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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

1st LT Edward Shames, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, US Army / Public Domain Photo

Jewish war hero Edward Shames, last living member of Easy Company, passes

Jordan Palmer, Chief Digital Content OfficerPublished December 5, 2021

Edward Shames, a Jewish World War II veteran and the last surviving officer of the famed “Easy Company,” has died. He was 99. According to an obituary posted online, Shames passed away peacefully at home on December 3, 2021. Shames was born...

Judi Dench as Miss Rocholl in Andy Goddard’s “Six Minutes to Midnight.” Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.

British WWII historical drama tips its bowler to Hitchcock

BY CATE MARQUIS, SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHTPublished February 4, 2021

Judi Dench, Eddie Izzard and Jim Broadbent headline “Six Minutes to Midnight,” a Hitchcock-styled British historical thriller set in the summer of 1939 at a finishing school for German girls on the southeastern coast of England as World War II looms.The...

Holocaust Remembrance Day discussion with author Rebecca Erbelding

Holocaust Remembrance Day discussion with author Rebecca Erbelding

Published January 26, 2021

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum will host a Facebook Live event with author Rebecca Erbelding, who will discuss her book, "Rescue Board: The United States War Refugee Board and the Holocaust." The...

Above: American soldiers wade from Coast Guard landing barge toward the beach at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Photo: Robert F. Sargent/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

D-Day plus 79 years: Pivotal battle helped save the West, world Jewry

ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished June 2, 2019

June 6, 2023, will mark the 79th anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy invasion that dealt a fatal blow to the evil, genocidal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, saved Western civilization and arguably the Jews of the entire world. On June 5, 1944, after...

Grave markers in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. Photo: Steve Granitz/Thinkstock

Normandy beaches offer needed history lesson

By Marty RochesterPublished June 15, 2016

The next time I hear one of my students or anyone else demand “safe spaces” that spare them any discomfort from offensive or even contrary viewpoints of which they disapprove, I will think of the thousands of American and Allied soldiers who fought...

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...

William B. Eiseman

William B. Eiseman, Jr., 94; past president of Temple Israel

BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief EmeritusPublished August 1, 2012

William B. “Bill” Eiseman, Jr., co-founder of the U.S. Tape and Label Corp., a past president of Temple Israel and a longtime member of the New Mount Sinai Cemetery Association, died Friday, July 27, 2012 at St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond...

Historian looks at Europe’s Jews ‘On the Eve’ of war

By Burton A. Boxerman, Special to the Jewish LightPublished July 25, 2012

Numerous books have been written about Europe in the 1930s prior to the holocaust.   In Bernard Wasserstein’s provoking book, “On the Eve, The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War” (Simon and Schuster, 552 pages; $32.50), the author, a Professor...

Romanian native Hava Hershkovitz was crowned the winner of the "Miss Holocaust Survivor" beauty pageant in Haifa, June 28, 2012.

Holocaust survivors beauty pageant crowns Romanian beauty

JTA REPORTPublished June 29, 2012

A beauty pageant for Holocaust survivors was held in Haifa and featured female survivors walking down a red carpet and sharing details of their travails during World War II. Fourteen women, aged 74 to 97, participated according to news reports. Romanian...

Lt. Col. Bernhard Fischer, a Jewish officer in the protocol branch, in his office at the German Federal Ministry of Defense.

Germany’s Jewish patriots find a home in the military

By Toby Axelrod, JTAPublished June 26, 2012

BERLIN -- In an office amid a labyrinth of hallways in Germany's Ministry of Defense, a short jaunt from where Claus von Stauffenberg was executed in 1944 for trying to kill Adolf Hitler, sits Bernhard Fischer, lieutenant colonel and Jew. What’s a...

Holocaust survivor Michael Pupa standing next to his childhood photo in the "Attachments" exhibit at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

For a National Archives exhibit, Michael Pupa finally reveals his harrowing Holocaust journey

By Zach Silberman, JTAPublished June 21, 2012

WASHINGTON -- While preparing for a new National Archives exhibit that he is curating, Bruce Bustard showed some documents to his colleague, Miriam Kleiman. She was stunned to see the name Michael Pupa, father of her friend Jill Pupa, as he had never...

Students from the St. Ursula-Schule, a Catholic high school in Germany, view facsimiles of ads for Hitler's "Mein Kampf" at the House of the Wannsee Conference in Potsdam, site of the planning of the Final Solution.

German plans for ‘Mein Kampf’ excerpts in schools seen as a way to demystify Hitler tome

By Toby Axelrod, JTAPublished June 17, 2012

BERLIN –- Does “Mein Kampf” belong in German high schools? With Adolf Hitler’s book due to come out of wraps here in 2015, freed after decades under copyright protection that prevented its publication in Germany, it’s a question that is being...

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