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In New York, Lithuania’s president honors those who saved Jewish artifacts during and after the Holocaust
(New York Jewish Week) — The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research welcomed Lithuania’s president to its Manhattan headquarters Monday to honor the Jews who rescued rare books and documents from the Vilna Ghetto and the non-Jewish Lithuanian librarian who protected the same material from destruction by the Soviets.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda was the guest of honor at a small ceremony unveiling two plaques in YIVO’s Strashun Rare Book Room.
The first plaque recalls the Jewish slave laborers, led by Avrom Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski, who in 1942 and 1943 defied the Nazis’ orders and protected a trove of Jewish documents and artifacts that the Germans had intended to house in a museum dedicated to the “exterminated race.”
The second plaque honors Antanas Ulpis, then director of the Lithuanian National Book Chamber, who in 1948 hid the archival material from the Soviets, who also intended to seize and likely destroy them.
The materials saved by the Jewish “Paper Brigade” and Ulpis form the heart of YIVO’s collection of some 25,000 materials — rare books, diaries, maps, photographs and films — documenting the extent of Yiddish civilization prior and during the Holocaust.
“These acts [of rescue] are without any doubt unique examples of universal human principles to fight the evil, to fight the darkness with every bit of light,” Nausėda said in prepared remarks. “We say we must remember, we must never forget.”
Monday’s ceremony also marked a decade or more of cooperation between YIVO and Lithuania, who in the years after the war argued over the fate of the Jewish materials that remained in Lithuanian hands after YIVO was relocated to New York. Current YIVO executive director and CEO Jonathan Brent helped broker a deal in 2011 that reestablished YIVO’s presence in Vilna (now Vilnius), and in 2015, YIVO and the Lithuanian Central State Archives began a joint project to digitize the documents as part of what is now called the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections project. Completed in 2022, it unites YIVO’s prewar collections online.
Blank, a telemarketing pioneer and philanthropist, attended the ceremony along with YIVO board chair Ruth Levine and other YIVO staff and supporters and Lithuanian officials.
YIVO also announced an award to be given in Ulpis’ honor to a Lithuanian who has worked to protect Jewish culture, and that the institute is working with the National Library of Lithuania and other institutions to commemorate YIVO’s 100th anniversary in 2025.
“It’s definitely a partnership,” Brent told the Jewish Telgraphic Agency after the ceremony. “It’s not one-sided. They genuinely understand, as President Nausėda indicated, that our histories are not just interconnected, but it’s part of a single history.”
This month marks the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto. Before Soviet troops reoccupied Lithuania in the summer of 1944, the Germans had murdered about 90% of Lithuanian Jews.
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The post In New York, Lithuania’s president honors those who saved Jewish artifacts during and after the Holocaust appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Currency Plunges to Record Lows Amid Escalating US Tensions
ILLUSTRATIVE: The Iranian flag waves in front of the IAEA headquarters before the beginning of a board of governors meeting, in Vienna, Austria, March 1, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner
Iran’s currency fell on Saturday to a new all-time low against the US dollar after the country’s supreme leader rejected talks with the United States and President Donald Trump moved to restore his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran.
The rial plunged to 892,500 to the dollar on the unofficial market on Saturday, compared with 869,500 rials on Friday, according to the foreign exchange website alanchand.com. The bazar360.com website said the dollar was sold for 883,100 rials. Asr-e-no website reported the dollar trading at 891,000 rials.
Facing an official inflation rate of about 35%, Iranians seeking safe havens for their savings have been buying dollars, other hard currencies, gold or cryptocurrencies, suggesting further headwinds for the rial.
The dollar has been gaining against the rial since trading around 690,000 rials at the time of Trump’s re-election in November amid concerns that Trump would re-impose his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran with tougher sanctions and empower Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear deal struck by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2015 and re-imposed U.S. economic sanctions on Iran that had been relaxed. The deal had limited Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, a process that can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Iran’s rial has lost more than 90% of its value since the sanctions were reimposed in 2018.
The post Iran Currency Plunges to Record Lows Amid Escalating US Tensions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Envoy’s ‘Zionist’ Ring Sends Shockwaves on Social Media
Lebanon’s army chief Joseph Aoun walks after being elected as the country’s president at the parliament building in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
i24 News – A photo showing US President Donald Trump’s deputy Middle East envoy donning a ring embellished with the Star of David to a meeting with Lebanon’s leader triggered outrage in Arabic social and broadcast media.
As Morgan Ortagus, who is Jewish, shook hands with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, her Star of David ring was visible in the frame, sparking accusations such as her being “more Zionist than her predecessors.”
Her direct superior, Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, is likewise Jewish-American, as is his predecessor Amos Hochstein, who was born in Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces.
Ortagus is the first senior Trump admin official to visit Lebanon amid the fragile ceasefire agreed by Israel and the Lebanon-based Shiite jihadists of Hezbollah.
The post US Envoy’s ‘Zionist’ Ring Sends Shockwaves on Social Media first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing
Supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir at a pro-Hamas rally in London. Photo: Reuters/Martin Pope
i24 News – Anti-Israeli activists in Britain applied for a permit to stage a demonstration through London on the morning of October 7, 2023, as Gazan jihadists were rampaging through southern Israel and slaughtering civilians, the Daily Telegraph reported.
At 12:50 PM, as the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was still ongoing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) notified the Metropolitan Police that they intended to hold a rally the following week.
Reports and videos of the Hamas-led onslaught began appearing on social media, and Israeli and then international broadcast media, several hours earlier.
“The Met was contacted on Saturday Oct 7 at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest,” a police spokesman was quoted by the Telegraph as saying. “The Met committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place seven days after notification.”
The group’s spokesperson defended the move, telling the Telegraph it was “clear” as early as Saturday noon that “the Israeli attacks on Gaza would be of an indiscriminate violence we had not witnessed before, and that 2.3 million people in Gaza – more than 50 percent of them children – were at severe risk.”
The post UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing first appeared on Algemeiner.com.