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Two Holocaust survivors, reunited after 80 years apart, tell their tale in a new short documentary
(New York Jewish Week) — In March 2022, Jack Waksal thought he recognized Sam Ron, the keynote speaker at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual South Florida dinner in Boca Raton. But he couldn’t quite place him — after all, at 97, Waksal had met thousands of people during his lifetime.
But when Ron said the word “Pionki,” all the memories came rushing back. Ron, formerly known as Shmuel Rakowsk, and Waksal had been best friends as teenagers when they worked side by side making gunpowder at the Pionki labor camp in Poland for nearly a year during the Holocaust.
Waksal was blown away by the coincidence of meeting Ron again at a gala nearly 79 years after they first became friends half a world away. After Ron’s speech, Waksal made his way over to his table. In a new documentary about their rekindled friendship, “Jack and Sam,” Waksal recalls the first words he spoke to Ron in nearly 80 years: “I said, ‘You’re my brother!’”
“It is such a beautiful love story,” director Jordan Matthew Horowitz said after a screening Sunday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York’s Holocaust museum. “It’s a beautiful story of friendship that’s endured so much over such a long period of time.”
The screening was part of the filmmakers’ push to get the film in front of documentary branch members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as they begin voting on the shortlist of Oscar-nominated short documentaries. (“Jack and Sam” clocks in at 20 minutes.) Around 40 voters, film industry leaders and other documentary filmmakers attended Sunday’s screening, with more expected at a second screening Tuesday at the United Talent Agency offices in Los Angeles.
“Jack and Sam” premiered at Provincetown International Film Festival in June and has since been shown at six film festivals across the globe including at DocNYC last month. Jewish actresses Sarah Silverman and Julianna Margulies signed on as executive producers for the film in October.
“My wish for the film is that everybody sees it, especially right now. I think from sixth grade to 12th grade, this film should be mandatory viewing,” said Margulies in a talkback after Sunday’s screening. The actress, who starred in the television series “E.R.,” has been outspoken about the rise in antisemitism and Jewish representation in Hollywood in recent years.
Margulies, who is on the board of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, said she is personal friends with Waksal’s granddaughter and believes that the story in the film is crucial given the antisemitism experienced on and after Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. (She was also fresh off an apology after making disparaging comments about Black Americans who have not supported Jews after Oct. 7.)
“Right now, it is such a heightened moment. Especially in terms of education and misinformation, it is our absolute responsibility as adults and human beings to make sure that we do everything we can to get these films seen,” she said. “The timing of this is extraordinary. We have to push as hard as we can to show the evidence of what people refuse to believe.”
“Having testimony and recordings of history like this is so important,” said Jack Kliger, the CEO of the museum. Horowitz “has added a lot to the body of the work that will live on for many years and I appreciate that.”
Horowitz said that, as Holocaust survivors number fewer and fewer, the two men’s story was important before Oct. 7. But in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel and the international outburst of antisemitism in the nearly two months since, it has become even more relevant. “I had no idea how the world can change so rapidly,” he said.
The film begins with Waksal and Ron narrating the story of their childhoods in Poland over traditional documentary footage of pre-Holocaust European life in cities and ghettos. Both were born in 1924, Waksal in Jedlinsk and Ron in a town near Krakow. They remember Kristallnacht, the Nazi-led pogrom of 1938, and both lived in ghettos before being moved to labor camps.
Horowitz enlisted animator Lukas Schrank to recreate Waksal and Ron’s depictions of being transported via cattle cars to labor camps and the details of their lives there, including their harrowing memories of taking their first showers in weeks but not knowing if water or gas would come out of the faucet.
The film also animates Waksal’s story of escaping the labor camp after hearing that some residents would be moved to Auschwitz. He and a group of 15 others escaped together and lived in a nearby forest for more than six months before the war ended. Only six of the group of 15 survived the whole winter.
The movie doesn’t cover why Ron didn’t join them; Horowitz cited interviews with Ron, who explained that both staying and leaving carried risks and he found it an impossible choice to make. He instead was moved to Sachsenhausen, another concentration camp, and then was sent on a death march, during which he didn’t eat for more than a week. He was on the march when the American army liberated the group in the spring of 1945.
After the war, Waksal moved to Dayton, Ohio, where he lived until 1992 and became a successful owner of a scrapyard. Ron joined B’richa, an underground organization that helped Jewish orphans escape to Palestine. He briefly moved to Israel, and in 1956 settled in Canton, Ohio, about 200 miles from his wartime companion.
When they retired, both men moved to South Florida, never knowing they had lived and continued to live close to one another. That is, until the U.S. Holocaust Museum dinner in March 2022. After the dinner, Waksal and Ron became close again, visiting each other frequently, updating each other on the last eight decades of their lives and sharing their story at local high schools.
“It’s like a miracle,” Ron says in the film of his renewed relationship with Waksal.
Horowitz said he began working on the film a year and a half ago, just a few weeks after Ron and Waksal reunited.
“I actually never thought I would ever make a Holocaust-themed movie,” he said. “I just didn’t feel like there’s anything I could add to the conversation that hasn’t been said many times before. But then when I heard about their story, I was so moved by it.”
