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I can’t forget what the Nazis did to my family, but I can be grateful to a repentant Germany
(JTA) — Picture a cute-looking, 6 1/2-year-old girl with curly braided hair. She is standing on a sidewalk, on a cold, dreary day in Leipzig, Germany, together with her parents and my wife and me. My granddaughter Vivi is staring intently at a 75-year-old worker, kneeling on the ground. He is digging a hole through the pavers to install several 4” x 4” brass plaques mounted on cement cubes — memorials to relatives who perished at the hands of the Nazis more than 80 years ago.
In February, we traveled 9,500 miles round-trip to dedicate 12 Stolpersteine plaques in memory of relatives I never knew, or even knew I had. (All 16 of my family members would have stood with us that day, but Germany’s airport worker strike canceled the others’ flights.) They were just some of my late father’s aunts, uncles and cousins who were murdered in the Holocaust, and we regarded the ceremony as a pseudo-levaya, a quasi-funeral that would be the final act of respect and farewell Hitler had denied my relatives.
I couldn’t have imagined, 60 years earlier when I first visited Germany, that I would ever return in a spirit approaching forgiveness, or that I’d feel a deep connection to a country that was once synonymous with brutality, pain, humiliation and suffering.
Stolpersteine, a German word meaning “stumbling block,” refers to a design brilliantly conceived by the non-Jewish German artist Gunter Demnig in the early 1990s. Installed in front of the homes where innocent Jewish victims last freely lived, the brass plaques simply and artistically memorialize, honor and personalize those brutally persecuted. On each plaque are engraved the victim’s name, dates of birth and death. As Demnig once said, “A person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.” Hence, 100,000 of his plaques throughout Europe remind us that Jews are part of a shared history, and a common memory.
Whether consciously or not, the “stumbling pedestrian” instantly recalls the extraordinary evil unleashed by ordinary people, on once vibrant Jewish communities, and the terrorized Jewish neighbors who lived within them. This evil was driven by a blind loyalty to a gratuitous hatred of “the other,” meaning non-Aryans.
Who were these relatives I recently memorialized? Recently uncovered documents suggest my relatives were all decent, law-abiding citizens who contributed to Leipzig’s economy, enriched its cultural life and strengthened its social fabric. Sadly, being model citizens did not spare them from torturous fates.
One of those relatives, Elfriede Meyerstein, my paternal grandfather’s sister, was born Feb. 27, 1871 in Breslau. At 20, she came to Leipzig where her husband Menny ran a textile trading company with his family. They lived at the same address for many years. By 1931, after Menny’s death, she lived with her daughter Käthe Huth.
The Nazis, once in power, immediately expropriated Elfriede’s assets, comprising foreign stocks meticulously accumulated by Menny. The Nazi “Ordinance on the Registration of Jewish Assets” of April 26, 1938, forced her to surrender those securities to the state. In 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht on Nov. 9-10, 1938, the Nazis collected a “reimbursement tax” as “atonement,” from Elfriede and the rest of Germany’s Jewish community, for the damage Nazis did that night.
Just prior to her Sept. 19, 1942 deportation to Theresienstadt at age 71, Elfriede was forced to sign a “home purchase agreement,” the Nazis’ final act of expropriation. The document falsely and cynically promised her a “retirement home,” with free lifetime accommodation, food and medical care, but paid for by her, in advance. The Reich Security Main office confiscated 65,000 Reichsmarks ($300,000 in today’s currency). Her “retirement home” was in a ghetto with disastrous hygienic conditions, starvation, and no medical care. Elfriede died one month later.
After considerable soul-searching and three visits to Germany, spaced over 60 years, my attitudes and feelings today, vis a vis Germany and its citizens, are dramatically different from when I first visited in 1966.
Then, I came with unprocessed emotional baggage. In 1939, my father, Ralph Meyerstein, fled Dusseldorf and my mother, Cecily Geyer, fled Dresden, both for England. My paternal grandparents, Alfred and Meta Meyerstein, were deported from Dusseldorf on Nov. 8, 1941, to Minsk, where they were killed. My maternal grandmother, Salcia, was deported to Riga in January 1942; in November 1943 she was sent to Auschwitz and murdered.
