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100 years after deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, its Jewish and Italian workers get a memorial
(New York Jewish Week) – As Allison and Rebecca Kestenbaum stood in front of a building in Greenwich Village on Wednesday, they were thinking about another set of sisters: their relatives Celia and Bess Eisenberg, who, as teenagers, worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Bess called in sick on the day that a horrific fire tore through the garment factory. Celia died, along with 145 others.
The tragedy transformed U.S. labor law and the building that housed the factory, now a New York University science building, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003. But until this week, there had never been a permanent memorial paying tribute to the fire’s victims.
One was unveiled Wednesday at the site of the factory on the corner of Washington Place and Green Street near Washington Square Park. The memorial was conceived by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, a nonprofit group of descendants and labor advocates dedicated to preserving the memory of the mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women who died that day and the fire’s impact on the organized labor movement.
“It’s remarkable to see people showing up who maybe didn’t have a connection but who feel moved by it,” said Allison Kestenbaum, who brought her two children to the unveiling from their home in San Diego. “This triggers emotions for a lot of people and opens our eyes to something that so many didn’t know anything about.”
According to the story that’s been passed down through in the Kestenbaum family, Celia, just 17, went to work alone on March 25, 1911, a warm Saturday.
Near the end of the workday, a cigarette butt ignited fabric scraps inside the factory, on the ninth floor of the Asch Building. As the flames began to spread, the women who worked there found that they had been locked in from the outside by management, who wanted to prevent the workers, who made roughly $7 a week, from stealing inventory as well as keep out union organizers. The fire was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in New York City history.
The memorial, in the making for more than a decade, includes a massive stainless steel ribbon that floats horizontally along the edge of the building — the names and ages of the victims are cut out of the ribbon. A stone panel underneath the ribbon reflects the names back to the viewers and also bears quotes from witness and survivor testimonies. On Wednesday, the reflective stone panel was also adorned with 146 white roses in honor of the victims.
Gov. Kathy Hochul spoke at the unveiling ceremony of a memorial for the 146 victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Oct. 12, 2023. (Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
“It’s getting some really beautiful reactions,” Uri Wegman, who, along with Richard Joon Yoo, was one of the two architects of the memorial, told the New York Jewish Week. “You never know how people are going to respond and I feel like we are accomplishing exactly what we designed the memorial to do, to transport and reorient people” to the events of the tragedy, the Israeli-born architect said.
Over the next few months, a vertical steel column will be installed to showcase the height from which workers jumped in a futile attempt to escape the flames.
The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition organizes an annual event on the anniversary of the fire, in partnership with Workers United, the New York City Central Labor Council, the FDNY and New York University.
“I’ve waited a really long time to say three words to you — three powerful words, and three extraordinarily sweet words: We did it,” said Mary Anne Trasciatti, the president of the coalition, at Wednesday’s unveiling ceremony. “By honoring the Triangle workers with this memorial, we are making a statement about the dignity and humanity of every worker, past and present. We are showing our support for baristas, auto workers, nurses, teachers, farm workers, warehouse workers, coal miners.”
Unions from around the city and beyond — including the International Ladies Garment Workers, the Steamfitters Union, the Laborer’s International Union, Actor’s Equity, United Automobile Workers and the SAG-AFTRA Union — sent representatives to the unveiling ceremony.
At the ceremony, labor organizers reminded the crowd about how the fire jumpstarted labor reforms and workers’ rights efforts, including activism and legislation that led to safety protocols, workers’ compensation, a 40-hour work week, minimum wage and pensions. They also used the opportunity to speak about workers’ rights today, pledging continuing support for the Hollywood actors’ and United Auto Workers strikes.
Hundreds of people, including descendants of victims, union members, local officials and labor activists came to the unveiling of the memorial, Oct. 11, 2023. (Julia Gergely)
The Triangle fire — with its large number of Jewish, Eastern European immigrant victims — also “galvanized the Jewish community, which had an already active labor base,” Ann Toback, the chief executive officer of the Worker’s Circle, told the New York Jewish Week.
Founded in 1900 as a fraternal organization to help Eastern European immigrants adjust to American society and workplaces, the Workers Circle was a central base for Jewish labor activists. In 1909, it helped organize an 11 week long general strike consisting of 20,000 young Jewish women in the shirtwaist industry. One of the only holdouts of the strike was the Triangle company.
After the tragedy in 1911, Jewish union organizers Clara Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman marched from the site of the tragedy to Cooper Square to demand new changes and more organizing.
“It did spark a new outcry of activism and The Workers Circle at that time was very much a center of labor activism,” Toback said. Jewish labor activists and Workers Circle members were also at the forefront of expanding the membership and organizing power of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, which became one of the country’s largest labor unions after the fire. The Workers Circle was a sponsor of the victims’ memorial at the site of the factory.
In remarks, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul shared that her grandfather, uncles and father worked in coke ovens at the Bethlehem Steel plant, itself the site of multiple fatal industrial accidents.
“I am so proud to be part of this effort to honor the names of those who were lost in that horrific inferno,” Hochul said. She called New York “the birthplace of the workers’ rights movement” because of “what happened right on this block.” New York State allocated $1.5 million in state funds to build the memorial.
A steel ribbon with cutouts of the names of the victims wraps around the former site of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory on the northwest corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. (Julia Gergely)
Hochul, who has been trying to maintain support for immigrants as the city struggles with the recent influx of nearly 125,000 migrants, connected the fire to the present day.
“Our workers deserve to be protected and we will fight to make sure they have those rights,” Hochul said. “This state is so great because of the immigrants, the migrants who came here. Let them work. We need them.”
Julie Su, the Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor, also addressed the crowd. “We can imagine the black plume of smoke up in the air, the flames that spread from floor to floor, the panic of the workers who ran and found closed exits and broken fire escapes,” she said. “Their cries for help and then the thud of bodies as they began to jump one after another.”
Allison Kestenbaum said she has always felt a strong connection to her relative and other victims of the fire. “I went to NYU. If I had been there two generations earlier, an immigrant, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go to college — I would have been a seamstress in a sweatshop,” she said.
“It also relates to what’s going on in our present and our future,” she added. “The story and everything that came after is known throughout our country and in so many parts of the world for the tragedy and for all the changes that it inspired and continues to inspire. It’s very meaningful.”
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.