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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

Michael Schmitz (front row, second from right) is shown with Polish volunteers.

Michael Schmitz volunteering in Poland to aid in Ukraine relief effort

Bill Motchan, Special For The Jewish LightPublished August 24, 2022

As college classes wound down last spring, Michael Schmitz started looking for a summer internship. With no prospects on the horizon, he found a much different college break experience: volunteering in Poland for Ukraine relief efforts. Schmitz, 21,...

Ben Cohen

Truth is not selective: Poland vs. Netflix

By Ben Cohen, JNSPublished November 21, 2019

In debate over Holocaust collaboration, Poland seeks complete exoneration, which doesn’t comport with the historical recordPoland’s government won an important victory on the battleground of history last week. It succeeded in persuading the entertainment-streaming...

The Belzec Memorial on the site of the former Nazi death camp in southeast Poland.  

Poland grapples with legacy of WWII death camps

By Robert SteinPublished September 5, 2019

The walls, higher in memory than in reality, form the central path that leads to the gas chamber. Stacks of inorganic, valueless furnace slags raked from the top of molten steel are strewn about a vast acreage, lifeless. I stood at the entrance to the...

in a 2010 Jewish Light file photo by Lisa Mandel.

Maria Szapszewicz, 90; Auschwitz survivor shared her story with the world

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished October 31, 2012

Maria Szapszewicz never erased the Auschwitz number tattoo the Nazis had put on her arm, nor did she erase the memories of the Holocaust from her mind.  Instead, Mrs. Szapszewicz shared those memories through moving poetry and essays, a published book...

‘Little Rose’

Political drama with romantic edge set in Communist Poland

By Cate Marquis, Special to the Jewish LightPublished June 6, 2012

The political, historic drama “Little Rose” is one of the many excellent films in this year’s St. Louis Jewish Film Festival. “Little Rose,” in Polish and French with English subtitles, is also one of several Polish (or part ly Polish) films...

President Obama's use of the term "Polish death camps" during a May29, 2012 ceremony at the White House to honor the late Polish partisanJan Karski caused a stir.

President Obama’s ‘Polish death camps’ mistake is common

By Michael Berenbaum, JTAPublished June 4, 2012

LOS ANGELES — President Barack Obama made a simple and very basic mistake when he spoke of Polish death camps during the presentation of a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter who was among the first to report German...

From neo-Nazi skinhead to black-hatted Jew: the journey of Pawel Bramson

By Katarzyna MarkuszPublished May 14, 2012

WARSAW  -- Fifteen years ago, Pawel Bramson was a skinhead shouting anti-Semitic and racist slogans during soccer matches. He hated Jews and blacks – simply, he says, because you need someone to blame for what’s wrong in the world. These days he...

Marking 25 years, March of the Living uniting survivors with liberators in Poland

By Ben Sales, JTAPublished April 16, 2012

NEW YORK—Bernhard Storch grew up in a Jewish family in Silesia, near Poland’s border with Germany. Like many Polish Jews, he moved quickly from town to town as the Nazis advanced in 1939, trying to avoid capture. Before long he was caught and sent...

Mack Daddyz

Reeling in the years

By Ellen Futterman, EditorPublished March 28, 2012

Mark Gubernik, Jesse Kavadlo and Steve Chervitz have taken the old adage “you’re never too old to rock and roll” and set it in action. Approaching middle-age, married and all dads, the three recently formed a rock band and will be playing their...

ADL poll: Anti-Semitic attitudes up slightly in Europe

JTAPublished March 22, 2012

NEW YORK -- A new Anti-Defamation League poll found that anti-Semitic attitudes in several European countries have increased marginally since 2009. The poll, which was released Tuesday, reported slight increases in overall anti-Semitic attitudes in a...

Family tomb of Polish writer Adam Michnik vandalized

JTAPublished March 21, 2012

Vandals damaged and scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti on the family tomb of leading Polish writer, editor and former anti-Communist dissident Adam Michnik. Polish Radio reported that the defacement of the tomb of Michnik’s father, a prominent Jewish communist,...

March recalls Krakow ghetto liquidation

JTAPublished March 19, 2012

An annual march of remembrance was held to mark the 69th anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. The march retraces the steps of one that took place on March 13 and 14, 1944, when some 6,000 Jews living in the Krakow ghetto in the Podgorze...

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