Jewish & World News

A project to reinforce the ground beneath the only synagogue at the Auschwitz memorial and state museum will begin this spring. Tomasz Kuncewicz, director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the site of the former Nazi death camp, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue project would cost approximately $330,000. He said the site was in danger of collapse unless the sloping ground on which it sits was reinforced.

Harry Grenville and his sister Hannah didn't know what had happened to their parents during World War II for nearly 70 years. That uncertainty came to an end last month following an initiative of a Polish citizen who visited the Auschwitz concentration camp museum. According to a report in London's Times newspaper, the Polish visitor photographed a vast pile of suitcases left by victims murdered in the Holocaust, each of which had a name and serial number painted in white letters on the front.

A sign on the overpass of an automotive plant in Detroit reads in German "Work will make you Free," evoking images of the sign on the gate of Auschwitz. The red letters on white pieces of paper in the windows of the overpass at the Packard Automotive Plant reads "Arbeit Macht Frei," the Detroit Free Press reported Monday.

A ceremony marking the 68th year since the liberation of Auschwitz was held at the site of the former Nazi camp. The ceremony held Sunday, on International Holocaust Memorial Day, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was attended by ex-prisoners and liberators of Auschwitz. The honorary patron of the ceremony was Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski.

Miriam Rosenthal was four-months pregnant, starving, bone-tired, cold, filthy and afraid when an SS officer in big black boots and a crisp uniform appeared before the barracks in Auschwitz with a loudspeaker in hand. All pregnant women line up, he barked. Line up, line up — your food portions are being doubled.

When last they saw each other, cousins Leon Schagrin and Lemel Leo Adler were teens who had just a chance meeting of a few minutes as they were carted off by the Nazis to a concentration camp at Auschwitz. When the moment passed, they were taken to separate parts of the facility and never saw each other again. Until now. On Sunday afternoon, Mr Schagri, 85, and Mr Adler, 89, met for the first time since their moments together in the Monowitz-Buna sub-camp in Poland seven decades ago. Neither even knew the other had survived the horrors of the Nazi extermination machine.

70 years after German troops cramped them into cattle cars, survivors of the first shipment of Jews to the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, Poland, retraced the route of the train route to honor the 1.1 million people who were murdered there, the French news agency AFP reported.

Three Poles convicted of stealing the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign from the Auschwitz museum gate have not shown up to begin their prison sentences.  The news that convicts responsible for a crime which caused shock and outrage the world over were not even behind bars will come as a shock to many.

Former Swedish neo-Nazi Anders Hogstrom will be extradited to Poland on Friday, in connection with the theft of the Arbeit Macht Frei sign over the Auschwitz Gate 1 last December.

Swedish authorities say a man wanted in Poland in connection with the theft of a famous sign at Auschwitz has been arrested in Stockholm. Prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnstrom says 34-year-old Anders Hogstrom was arrested Thursday on a European arrest warrant.     Qvarnstrom says Hogstrom will be appointed a defense lawyer and questioned by Swedish investigators before authorities can decide on extraditing him to Poland. Polish officials have said Hogstrom is suspected of incitement to commit theft of a cultural treasure. The sign was stolen in December from the site of the Nazis' former Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Polish police found the sign in the woods three days later, and charged five Polish men with its theft. Earlier this month, a Polish court issued a European arrest warrant yesterday for a former neo-Nazi leader suspected in the theft of the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at Auschwitz. The sign - German for "Work Sets You Free" - wa...

Krakow - The 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp and International Holocaust Remembrance Day, were marked on January 27 through high profile ceremonies held  in Auschwitz-Birkenau and in nearby Krakow. Political deaders such as European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, Polish president Lech Kaczynski, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as well as his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, all attended the ceremonies. In his speech, Buzek called the Holocaust "the greatest human tragedy in history," while the Polish leaders promised to continue preserving the Jewish legacy in Poland and to further strengthen Poland’s ties with Israel. Earlier this month, Marek Kucia, Professor of sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow conducted a survey in which he attempted to examine the Polish street’s perception of Auschwitz. More than a thousand respondents above 15 years of age, chosen randomly, where surveyed. Similar polls have been condu...

A former Swedish neo-Nazi group leader has claimed that he intended to sell the stolen Auschwitz "Arbeit macht frei" sign for several million crowns, but changed his mind and helped catch the five Polish thieves instead. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet says the man belonged to an illegal fascist group which planned violent attacks against politicians. Money received from selling on items such as the "Arbeit macht frei" sign - stolen on December 18 from the Auschwitz museum and found three days later in woodland near Torun in northern Poland - could be used to fund the political group’s activities. “Money for the plate would go to Nazi activities," the man tells Aftonbladet . “We had someone who was prepared to pay several million crowns for the sign, that person has no political agenda. These kinds of objects have a great value to collectors.” But after the international outrage following the theft, the man, who remains nameless in the report, says tha...

The Krakow Prosecutor’s Office is issuing arrest warrants for a Swede and a citizen from former Yugoslavia in connection with theft of the “work makes you free” sign from the Auschwitz museum last month. One of the suspects is 35-year-old Swede, Anders H, a neo-Nazi group leader who admitted yesterday that his group had arranged to sell the sign on to a dealer in another country for “millions of crowns”. The other suspect is a 40-year-old immigrant to Sweden from former Yugoslavia. The Krakow Prosecutor’s Office is to issue a European arrest warrant for the two men. The document, recently forwarded to the Stockholm police, included a request for a cross-examination of the suspects. The theft of the “work makes you free” sign had been planned for over a year, Polish media reports. The Swedish neo-Nazi was to get almost half a million euro for the sign after he sold it on to a collector, which Anders H. told a Swedish tabloid yesterday was someone outside of Sweden and who was not...