the stepsister of Anne Frank, is shown with students during a visit to Washington University last week. At top left is Rabbi Hershey Novack of Chabad on Campus, which sponsored Schloss’ visit.

A survivor’s story

Ellen Futterman, EditorPublished February 22, 2017

A survivor’s storyWho knew? Before last week, I had no idea Anne Frank, of diarist fame, had a living stepsister.But there I was Thursday night, at Chabad on Campus at Washington University, enjoying conversation with 87-year-old Eva Schloss, a Holocaust...

Marge Bilinsky

Marge Bilinsky, former local director of AJ Congress, filmmaker, dies at 83

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished November 2, 2016

Margaret (Marge) Bilinsky, a Holocaust survivor and filmmaker who served for 25 years as regional director of the St. Louis Council and Chapter of the American Jewish Congress, died Sunday, Oct. 23, at age 83. A longtime resident of the St. Louis area,...

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