YADVASHEM-

Exactly 80 years ago, a ship of refugees hoping to flee the Holocaust was torpedoed and sunk at sea. In December 1941, approximately 780 Jews boarded the Struma hoping to flee war-torn, fascist Romania and make their way to a new life in Eretz Israel via Constantinople. These Jews had survived the antisemitic pogroms in Bucharest and Iași, and evaded deportations to Transnistria, escaping from detainment and labor camps. Upon arrival in Constantinople, instead of receiving visas, they were forced to spend 10 weeks waiting aboard the ship. Some two months after boarding, the Turkish authorities towed the Struma back out to sea, without food, water, or fuel for the refugees.  On 24 February 1942, the Struma was sunk, presumably accidentally, by a Soviet submarine torpedo. Only one refuge survived this disaster on the Black Sea. Click here to learn the personal stories of some of the Jews aboard the Struma.

Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus” won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1992. Through stunning illustrations and powerful dialogue, Spiegelman skillfully tells his Holocaust-survivor father’s story weaving the past with the present and touching on many different themes. How can this masterpiece be used to teach the Holocaust in today’s classroom? In this webinar, Sheryl Ochayon – Program Director of Echoes & Reflections at Yad Vashem – will show us how. The webinar will be held on zoom on Wednesday, 23 February 2022, 3 PM – 4 PM EST. Click here to register.

Sara Kadosh

Shortly before WWII broke out, Shaul Weingort, a young Polish rabbi, arrived in Switzerland to live with the family of his future wife. Although only in his mid-twenties, Rabbi Weingort was already regarded as a brilliant scholar. In the years that followed, Weingort sent letters to many of the greatest minds of the Jewish world. The topic of those letters, however, was not Talmudic interpretation or Jewish Law; they were meant to save lives. Weingort’s extended family was among millions of Jews who had come under German rule as a result of the occupation of Poland. In the new publication We Think of You as an Angel: Shaul Weingort and the Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, historian Sara Kadosh sheds light on Weingort’s efforts to create an aid network that delivered sustenance, South American passports, and hope to his family and hundreds of other Polish Jews in an attempt to save their lives. Weingort died tragically in 1946, and until now his story was largely unknown. Click here to purchase.