Features
Return to Ukraine: searching out the Rosner family past
Introduction: Not too long ago we were contacted by former CBC Manitoba managing editor Cecil Rosner, who asked us whether we’d be interested in publishing a story about a trip he took in 2012 to visit the area in Ukraine where both his parents were born. Although it’s been 10 years since Cecil visited Ukraine, given the current situation in that country we thought it timely to get a sense of what life was like in Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion.
By CECIL ROSNER ““Oi — look at the way the schlemiel drives.”
We are bouncing along the potholed roads of Western Ukraine, heading from Lviv to my mother’s hometown of Buczacz. Our driver and guide isn’t Jewish, but that doesn’t stop him from endlessly whistling Fiddler on the Roof tunes and inserting Yiddishisms into every second phrase.
“These guys are all ganefs (thieves),” he says of the policemen we pass, as he forms his thumb and forefinger into a pistol and slowly pulls the trigger. Alex doesn’t like the speed traps the highway patrols set up, and he appreciates oncoming drivers signalling him to beware of cops just beyond the next hill. It’s an important issue for our driver, who crisscrosses Ukraine’s roads all year-long, ferrying tourists to distant towns and villages in search of their Jewish ancestors.
For Alex, who holds a history degree and is an expert at tracing genealogical roots, it’s an occupation he never dreamed he would have. But in the chaos of the Soviet Union’s collapse, when jobs were evaporating and everyone was trying to reimagine their lives, it seemed like a useful niche to pursue – especially as foreigners were finally trying to discover exactly what had happened to their relatives during the Second World War.
That’s why I’m here too, along with my wife and a cousin. Both of my parents were born in the region, and both were here when the Nazis occupied the area in 1941. In different improbable and miraculous ways, they both survived the war and emigrated to Canada. But every single other family member was shot, gassed, beaten or starved to death by the Nazis and their collaborators. We came here to see what traces of their lives remained.
It seemed logical to make our first stop the local museum, right across from the old city hall. Buczacz is little more than a village, with about 13,000 people. In the early part of the 19th century, Jews made up two-thirds of the population. While that number ebbed and flowed over the years, Jews were still in the majority when the Nazi occupation began. But that would have been difficult to discern in the museum.
In all the display cases, and in the colourful photo album that the town produces, there is no specific mention of a Jewish population. There is scarcely any reference to the Second World War, except for a notation that the town “was released from German invaders and captured by the Soviet Union.” Wouldn’t a town’s museum want to address what became of the majority of the population? What happened to thousands of farmers, shop owners, tailors, tinsmiths, doctors, lawyers and politicians? Doesn’t the mass roundup and extermination of most people in town even rate a mention?
The only hint of any Jewish presence came in the form of artifacts from the life of Shmuel Agnon, a Jewish writer born in Buczacz who won the Nobel Prize for literature. But the entire fate of the people Agnon wrote about had been erased.
Alex had little luck getting the museum’s employee to throw any light on what the town was like in the immediate pre-war period. She genuinely seemed not to know. But there were a few things I already knew.
My mother, Mina, had been born here in 1913, and her family owned a wholesale distribution company. They carbonated water and stored it in big, forty-litre copper cylinders, shipping them along with ice to shops throughout the area. When she was 25, she married my father, Michael Rosner, who came from nearby Kolomaya. In 1939, they opened a small retail store on the main town square, probably within metres of the present-day museum.
When the war broke out in September 1939, there was a reprieve. The region came under the control of the Soviets, and Jews were under no immediate threat. All that changed when Hitler marched eastward in 1941. My father was conscripted by the retreating Soviets, and my mother was trapped behind Nazi lines for the remainder of the war.
For the next three years, every member of my mother’s family – her parents, five brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins – were dragged from their hiding places, bludgeoned or shot, or sent off to be executed. They were all dumped into unmarked graves. My parents’ first-born child – my brother – also fell victim, dying at the age of three in 1942.
My mother’s survival defied any normal odds. She fled from one hiding place to another, escaping just in time to avoid capture. She spent 11 months in the attic of a Polish family along with five other Jews. She took an assumed name and boldly convinced the Nazis she was Christian. Finally, after Buczacz was liberated, she re-united with my father and they came to Canada to start anew in 1948.
