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Broadway stars to perform songs written during the Holocaust at Carnegie Hall
(New York Jewish Week) — More than a dozen songs written by Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and ghettos during the Holocaust will be brought to life at Carnegie Hall next week as part of a commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Featuring Broadway bigwigs and performers such as Harvey Fierstein, Chita Rivera, Mikhl Yashinsky and Joel Grey, the one-night-only “We Are Here: Songs from the Holocaust” performance will take place on Thurs., January 26 at 7:30 p.m.
“I know a lot about music — I’ve spent my whole life doing it — and I never knew there were songs that came out of the camps and the ghettos,” said music producer and composer Ira Antelis, who conceived of the concert several years ago. “I knew there was classical music in Theresienstadt, but I was not familiar with what I call the ‘Bruce Springsteen’ or ‘Pete Seeger’ music of the camps.”
As it turns out, however, hundreds of what might be called folk and popular songs were written — mostly in Yiddish — by Jews in concentration camps and ghettos. In the decades following the war, many were published in newspapers, songbook collections and memoirs in Europe, Israel and the United States.
The “We Are Here” concert draws its name from one such songbook, titled ““We Are Here: Songs of the Holocaust,” which was compiled in 1983 by Eleanor Mlotek and Malke Gottlieb, with a foreword by Elie Wiesel. Antelis discovered the book while doing research on Wiesel after his death in 2016.
Shortly after he read the songbook, Antelis, who lives in Chicago, was visiting family in New York when he ran into an old friend, Rabbi Charlie Savenor. A former educational director at Park Avenue Synagogue, Savenor was teaching a class on Holocaust memoirs there at the time.
“Keeping a memoir, hiding it, and making sure that whether or not you live and die your experience would be remembered was an act of deep resistance,” said Savenor, who is now the executive director of Civic Spirit, an organization that advocates for civic education. “Writing this music and these songs was doing the same exact thing.”
It felt like fate that the two had reconnected after 15 years, and they decided to collaborate on the project.
Initially, the pair planned to mount a concert just using songs from the “We Are Here” anthology. But when the pandemic put everything on hold, Antelis used the time to do additional research — which led him to discover a 2014 doctoral dissertation that had compiled research about 14 additional songbooks published between 1945-1949. Each of these volumes was filled with dozens of songs from a particular camp or ghetto — songs from Bialystok, Vilna, Munich and others.
“This is our concert,” Antelis thought.
Newly reinvigorated, the concert he was conceiving would feature one song from each songbook.
“What better way to say ‘We Are Here’ than to carry on somebody’s voice from 1940, who was murdered?” Savenor said. “We have the opportunity to do that.”
The first-ever concert of these songs was produced last year at Chicago’s Temple Sholom. That program was on Yom HaShoah, so it included a yahrzeit candlelighting and several speeches. This year, by contrast, the concert will focus almost entirely on the music and the performers, many of whom are no strangers to drawing crowds.
Though many of the songs featured in “We Are Here” have been translated into English, several will be sung in their original Yiddish, including “Minuten Fon Bitahon” (“Minutes of Faith”) by Mordechai Gebirtig. Sung by Steven Skybell, who is coming off of a seven-week off-Broadway run as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the song will open the concert.
“One of the most heartbreaking and amazing things about Yiddish songs, in general, is that they don’t shy away from putting into song every aspect of the Jewish life,” said Skybell, who began seriously learning Yiddish during the pandemic. “It’s really unlike any other type of music I’ve ever seen, in that it does not shy away from ugly reality and sometimes hopeless situations.”
At the same time, however, Savenor said he is surprised at how uplifting many of the songs are, considering the horrible circumstances their writers were enduring. “This is not the Mourner’s Kaddish for an hour and forty five minutes,” he said. “It’s just people talking about love and relationships, and dreams and aspirations. It’s a lot more about life than it is about mourning.”
Each song will be introduced by a presenter who will share a brief personal anecdote relating to the Holocaust. Along with hosts Antelis and Savenor, these presenters include Jack Kliger, the president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage; Scott Richman, director of the New York and New Jersey branch of the Anti-Defamation League and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York.
