Today in Jewish History – Adar 14

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Sponsored by Aish: In 355 BCE, the Jews celebrated their successful defeat of Haman’s anti-Semitic mobs, an event we commemorate today with the Purim holiday.We read the Megillah (Scroll of Esther), dress up in costumes, and celebrate how the Jews of Persia narrowly escaped annihilation, thanks to the bravery of Esther and Mordechai. In Shushan, the Persian capital, however, the battle lasted one additional day and Purim was not celebrated until the 15th of Adar. Thus today in Jerusalem, Purim is celebrated one day later than the rest of the world. Adar 14 is also the day in 1912 that

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Vandals defile ancient Jewish cemetery in S. Czech Republic

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A Jewish cemetery has been desecrated in a southern Czech town, police said Friday. Spokeswoman Hana Moltasova said in a statement that 23 tombstones were overturned at the cemetery in Pisek, 100 kilometers south of Prague. Five of the tombstones were broken, she said. The cemetery, dating back to the 19th century, is no longer used for burials, and was opened to the public in 1993 after renovations. Two weeks ago, vandals defiled a Holocaust memorial at a Berlin train station, where tens of thousands of Jews were once shipped to Nazi concentration camps.

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Net closing in on top Nazi criminal Aribert Heim

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Investigators are closing in on one of the last living top Nazi war criminals, Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported on Saturday. Spiegel magazine said investigators were focusing on Spain and Austria in their hunt for 93-year-old Aribert Heim, known as “Dr Death” at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Germany has for decades been searching for Heim, an SS doctoraccused of having killed hundreds of concentration camp inmateswith heart injections.Earlier this month, Austria said it was offering a 50,000 euro(e68,260) reward for information leading to the arrest of Heimand Alois Brunner, an aide to Adolf Eichmann who helped organisethe deportation of Jews

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Kurt Waldheim dies at 88; ex-UN chief hid Nazi past

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Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general and president of Austria whose hidden complicity in Nazi war crimes was exposed late in his career, died Thursday in Vienna, Austrian media reported. He was 88. He died of heart failure, the state broadcaster ORF reported. Although it was never proved that Waldheim himself committed atrocities during World War II, he was a lieutenant in army intelligence, attached to brutal German military units that executed thousands of Yugoslav partisans and civilians and deported thousands of Greek Jews to death camps from 1942 to 1944. Waldheim lied about his wartime service in the

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Today in Jewish History – Sivan 24

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Sponsored by Aish.com: In 1977, a neo-Nazi group planned to march in Skokie, Illinois, in a largely Jewish neighborhood that was home to many Holocaust survivors. It was believed that the march would be disruptive, and the city refused to allow it. The American Civil Liberties Union came to the Nazis’ support, and in 1978 a high court upheld the Nazis’ right to march, on the grounds that the public display of the Nazi flag is a constitutionally protected free expression. After winning the court battle, the Nazis decided to march in Chicago’s Marquette Park instead. In 1987, a Holocaust

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Today in Jewish History – Iyar 27

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Sponsored by Aish.com: In 1945, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was liberated. Theresienstadt was not a death camp by the usual definition. It was the center of a Nazi PR ploy — a mythic, idyllic city that was supposedly built to protect Jews from the vagaries and stresses of the war. The Red Cross was once allowed to visit Theresienstadt, which was spruced up for the occasion; inmates were dressed up and baked goods suddenly filled the shelves. (The Red Cross concluded that the Jews were being well-treated.) In reality, starvation and disease proved rampant. Of the 200,000 people (mostly Czech

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Today in Jewish History – Nissan 3

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Sponsored by Aish.com: In 1944, the Nazis perpetrated the Children’s Action in the Kovno Ghetto. That day and the next, German soldiers conducted house-to-house searches to round up all children under age 12 (and adults over 55) — and sent them to their deaths at Fort IX. Eventually, the Germans blew up every house with grenades and dynamite, on suspicion that Jews might be in hiding in underground bunkers. They then poured gasoline over much of the former ghetto and incinerated it. Of the 37,000 Jews in Kovno before the Holocaust, less than 10 percent survived. One of the survivors

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Mock Nazi camp in Debica, Poland

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The authorities of the Debica region in southern Poland have decided to construct a replica of a Nazi concentration camp. The copy of the camp would be situated in the locality of Pustkow , where a Nazi concentration camp operated during WWII. Some 3 thousand Poles, 7 thousand Jews and 5 thousand Soviet POW were murdered there. The replica of the camp with the main entrance gate, barracks for prisoners surrounded by barbed wire is to stand near the Mountain of Death a memorial to the victims of the Pustkow camp. The initiative would be financed by EU funds and

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