I had been to Buczacz once before, with my mother, in 1990. We came with a documentary crew to record her first visit back home since the war. It was an emotional trip and a difficult one for both of us. But we learned very little of the actual events that had transpired in the town, or the exact locations where they happened. That’s why, nearly 15 years after my mother’s death, I was returning for a second time.
I convinced Alex that our best strategy on this trip would be to find older people and ask them what they knew about the 30s and 40s. Alex seemed skeptical. For one thing, the war had begun more than 70 years ago, so it was unlikely there would be any useful first-hand witnesses at hand. And there was also the collective amnesia that pertained to inconvenient truths.
After all, a segment of the population had actively collaborated with Hitler. They were instrumental in helping identify and round up the Jews, the Communists, and all the other elements the Nazis wanted to destroy. Some might still be living in Buczacz and surrounding areas. Their children and grandchildren almost certainly are here.
The museum’s employee finally gives us a sliver of hope. There is someone in town we should visit – someone who knows the history and might be able to help us. His name is Mykola.
We drive for a few minutes and stop at Mykola’s house. I am expecting to find an elderly man who may have been a teenager during the war. Instead, we come upon a 40-something man in sweatpants and a Maple Leafs T-shirt. He is clutching a handful of papers and photographs. One of them shows a photo of Buczacz’s surviving Jews standing beside a memorial gravestone in 1944. Out of the original population of 10,000, no more than 100 survived. One of the people in the photo is my mother.
Mykola has taken an interest in wartime history, and now helps visiting tourists locate family remnants. He has a variety of interesting documents, including a map of pre-war street names, and a mid-19th century register of townsfolk. It turns out that he knows about some of the Jewish families that lived in Buczacz during the war – a handful of them have returned over the years, and he has helped them find their old homes and landmarks.
We ask Mykola if he could help solve a puzzle my mother and I couldn’t figure out on our previous trip. Her family had lived on a street called Zeblickevicie, which had changed names several times after the war. From her description, though, we knew it was beside a stream that ran into the Strypa River, a subsidiary of the Dniester.
We pile into the car along with Mykola and he directs us to the location. The stream had been covered over, except at the point where it emptied into the Strypa. Though the original home was no longer there, he shows us the exact location where my mother’s family had lived. I saw the idyllic surroundings, the lush vegetation around the quiet river, and for the first time I had an inkling of the peaceful life my mother experienced before the war changed everything.
While we were all walking along the old Zeblickevicie street, Mykola bumps into a friend and exchanges a few words with him. As we walk on, the friend stops my wife, Harriet, and our cousin Nina and says: “Mina Rosner – I am a Witness.” That is the name of my mother’s book. Alex is impatient. He had rich experience of locals trying to pester visitors, and he was eager to move us all along. But Harriet and Nina persist. It turns out the man on our chance encounter knows all about my mother’s story, and offers to take us on a tour of where she lived, where she went to school, where she hid during the war, and where her family members were killed.
Over the next 24 hours, Alex grudgingly admits he was wrong. Our serendipitous encounter has linked us up with Jura, a 60-year-old retired computer technician, astrologist and local historian. He knows my mother’s exact birthdate, and, it appears, everyone else’s in town. He has a photocopied version of my mother’s book, and he has pieced together her recollections with precise locations of many of the events she describes. If photographic memories actually exist, we figure he has one. He is a visiting tourist’s dream come true, and Alex has to take a back seat while Jura takes us on a remarkable tour of my mother’s life.
The first stop is just around the corner, on a street that used to be called Chechego Maya. I remember it from my mother’s stories, but we could never pinpoint it on our previous trip. Jura shows us the building where my mother’s sister and her husband ran a hardware shop. He knows the address because it’s listed in trade publications of the era. Though my mother’s original house and her parents’ store no longer existed, I finally had an authentic touchstone of some of her family’s life at the time.
Jura takes us to the pre-war building on Kolejowa Street that served as the cheder, the religious school, where Jewish kids studied. We visit the girls’ school and middle school where my mother was a student, and walk into Buczacz’s Sokol theatre, where she watched dramatic performances and movies as a teenager. A group of children is rehearsing a musical concert on stage, and I can imagine my mother sitting in the auditorium with her brothers and sisters and friends.