The diversity of the presenters and performers is intentional, said Antelis and Savenor, emphasizing that part of the purpose of the concert is to showcase a coming together across races, religions and ethnicities. The aim, they said, is to show unity and entrench the message of “never again.”
That’s also why the concert is being presented at historic Carnegie Hall, rather than a synagogue. “To have the sounds of Yiddish reverberating in Carnegie Hall gives me special delight,” said Skybell. “The fact that Yiddish is alive and well and we hear it at Carnegie Hall — it’s just to say that we are here, we’re not going away and we won’t be silenced.”
Proceeds from the performance will be donated to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan. Though it will not be recorded for the public or live streamed, Antelis and Savenor said they hope to bring the production around the country and even to Europe to perform the songs at the sites of the ghettos and camps where they were originally composed.
“With everything that’s going on, we cannot be silent — people need to step up. If we don’t stand against antisemitism and hate in every facet, then who are we?” Antelis said. “I think this is the most important concert in many, many years, especially in our culture.”
“We are Here: Songs From the Holocaust” is a one-night event on the Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall (881 7th Ave.) on Jan. 26 at 7:30 pm. Buy tickets here.
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The post Broadway stars to perform songs written during the Holocaust at Carnegie Hall appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UN’s Francesca Albanese Lashes Out at ‘Pro-Genocide Minions’ After Georgetown University Severs Ties
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for Palestinian human rights, on Nov. 14, 2023. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect
A controversial United Nations official who has been criticized for using her role to promote anti-Israel bias and pro-Hamas propaganda denied on Monday that Georgetown University severed its relationship with her due to accusations that she is antisemitic, explaining that she was dropped due to the US government’s decision to sanction her.
“I had an affiliation with a US university. I used to lecture there. Everything has been cut down,” she said earlier this month at an event with ODI Global.
A university official confirmed to JNS on Friday that Georgetown severed ties with Albanese due to the imposition of sanctions, saying, “US institutions are prohibited by federal law from affiliating with individuals subject to US sanctions.”
In July, the Trump administration sanctioned Albanese, accusing her of “political and economic warfare” against the US and Israel. “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time.
Following news of Georgetown’s severing ties with Albanese, some media reports suggested the decision was based on her antisemitic comments. The UN official appeared to respond to such claims on the social media platform X.
“Georgetown’s decision to end my 10-year-old affiliation is yet another fallout of the sanctions the US imposed on me last July for exposing Israel’s genocide and the complicity of US businesses. Any other explanation is the usual laughable propaganda of the pro-genocide minions,” she posted on X.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
In August, she defended Hamas as a legitimate “political force” in Gaza that has built schools and hospitals while ruling the Palestinian enclave for nearly two decades, arguing that people should not think of the internationally designated terrorist group as armed “cut-throats” or “fighters.”
Months earlier, Albanese called on all medical professionals to cut ties with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” — an accusation she made repeatedly since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The UN recently launched a probe into Albanese’s conduct over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
While speaking at a Washington, DC bookstore last October, Albanese also accused Israel of weaponizing the fallout of the Oct. 7 atrocities to justify the continued “colonization” of Gaza.
Albanese claimed last year that Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. In 2023, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
In response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s calling Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.” In July 2024, she also called for Israel to be expelled from the UN.
Albanese even once confessed that she struggles with impartiality. In an interview with the Institute for Palestine Studies in which she discussed Palestinian refugees and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) she said, “I feared deep down perhaps I feared that embarking on research on a matter on which I deeply held personal views could compromise my objectivity.”
UN Watch cheered Albanese’s dismissal from Georgetown as a victory against rising antisemitism.
“We welcome Georgetown University’s decision,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “Academic institutions have a responsibility to uphold basic standards of integrity and human dignity. Removing an official who has repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and justified terrorism is a necessary step toward restoring those standards.”