My parents met in Ware, a small town north of London, where some German Jews took refuge. They moved to London where they married during the Blitz and we came to the United States in December 1947.
The German-issued ID card of Max Israel Meyerstein, the author’s great-uncle, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1942 at the age of 80. (Courtesy Michael Meyerstein)
As an only child, I shouldered much of my parents’ guilt over abandoning their parents, even though it was their parents who, thankfully, had urged them to flee Germany. When retelling their survival story, my eyes still well up with tears, revealing a lifetime of trauma I’ve absorbed on their behalf. That first visit felt almost adversarial in tone. It was I, representing my parents’ personal losses and those of the Jewish people, versus Germany and Germans. I reacted viscerally to hearing guttural Deutsch being spoken. I eyeballed Germans on the street and asked myself: How old are they? Did they commit heinous crimes against my family and my people?
By 2018, when I dedicated a Stolpersteine in my maternal grandmother’s memory, my judgmental attitudes and harsh feelings had softened. Maybe I realized that 75 years later, the ordinary citizen on the street could not be held responsible for the carnage of the Holocaust. Also, working with non-Jewish German volunteers in planning the ceremony showed me their humanity, sensitivity and outright remorse for Nazism’s impact on my family and their German state. Their kindness was an atonement for a past not of their making.
My visit in February shed further light on my evolving relationship with Germany and Germans. Today’s Germany is doing teshuva, or repentance, by strengthening democracy, creating an inclusionary society, responding resolutely to far-right extremism, educating its young about the Holocaust, offering sanctuary to Jews fleeing Russia and Ukraine and being a true friend to the State of Israel. It also is supporting Jewish communal institutions, paying reparations to Israel, to individual victims and their descendants.
My relationship became much more nuanced upon learning that Germany was once home to five generations of my family, as far back as 1760, in the small town of Grobzig where Matthias Nathan Meyerstein was born. On our visit to its mid-17th-century Jewish cemetery, I gazed incredulously at the graves of Meyersteins. I saw schutzbriefen, documents issued by the reigning duke, that assured my ancestors protection, commercial privileges and religious rights. In the old Leipzig Jewish cemetery, I visited 12 relatives’ graves from the 1800s and 1900s, which reflected much about their secure socio-economic status.
Before my retirement, I never knew that Grobzig or Leipzig or other towns were in my family’s history. This discovery led to one conclusion: Unquestionably, 1933 to 1945 was a tragic anomaly in human history, and especially Jewish history. However, I must also gratefully acknowledge the Germany that sustained my family for over 300 years, and Jewish communal life for 1,700 years.
Nazi Germany’s ill-treatment and intolerance of “the Other” still affects me today as I mourn my relatives’ death. On the other hand, I feel heartened by this sentiment written by a non-Jewish German who funded research about my family: “For me, as I am part of this country and its history, it will be a never-ending task to find ways to deal with this horrible past and most importantly, never to forget,” she wrote.
Navigating this complex relationship with Germany and Germans is intellectually and emotionally messy for Jews. My engagement with “the Other,” however, has been profoundly satisfying.
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Doctors Without Borders Admits Gaza Hospital Used by Militants, Halts Operations
People walk at the site of Israeli strikes on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip in this still image taken from video, Aug. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders has publicly acknowledged that armed individuals — many of them masked — were present inside the large compound of Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, citing intimidation of patients, arbitrary arrests, and suspected weapons movement as reasons for halting some of its work there.
The admission, buried in a rarely referenced FAQ page on the group’s website published last month, lends factual support to claims long asserted by Israeli authorities about the use of medical facilities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists during the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which is French for Doctors Without Borders, said it has suspended all “non-critical medical operations” at Nasser Hospital as of Jan. 20, 2026, citing “concerns regarding the management of the structure, the safeguarding of its neutrality, and security breaches.”
MSF’s admission was first reported by independent analyst Salo Aizenberg.
In describing those “security breaches,” MSF stated that patients and its own personnel observed “armed men, some masked, in different areas of the large hospital compound … not in areas where MSF has activities.” It added that since the most recent ceasefire in Gaza, teams have reported a “pattern of unacceptable acts,” including the presence of armed men, intimidation, arbitrary arrests of patients, and “a recent situation of suspicion of movement of weapons.” The group said such conditions posed “serious security threats to our teams and patients.”