Horowitz conducted extensive interviews with both men over the course of 2022. They also both spoke at a screening of the documentary at Florida Atlantic University in August, which Horowitz said was “one of the highlights of my personal and professional career.”
Ron died on Oct. 11 at age 99. Waksal, meanwhile, is 99 and recently attended the March for Israel in Washington, D.C. with his daughter and granddaughter.
“We’re just trying to get as many eyes on this as possible,” Horowitz said. “That’s what Jack wants more than anything. He is so concerned with the state of the world and he feels like he has such valid points to make about it that he’s getting it in front of as many people as possible.”
“As he says, this is why I survived, to tell this story,” Margulies said.
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The post Two Holocaust survivors, reunited after 80 years apart, tell their tale in a new short documentary appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave a “demolition site” and saying residents have “no alternative” as he held critical talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“[The Palestinians] have no alternative right now” but to leave Gaza, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu arrived. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.”
Trump repeated his call for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war there between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which ruled the enclave before the war and remains the dominant faction.
Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, Trump argued on Tuesday that Palestinians would benefit from leaving Gaza and expressed astonishment at the notion that they would want to remain.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked. And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. We’ll get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” Trump said.
Referring to Gaza as a “pure demolition site,” the president said he doesn’t “know how they [Palestinians] could want to stay” when asked about the reaction of Palestinian and Arab leaders to his proposal.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” Trump continued. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had decades and decades of death.”
However, Trump clarified that he does “not necessarily” support Israel permanently annexing and resettling Gaza.
Trump later made similar remarks with Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, suggesting that Palestinians should leave Gaza for good “in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.”
“They are not going to want to go back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump did not offer any specifics about how a resettlement process could be implemented.
The post-war future of Palestinians in Gaza has loomed as a major point of contention within both the United States and Israel. The former Biden administration emphatically rejected the notion of relocating Gaza civilians, demanding a humanitarian aid “surge” into the beleaguered enclave.
Trump has previously hinted at support for relocating Gaza civilians. Last month, the president said he would like to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle residents in Jordan or Egypt.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, defended Trump’s comments in a Tuesday press conference, arguing that Gaza will remain uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
“When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” Witkoff said. “It is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating widespread sexual violence in what was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one of the agreement, Hamas will, over six weeks, free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
The ceasefire and the future of Gaza were expected to be key topics of conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, along with the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and Iran’s nuclear program.
Riyadh has indicated that any normalization agreement with Israel would need to include an end to the Gaza war and the pathway to the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, perhaps the most strategically important subject will be Iran, particularly how to contain its nuclear program and combat its support for terrorist proxies across the Middle East. In recent weeks, many analysts have raised questions over whether Trump would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which both Washington and Jerusalem fear are meant to ultimately develop nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu on Tuesday was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration last month.
The post Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signed the presidential memorandum reimposing Washington’s tough policy on Iran that was practiced throughout his first term.
As he signed the memo, Trump described it as very tough and said he was torn on whether to make the move. He said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of failing to rigorously enforce oil-export sanctions, which Trump says emboldened Tehran by allowing it to sell oil to fund a nuclear weapons program and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told Reuters in December. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump‘s memo, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions.
It also directs the Treasury and State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero.” US oil prices pared losses on Tuesday on the news that Trump planned to sign the memo, which offset some weakness from the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates. Output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had driven Iran‘s oil exports to near-zero during part of his first term after re-imposing sanctions. They rose under Biden’s tenure as Iran succeeded in evading sanctions.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency believes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other OPEC members have spare capacity to make up for any lost exports from Iran, also an OPEC member.
PUSH FOR SANCTIONS SNAPBACK
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese firms buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a trading system that uses mostly Chinese yuan and a network of middlemen, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum (SHIP) law to curtail some Iranian barrels.
SHIP, which the Biden administration did not enforce strictly, allows measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said a move last month by the Shandong Port Group to ban US-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province signals the impact SHIP could have.
Trump also directed his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” under a 2015 deal between Iran and key world powers that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Trump‘s first term, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of sanctions under the deal in 2020, but the move was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a snapback of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss if they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
The post Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and continued a halt to funding for the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.
The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been critical of UNRWA, accusing it of anti-Israel incitement and its staff of being “involved in terrorist activities against Israel.”
During Trump‘s first term in office, from 2017-2021, he also cut off funding for UNRWA, questioning its value, saying that Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, and calling for unspecified reforms.
The first Trump administration also quit the 47-member Human Rights Council halfway through a three-year term over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform. The US is not currently a member of the Geneva-based body. Under former President Joe Biden, the US served a 2022-2024 term.
A council working group is due to review the US human rights record later this year, a process all countries undergo every few years. While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and criticism can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Since taking office for a second term on Jan. 20, Trump has ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization and from the Paris climate agreement — also steps he took during his first term in office.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor — providing $300 million-$400 million a year — but Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
The US Congress then formally suspended contributions to UNRWA until at least March 2025.
The United Nations has said that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
An Israeli ban went into effect on Jan. 30 that prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory or communicating with Israeli authorities. UNRWA has said operations in Gaza and West Bank will also suffer.
The post Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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