RSS
Obituary: Lou Hoffer, a Holocaust survivor who had a passion for keeping the stories of Romanian Jews alive
Romanian-born Holocaust survivor Lou Hoffer was dedicated to putting a spotlight on the plight of Romanian Jews deported to Transnistria, a region of the Ukraine known as ‘The Death Trap,” during the Second World War.
He died in Toronto on Jan. 10.
“Lou was an eloquent survivor speaker who captivated the audience’s attention, especially students. He often started his talks with a bit of a geography and history lesson before diving into his personal experiences in the Holocaust, as most people didn’t know the area he originally came from and was deported to,” said Mary Siklos, who worked closely with Hoffer and other survivors at the Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto. “He was a passionate advocate for educating people about Transnistria.”
Hoffer estimated he was born in 1927 in Vijnitz, Romania, where half of its prewar population of 8,000 was Jewish. His records and documentation were lost during the war. He attended classes at Jewish and secular schools where he was recognized as an excellent student, played soccer and travelled to the Carpathian Mountains for excursions.
Hoffer’s ordeal started in 1940 with Russian occupation. A year later, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Vijnitz was under German control. More than 250 Jews were killed in a pogrom that lasted for three days. Hoffer’s grandfather was one of the first Jews murdered.
By the end of 1941, Hoffer, his parents and his younger brother were deported in overcrowded cattle cars. Their first stop was a town called Ataki, on the banks of the Dniester River across from Ukraine. Hoffer and his family took shelter in homes that were abandoned by Jewish residents.
In a 2014 interview Hoffer told The CJN that the Jews left messages on the walls of these empty houses. ‘We are being killed. If you survive, please tell the world what happened to us. Say Kaddish for us and don’t ever forget us.’ Hoffer committed himself to doing this if he survived.
The family were moved to a region called Transnistria, meaning ‘beyond the Dneister River’, controlled by Romania. In an interview that Hoffer did with the U.S. Holocaust Museum, he described what his family experienced during the war.
“During the first 10 days of deportations, 38,000 Jews were killed on both sides of the border. Many were just driven into the river and shot.”
The Hoffers survived the transport and arrived in Shargorod, an ‘unofficial’ ghetto. The new arrivals joined some 2,000 local Ukrainian Jews who lived there. “We were now stateless, homeless and we didn’t know what to do next.” Hoffer and his family traded clothes for food whenever possible with local Ukrainian peasants who had potatoes, milk and cheese.
“We battled typhus and dysentery,” Hoffer said. “There were 10 people living in two-and-a-half rooms. Germany had a formula to kill Jews with gassing and mass executions. But Romania was trying to save bullets, so they simply deprived Jews of food, water and shelter. And they would shoot a few of us. The Germans would occasionally come to the Romanian side to get Jews for target practice.”
In April 1944, after Hoffer and his family had suffered in Shargorod for three years, the Russian army appeared. “A tall, powerful man dressed in a military uniform started to speak. In perfect Yiddish he said that in most of the territory that his army liberated there were very few Jewish survivors. He said that the ‘heroic Red Army will eradicate the Nazi beast from the face of the earth.’ My brother and I were so overcome with emotion that we both cried uncontrollably.” Hoffer, his brother and his parents had survived.
Nearly half of Romania’s prewar Jewish population was deported to Transnistria, which became known as ‘The Death Trap’. Over 400,000 Jews incarcerated in concentration camps and ghettos in Transnistria were murdered or perished from starvation and disease. About half were deportees from Romania, while the remainder were Transnistria residents who became trapped there with the German-Romanian invasion.
In 1948, Hoffer arrived in Canada through the Canadian Jewish Congress’s orphans’ program and began a successful business career in Saskatchewan. “They taught us how to operate a tractor and gave us $50 a month and a room.” Hoffer married his wife Magda Pressburger in 1959 and in 1966 they moved to Weyburn Sask., where Hoffer worked in the auto-wrecking and cattle industries and they raised their family.
In 2003 they moved to Toronto to be closer to their grown children and grandchildren and Hoffer reconnected with his past as he became involved with the Transnistria Survivors Association where he served as president for three years. He also was a sought-after speaker at the Toronto Holocaust Museum.
“Lou enjoyed working with students,” said Siklos. “He served as a mentor in the Holocaust Centre’s bar/bat mitzvah project, patiently preparing the students for the difficult tasks of remembering child victims of the Shoah. He was also instrumental in arranging the inclusion of the Transnistria Landsmanshaft information on the bridge between UJA’s Lipa Green building and the Gales Building.”
The Transnistria Survivors’ Association disbanded in 2014 but during its 10-year existence it worked to create public awareness that Romania and its citizens were one of Germany’s key allies in the oppression and murder of Jews.
Through the Jewish National Fund, Hoffer and his wife Magda planted 1,000 trees in the Transnistria Grove in the Aminadav forest near Jerusalem in memory of his parents and those who died there.
“Our job as survivors was fulfilled 100 percent,” he said. “Our stories, our legacies with be around for 1,000 years. The world isn’t going to forget.”
Hoffer is survived by his wife of 64 years Magda, children Michelle, Galya and Mark and eight grandchildren. He is predeceased by his son Garry and his brothers Joe and Sam.
The post Obituary: Lou Hoffer, a Holocaust survivor who had a passion for keeping the stories of Romanian Jews alive appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.