Just down the road, near an orchard, Jura shows us the garden of a long-ago demolished home where my mother hid during one of the Nazi aktions, or periodic killing sprees. A bunker had been constructed in the cellar, and this helped shield her and other Jews from capture. The Nazis conducted four major aktions during their occupation of Buczacz before declaring the town Judenrein, or completely free of Jews. But the declaration turned out to be false. My mother, along with dozens of others, managed to survive with the aid of courageous gentile families who risked their safety to shelter them.
In the middle of our travels, Jura pulls out a sheet of typewritten names – people who had served as policemen, gendarmes and SS officers during the war. I recognize some of the names. Some of the Nazi war criminals and their collaborators have been brought to justice, but the vast majority remain undetected and untried for their crimes.
We go to the Jewish cemetery, where many of the town’s Jews – including my mother’s parents – were taken to be executed. The place is untended and overgrown, a jumble of brush and junk, with headstones in various states of disrepair. We find my great-grandmother’s grave. It’s significant, because two plots over my mother buried her first-born child, Isaac, in an unmarked plot. I clear away the branches and debris from the group of headstones in the area to get a better view. I bend down and touch the ground where the brother I never met is buried. Exactly 70 years later, someone has come back to this place to remember.
Jura takes me down a path through brambles to a spot where survivors had erected a memorial to the war’s victims. The place is overgrown with trees and bushes now, but he says there was nothing here before the war. The marker no longer survives, and even if it did, it’s unlikely anyone would be able to find it without an expert guide.
Our next stop is Fedor Hill, another killing ground where thousands perished. It’s difficult to see traces of anything here, but Jura once again guides us to a marker commemorating the killing of 450 people during the early days of slaughter in 1941. It had been erected by a survivor’s family well after the war.
A far more prominent memorial on Fedor Hill is dedicated to the UPA, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the military wing of a movement that initially collaborated with the Nazis in hopes of winning an independent homeland. In fact, throughout our travels in Western Ukraine, there were numerous new memorials to Ukrainian nationalist fighters in places where it might have been logical to place markers noting the victims of the Nazi era. We saw this on the side of a synagogue in Ivano-Frankivsk, near the Jewish ghetto entrance in Lvov, and many other places. In my father’s hometown of Kolomyia, it was a similar story — no mention of Jews or Nazi victims in the local museum, no remnants of the huge Jewish population, and a patriotic memorial to Ukrainian nationalist figures on the site of a former synagogue. In the re-written history of today, the UPA and its related Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists are presented as groups that fought both Soviets and Nazis; no mention is made of the collaboration in 1941 that led to so much destruction during the war.
Throughout our trip to Ukraine, we were reminded of the upcoming election campaign and the ever-present imagery of Ukrainian nationalism, especially in the Western part of the country. In a land that was exercising its brand of democratic activity, we had to wonder how thoroughly the country had come to grips with its recent history. Many countries are wrestling with related questions, trying to reconcile horrendous events of the past with a way forward. But as in any process or truth and reconciliation, there needs to be an initial recognition of what took place. Erasing and denying the past is rarely the path to building a healthy future.
At the end of our tour in Buczacz, Jura wanted to know the exact date of my mother’s death. He also was interested in our birthdates and any other information he could glean from us. In a country that chooses to forget so much, he was something of an anomaly.
Features
Hacker and Fraud Prevention for Online Gambling Profiles
Safeguard your online casino & sports betting accounts from cyber threats
Follow these 10 vital steps to reinforce your online gambling profile by enabling two-factor authentication, using VPNs, unique passwords and more.
With the global online gambling market projected to reach over $100 billion by 2026, securing your online casino and sportsbook accounts is more critical than ever. As digital wallets swell with winnings so too does the motivation for cybercriminals to steal credentials and loot accounts.
#1. Activate Two-Factor Authentication
Topping the list is two-factor authentication (2FA) – requiring two credentials to login instead of one at FanDuel. Often this entails providing your password plus a one-time code sent via SMS or email.
Per an Oracle study, implementing 2FA would have thwarted 99% of historical cyber attacks that involved stolen credentials.
Most regulated online gambling sites offer 2FA, accessible under account settings. Turn it on immediately for stronger defense.