The hospital in Khan Younis — one of Gaza’s largest and, until recently, few functioning referral centers in the densely populated territory — has been a flashpoint in the Israel-Hamas war since early 2024. After intense battles and an Israeli military operation that searched for hostages inside the complex, the hospital was rendered non-functional and later reopened.
For months, the Israeli government and military have claimed that Hamas and other armed groups used hospitals — including Nasser — as shelter and operational bases, allegations that Palestinian authorities and many humanitarian organizations have rejected. In February 2024, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Daniel Hagari said the military had “credible intelligence” that Hamas held Israeli hostages at Nasser Hospital at one point and that there may have been bodies of hostages currently hidden there.
The Algemeiner has previously documented claims acknowledged by the Palestinian Authority that Hamas summoned Gazans to the Nasser compound for interrogations and that militants threatened hospital staff.
Terrorists from both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied group in Gaza, have confessed that they took over hospitals across the enclave, using the medical facilities to hide military activities, launch attacks, and hold hostages kidnapped during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
In the FAQ disclosure, MSF did not explicitly identify the armed men or link them to specific groups. But by reporting the presence of masked fighters, intimidation of civilians, and suspicion of weapons movement within the hospital compound, MSF’s account aligns with Israeli officials’ long-standing narrative that medical facilities have not been strictly neutral zones.
MSF said it formally expressed concern to “relevant authorities” and stressed that hospitals “must remain neutral, civilian spaces, free from military presence or activity” to ensure the safe delivery of care.
The new disclosure comes amid broader tensions between MSF and the Israeli government over registration and operations in Gaza, including Israel’s decision to bar dozens of aid groups, including MSF, from registering to operate in the territory after March 2026.
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Ireland Confirms It Will Face Israel in Nations League After Calling for Ban From UEFA
Soccer Football – UEFA Nations League Draw – Brussels Expo, Brussels, Belgium – Feb. 12, 2026, General view during the draw. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Ireland has agreed to play against Israel this fall in the UEFA Nations League mere months after pushing for the Jewish state to be banned from international soccer competitions because of its war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
The UEFA announced on Thursday in Brussels all the matchups for the 2026-27 Nations League, and Ireland was drawn to go head-to-head against Israel, as well as Austria and Kosovo, in Group B3. Ireland is set to play its away game against the Jewish state on Sept. 27 and will then host Israel in Dublin on Oct. 4.
The Israel Football Association said it hopes to host the Sept. 27 match in Israel, but a formal decision will reportedly be made in June. Israel has not hosted UEFA matches since October 2023 because of the war in Gaza with Hamas.
After the fixtures were announced on Thursday, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) confirmed in a released statement that the Irish men’s national team will indeed compete against Israel in both matches because they risk “potential disqualification” if they do not. The statement also addressed the motion the FAI approved in November 2025 to have Israel banned from UEFA competitions because of the country’s war in Gaza. The motions were ultimately rejected.
“In 2025, a motion was proposed by members of the FAI General Assembly to vote on issuing a formal request to the UEFA executive committee for the immediate suspension of the Israel Football Association from UEFA competitions for a breach of UEFA statutes,” the FAI said. “Members then voted in favor to submit the motion to UEFA, which the association did in November 2025. While consultation has taken place with UEFA officials, the association does recognize that UEFA regulations outline that if an association refuses to play a match then that fixture will be forfeited and further disciplinary measures may follow — including potential disqualification from the competition.”
FIFA President Gianni Infantino previously announced that no action will be taken against Israel and that FIFA “should actually never ban any country” from playing soccer “because of the acts of their political leaders.”
In October 2025, Republic of Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrimsson called on Israel to be banned from international competition just like Russia was after its invasion of Ukraine. “I don’t see a difference between FIFA and UEFA banning Russia and not Israel. I don’t see the difference,” Hallgrimssson said at the time. “I am not speaking on behalf of the FAI – I just don’t see the difference.”
He said on Thursday he stands by those comments and will respect any player’s decision not to compete against Israel in the Nations League.
“It’s obviously every player’s decision to play for the national team or not. So, it’s going to be whatever reason that is. It’s every player’s decision if they want to play for the national team or not,” he said, as quoted by the Irish Mirror. “But it’s not my decision if you play or not against them or what decision is taken on a higher level. I am the head coach. I need to focus on the football thing. I hope when we play them, the supporters will support Ireland and support us to do good when we play against them.”
