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Michael Douglas, Lena Dunham Make Shocking Discoveries About Their Jewish Ancestry
Michael Douglas and Lena Dunham in the latest episode of “Finding Your Roots.” Photo: Screenshot
Actor Michael Douglas and writer-director Lena Dunham made shocking revelations about their Jewish ancestors and family roots stemming from Eastern Europe in Thursday’s episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots.
In the latest episode of the popular series, in which celebrities learn more about their ancestral histories, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. presented Douglas with new information about his Jewish paternal side of the family. The Wall Street actor and his father, the late Kirk Douglas, are both household names in the Hollywood film industry, but Michael discovered on Finding Your Roots that his Jewish paternal grandfather who sold rags from a cart in America hailed from the town of Chausy, which was part of the Russian Empire but is now in eastern Belarus.
Back in Chausy, Douglas’ family lived in the town’s Jewish ghetto and faced discrimination for their Jewish heritage. The Oscar winner also learned that his grandfather was imprisoned and charged with robbery and his great-uncle, named Moshe, was a wanted man in Chausy accused of armed robbery in 1906.
Douglas made more revelations about his father’s Jewish family during the course of the episode and was even presented with a photo of a Jewish cemetery in Eastern Europe where some of his ancestors were buried. Upon learning more about his Jewish roots, the Fatal Attraction actor said, “I feel more of a spiritual religious connection to Judaism than I ever had before.”
During Thursday’s episode, meanwhile, Dunham for the first time ever learned that she had a family connection to the Holocaust. The creator of the HBO hit series Girls uncovered information about her Eastern European roots in Poland and Hungary. She learned of an ancestor, named Ilona, who was killed by Nazi SS police in Hungary in 1941 during World War II, along with thousands of Jews during a Nazi roundup.
“It’s an incredibly painful thing to think about people with whom I share probably not just a DNA but the features and emotional responses and an approach to life,” she said after learning about her genetic ties to the Holocaust. “Those people being placed in this situation and having their lives extinguished this way. There’s not a way to reckon with it. It’s too big … but to see a personal connection to it literalizes it in a way that is very, very powerful.”
The final bits of information presented to Douglas about his family revealed that his maternal fourth great-grandfather, named John Neilson, was a colonel of a battalion of a militia in colonial New Jersey during the American Revolution and an informant who provided military intelligence to George Washington. There is even a statue of Neilson in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey. However, Neilson was also a slave owner. Reflecting on that unsavory part of his family history, Douglas said it made him think of the Hebrew expression tikkun olam, which means to repair a broken world and make it a better place.
“You feel the obligation [of tikkun olam] and that sense much more when you see something like that,” he said. “It makes you want to be a better person.”
Watch the full episode of Finding Your Roots featuring Douglas and Dunham in the video below.
The post Michael Douglas, Lena Dunham Make Shocking Discoveries About Their Jewish Ancestry first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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