#2. Never Reuse or Recycle Passwords
A cardinal sin is recycling the same password across multiple sites or services. Once one account is breached, cyber thieves can access more accounts using that same password.
To avoid this, every account deserves a unique, strong password. For simplicity, utilize a password manager app to randomly generate and store site-specific passwords.
#3. Install a VPN for Public Wi-Fi Access
When playing online casino games on shared/open wireless networks, your data flows openly and risks interception. That’s where virtual private networks (VPNs) come in.
VPNs encrypt all network traffic to and from your device. This protects your gambling activity and account credentials from Wi-Fi eavesdroppers. VPNs also disguise your IP address.
Some top-rated services include NordVPN, ExpressVPN and CyberGhost.
#4. Keep Software Updated & Run Anti-Virus Scans
You must keep computers and mobile devices updated with the latest OS and security patches. Postponing critical updates leaves open dangerous holes that malware exploits.
Likewise run reputable anti-virus scans to catch viruses attempting to infiltrate systems and spy on login credentials for financial accounts.
#5. Verify the Security & Encryption of Sites
When signing up at online betting sites and casinos, verify the legitimacy of their security measures:
- Confirm the address starts with HTTPS, not HTTP
- Check that data transmissions are encrypted using at least 128-bit SSL
- Ensure site has proper licensing
- Review privacy policy for data storage and sharing
Reputable sites will display trust badges from companies like Norton and TrustE.
#6. Avoid Account Sharing
While tempting to give friends or relatives access to funded accounts, sharing login credentials is extremely risky. You lose control over deposits/withdrawals while exposing yourself to potential theft.
Instead, gift deposits to other player accounts or refer them to open their own secure accounts.
#7. Beware Account Takeover Scams
Exercise caution if contacted unexpectedly about unusual account activity. Savvy scammers will pretend a breach occurred to trick you into handing over your username and password.
If concerned about account integrity, directly access the site yourself and contact customer support – don’t click any links in unsolicited emails.
#8. Monitor Financial Statements
Carefully review online betting account and credit card statements to detect unauthorized transactions right away. Dispute unrecognized activity ASAP to limit losses.
For further vigilance, some banks offer real-time purchase alerts via email or SMS.
#9. Don’t Save Payment Info
Saving credit card or e-wallet details on gambling sites for faster future deposits also expedites withdrawals – by you and potentially hackers.
Instead, manually enter payment info each time to contain potential damage from any account infiltration.
#10. Create a Secure Email
A strong yet oft-overlooked defense is creating a secure email account strictly for gambling transactions. Keep it completely separate from your personal email to isolate threats.
Use a nickname, enable 2FA and establish a strong password using special characters, numbers, case changes and 15+ letters.
Table: Comparison of Top VPNs for Online Gambling Site Security
| VPN Service | Encryption Standard | Number of Server Locations | Allows P2P Traffic | Number of Simultaneous Connections | Money Back Guarantee |
| NordVPN | AES 256-bit | 5400+ | Yes | 6 | 30 days |
| ExpressVPN | AES 256-bit | 3000+ | Yes | 5 | 30 days |
| CyberGhost | AES 256-bit | 7400+ | Yes | 7 | 45 days |
Fortify Your Online Gambling Fortress
As online casinos and sportsbooks explode in popularity, no player is immune to the growing plague of cyber fraud and account theft.
Guard your profile by enabling two-factor authentication, setting strong passwords, installing critical software updates and more. Also research site security measures and payment options.
Features
Vital Role of True Randomness in Modern Computing
The critical need for true randomness in cryptography, simulations, and more
True randomness is essential for encryption, statistical sampling, simulations, and more computing applications to work effectively. We explore why.
The concept of randomness often evokes thoughts of unpredictability and chance occurrences. However in the world of computing, having access to true randomness is vital for many critical applications to function properly. Without the ability to generate random values and data, key aspects of modern technology simply would not work reliably.
In this article, we will explore what constitutes true randomness from a computational perspective, why it is crucially important, and some of the ways that software and hardware attempt to produce randomness reliably. Gaining insight into this topic highlights the dependence much of digital functionality has on the availability of non-deterministic, uniformly distributed random data.