Joanna Byrne, chairperson of Ireland’s soccer club Drogheda United, criticized the FAI for agreeing to play against Israel in the Nations League.
“In November, the FAI voted to submit a motion to UEFA to ban Israel from its European club and international competitions. That was the correct moral and principled position to take,” she said, as reported by the Irish Mirror. “Therefore, I am extremely angry and dismayed that the FAI have confirmed they will play against Israel.”
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Trump Tells Soldiers ‘Fear’ Is Powerful Motivator in Iran Talks as US Moves Second Carrier to Middle East
US President Donald Trump speaks during a visit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, US, Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
President Donald Trump told US troops on Friday that Iran has been “difficult” in nuclear negotiations and suggested that instilling fear in Tehran may be necessary to resolve the standoff peacefully.
“They’ve been difficult to make a deal,” Trump said of the Iranians before an audience of active-duty soldiers at Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina after US officials said they were sending a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
“Sometimes you have to have fear. That’s the only thing that really will get the situation taken care of.”
During his address Trump also referenced the US bombing of Iran‘s nuclear sites last June.
Earlier, he said the deployment of the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the United States’ newest and the world’s largest, was being made so “we’ll have it ready” should negotiations with Iran fail.
Oman facilitated talks between Iran and the US last week, which a spokesperson for Iran‘s foreign ministry said had allowed Tehran to gauge Washington’s seriousness and showed enough consensus for diplomacy to continue. The date and venue of the next round of US-Iran talks have yet to be announced.
The president traveled to Fort Bragg to meet special forces troops involved in the audacious Jan. 3 operation to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro, who faces narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges in US court, denies wrongdoing and maintains he is the rightful leader of Venezuela. In the weeks since the Venezuelan leader’s capture, Trump has worked with Maduro’s interim successor Delcy Rodriguez and sought broad control over the country’s oil industry.
Fort Bragg is home to some 50,000 active-duty soldiers. It also sits in one of the country’s more competitive political states.
Trump’s comments came as the Pentagon moved to send an aircraft carrier from the Caribbean to the Middle East, US officials said on Friday, a move that will put two carriers in the region as tensions soar between the United States and Iran.
The Gerald R. Ford carrier has been operating in the Caribbean with its escort ships and took part in the operations in Venezuela earlier this year.
Asked why a second aircraft carrier was headed to the Middle East, Trump said: “In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it … if we need it, we’ll have it ready.”
One of the officials, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said the carrier would take at least a week to reach the Middle East.
The Gerald R. Ford will join the Abraham Lincoln carrier, several guided-missile destroyers, fighter jets, and surveillance aircraft that have been moved to the Middle East in recent weeks.
The United States most recently had two aircraft carriers in the area last year, when it carried out strikes against Iranian nuclear sites in June.
With only 11 aircraft carriers in the US military’s arsenal, they are a scarce resource and their schedules are usually set well in advance.
In a statement, US Southern Command, which oversees US military operations in Latin America, said it would continue to stay focused on countering “illicit activities and malign actors in the Western Hemisphere.”
Trump had said this week he was considering sending a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East if a deal is not reached with Iran.
On Friday he told reporters he thought that talks with Iran would be successful but warned that “if they’re not, it’s going to be a bad day for Iran.”
The Ford has essentially been at sea since June 2025. It was supposed to be operating in Europe before it was abruptly moved to the Caribbean in November.
While deployments for carriers usually last nine months, it is not uncommon for them to be extended during periods of increased US military activity.
Navy officials have long warned that long deployments at sea can damage morale on ships.
Officials said the administration had looked at sending a separate carrier, the Bush, to the Middle East, but it was undergoing certification and would take over a month to reach the Middle East.
The Ford, which has a nuclear reactor on board, can hold more than 75 military aircraft, including fighter aircraft like the F-18 Super Hornet jets and the E-2 Hawkeye, which can act as an early warning system.
The Ford also includes sophisticated radar that can help control air traffic and navigation.
The supporting ships, such as the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser Normandy, Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers Thomas Hudner, Ramage, Carney, and Roosevelt, include surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.