What Makes Randomness “True”?
For data to be considered truly random from an information theory perspective, values must satisfy key mathematical and statistical qualities, for example at Lucky Seven Casino. True randomness implies meeting three core criteria:
- Uniform distribution — All potential values have an equal probability of occurring so that no bias exists towards certain numbers.
- Independence — The value at any position does not relate to or depends on values at other positions. Previous numbers do not influence future ones.
- Unpredictability — Knowing some values provides no useful information to predict other values. Guessing upcoming numbers is mathematically impossible.
Hence, true randomness requires generated data featuring high entropy (information density) with no observable patterns or correlations over any length or time period analyzed. Values must pass various statisticatests of randomness to qualify. True randomness exists only in specific natural phenomena scientists believe exhibit fundamental uncertainty such as radioactive decay. Computational methods can attempt to produce randomness but technically generate only an approximation usually called pseudo-randomness. However for many practical purposes, computationally generated randomness proves sufficient if it passes robust statistical testing.
Why True Randomness Matters Cryptography
Arguably, the area with the most crucial dependence on true randomness is cryptography. All modern encryption technologies require random number generation to ensure security. Encryption systems work by utilizing random numbers for:
- Key generation
- Initialization vectors
- Salts
- Nonces
- Padding
Any bias, predictability or correlation within random values used for the above purposes significantly compromises encryption protocols and introduces vulnerabilities. With trillions of dollars transferred online daily and vast amounts of sensitive data stored digitally, safeguarding cryptography requires high-quality random number generation rooted in solid entropy sources.
Simulations & Modeling
Outside of security, many more computing applications need randomness to operate correctly per their design intent. Monte Carlo simulations extensively utilize randomness to model complex real-world behaviors by running many iterations with differing random inputs. Financial analysis, climate modeling, nuclear reactions and molecular behavior represent common Monte Carlo simulation applications.
Games, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Gaming, AI and ML commonly incorporate randomness to increase variation, introduce unpredictability, and improve realism. For example, non-player characters in video games use randomness for movement, dialog and behavior to feel more lifelike and less robotic. AI/ML leverage randomness to train networks more thoroughly against a wider possibility space and build more resilient models less prone to biases.
Generating True Randomness via Hardware
Given the pervasive need for genuine randomness across computing, how do software and hardware reliably produce it? Most systems today use either specialized hardware random number generators or hybrid combinations of hardware and software.
Hardware options utilize the inherent randomness within low-level physical phenomena to produce entropy. Different techniques for generating randomness exist but most hardware implementations focus on three main sources:
- Thermal Noise
- Semiconductor Quantum Physics
- Chaotic Oscillator Outputs
| Generator Type | Description |
| Thermal Noise | Amplifies and extracts random electrical noise from resistor thermal vibrations |
| Quantum Physics | Leverages quantum mechanical properties like photon emission timing from LEDs/lasers |
| Chaotic Circuits | Uses unpredictable oscillator circuit outputs from chaos theory |
Semiconductor-based solutions can generate high bitrates up to 5Gbps using compact modern chip fabrication allowing extensive harvestingof entropy. However these sources derive from complex, random physical processes proving impossible to predict or fully model mathematically. This unpredictability provides excellent entropy quality unattainable via software algorithms alone.
Most general-purpose computers now integrate random number generators within CPUs allowing applications access to decent hardware-based random data. For the highest security use cases, dedicated standalone hardware random number generators exist exceeding >100Gbps speeds. Hence accessing genuine randomness is available today even on common computing devices.
Cryptographically Secure Pseudo-Random Number Generators
While hardware mechanisms utilize hard-to-predict physical phenomena to produce randomness, software solutions must take a different approach. Algorithmically-generated randomness cannot achieve true randomness from a physics perspective. However clever mathematical techniques like cyclical algorithms can generate randomness passing many statistical tests of randomness within their output bit length limits.
Cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generators (CSPRNG) serve as the premier software-based method for generating randomness. CSPRNGs work by repeatedly applying cryptographic primitives like hash or cipher functions on initial random seed values. This process produces a chain of output bits not reproducible without the original seed key. Leading CSPRNG algorithms include:
- Hash_DRBG
- HMAC_DRBG
- CTR_DRBG
Software libraries implement these CSPRNGs so developers can integrate quality randomness into applications with proper seeding. Seeding establishes the initial starting point for randomness generation using an entropy source like hardware random number generators or timing variability.
CSPRNGs allow the production of vast quantities of randomized data for any purpose needed. Compared to hardware mechanisms limited by physics on maximum speeds, algorithms scale boundlessly in the bits created as long as adequate computational power exists.
Yet key differences between software and hardware randomness remain. While CSPRNG outputs pass statistical testing and contain no observable patterns, their pseudo-randomness means given the same seed, the exact same value sequence will generate each time. Also, if a CSPRNG algorithm or implementation has flaws, adversaries could predict and exploit output resulting in compromised security. Still, with proper cryptographic design and regular reseeding, CSPRNGs provide quality randomness for most software needs.
Conclusion
From the above exploration, we see true randomness plays a pivotal role across computing – from cybersecurity to simulations and beyond. While no substitutes for true physically-derived entropy exist, modern hardware and hybrid hardware-software solutions provide abundant randomness for practical usage.
However as computing continues evolving with new technologies like quantum, ensuring high-quality randomness generation tackles emerging information security and system reliability challenges. Access to ample true randomness stands necessary now for current computing functionality and lays the foundation for future innovation.
Features
News from Israeli hotels
Introduction: The current wars in Gaza and Lebanon have had a disastrous effect on Israeli tourism. Recently we were contacted by a friend in the advertising business in Israel who asked us whether we would help to promote a couple of well-known Israeli hotels – who are hoping for a huge rebound in bookings once the wars come to an end.
Here is news about two leading Israeli hotels:
Mr. Roy Avidor is the new GM at The Ritz-Carlton, Herzliya.
We are delighted to welcome Roy Avidor as the new General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Herzliya!
Roy brings over a decade of leadership in the international hospitality industry, with a proven track record of operational excellence.
Most recently, Roy served as Director of Operations at the Sheraton Grand Tel Aviv, where he oversaw daily operations across multiple departments, always ensuring the highest standards of service. Prior to that, he held management positions at Celebrity Cruise Line and Isrotel Hotel Chain.
Roy’s extensive background in luxury hospitality, combined with his passion for service, makes him the perfect addition to our team and to his newest position as General Manager.
Boaz Elani Appointed General Manager of Sheraton Grand Hotel Tel Aviv
Boaz Elani has been named the new General Manager of the Sheraton Grand Hotel Tel Aviv, a prestigious property within the global luxury Marriott portfolio.
Bringing extensive expertise in luxury hospitality, Boaz most recently served as the General Manager of the Ritz-Carlton Herzliya, also part of the Marriott group. During his three-year tenure, he successfully navigated the hotel through two major challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Israel. His steadfast dedication to exceptional service significantly enhanced guest satisfaction, solidifying the hotel’s reputation as a premier destination.
“I am honored by Marriott’s trust in me and thrilled to join the Sheraton Grand Tel Aviv team,” said Boaz. “This hotel holds a distinguished place as one of Israel’s finest and most iconic. Following its comprehensive renovation, we are committed to delivering unmatched experiences for our guests and continuing its tradition of excellence.”
The Sheraton Grand Tel Aviv, overlooking the Mediterranean, features 320 beautifully redesigned rooms, including premium, deluxe, and club accommodations, along with luxurious suites. Guests staying in club-level rooms enjoy exclusive access to the 18th-floor lounge, offering breathtaking sea views. The recent renovations incorporate modern aesthetics with natural, seaside-inspired materials, creating a serene and inviting ambiance.
The hotel boasts a range of world-class amenities, including a newly updated beachfront pool, a popular sushi bar open to both guests and the public, and a renowned gourmet breakfast. Its versatile meeting spaces and state-of-the-art conference halls have garnered international acclaim, earning it the 2024 World MICE Award for Best Event and Conference Hotel.
In line with Marriott’s global commitment to sustainability, the Sheraton Grand Tel Aviv has held Green Key Certification since 2014, highlighting its dedication to environmentally responsible practices.
With Boaz Elani at the helm, the Sheraton Grand Tel Aviv is poised to further elevate its status as a premier destination for both leisure and business travelers.
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