Calling on the UN to join Georgetown in dismissing Albanese, he added, “This sends an important message. Positions of authority at the United Nations do not grant immunity from accountability, and universities should not serve as safe havens for those who abuse their platforms to promote hatred. The UN must follow Georgetown’s lead and remove Albanese.”
Albanese is not without allies at Georgetown. One of them, Middle East studies associate professor Nader Hashemi, said on X that Albanese’s status as a sanctioned person will change if and when the Democrats win the US presidency and that she will be hosted at Georgetown again.
“As soon as the sanctions are lifted on Francesca, we plan to host a [sic] her again at Georgetown University,” he wrote. “I’m certain her affiliation will also be restored. When she does return to campus, I suspect there is not a room large enough to accommodate all the people who want to meet her.”
Hatred for Israel, often fueled by the spread of misinformation about the Jewish state’s history and conduct in Gaza, is fueling violence against Jews in the US and elsewhere, according to experts who spoke with The Algemeiner earlier this year.
In June, an assailant firebombed a pro-Israel rally with Molotov cocktails and a “makeshift” flamethrower in Boulder, Colorado, killing one person and injuring 13 in what US authorities called a targeted terrorist attack. According to court documents, the man charged for the attack yelled “Free Palestine” during the violence and also told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
The Colorado firebombing came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder also yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supported the criminal charges against the suspect stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Recent research has found that anti-Zionist faculty at universities have created a hostile climate for Jews and Israelis.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), university faculty and staff have exacerbated the antisemitism crisis by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues.
The actions by faculty provided an academic pretext for the relentless wave of antisemitic incidents of discrimination and harassment which pro-Hamas activists have perpetrated against Jewish and Israeli members of campus communities since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, according to the survey, released in September.
The survey of “Jewish-identifying US-based faculty members” found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it. Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).
Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Russian Teen Assaulted Over Israeli Flag Photo as Antisemitism Concerns Mount, Amid Calls for Jews to Leave Country
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, former chief rabbi of Moscow and current president of the Conference of European Rabbis, on June 24, 2024. Photo: IMAGO/epd via Reuters Connect
A 15-year-old student at a school in Russia was brutally assaulted by classmates after posting a photo featuring an Israeli flag on social media, Russian media reported, leaving him with a serious eye fracture from an incident that has drawn public outrage and is now under criminal investigation.
Earlier this month, a high school student in St. Petersburg, a major city in northwestern Russia, was physically attacked by two classmates after changing his social media profile photo to one featuring an Israeli flag, according to a report by local News Channel 78 on Sunday.
One of the attackers allegedly harassed the boy over his profile picture, demanding that he remove it and apologize.
After a verbal confrontation in which the attacker threatened the boy and hurled insults, including references to the Holocaust, he allegedly demanded that the victim meet him in the bathroom to continue the discussion.
When the two boys met there, the assailant reportedly demanded that he apologize on his knees. The victim refused but said he was willing to apologize without being humiliated.
The attacker then struck him repeatedly in the face while another boy blocked the bathroom exit.
The victim had to be hospitalized after suffering a fracture to the eye socket and underwent surgery under general anesthesia to remove bone fragments.
After spending more than a week in the hospital, he is now receiving outpatient care, and his family is coordinating with school administrators on a transition to home-based schooling as recommended by his doctors.
The boy’s mother reported the assault to the police, prompting local authorities to open a criminal investigation for assault and battery.
This incident came after Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as Moscow’s chief rabbi from 1993 to 2022, recently urged Jews to leave Russia and consider immigrating to Israel, citing a growing hostile climate and rising antisemitic attacks targeting the local Jewish community.
“I have long urged Russia’s Jews to consider aliyah, the return to Israel. The post-Soviet renaissance was extraordinary, but illusions of permanence ignore history,” Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, wrote in an op-ed for The Jerusalem Post earlier this month.
“Now, more than ever, Russia’s Jews should heed the call to leave. Israel offers not just refuge but a homeland where Jewish life is sovereign, not contingent on geopolitical whims,” he continued.
Although the number of Jews leaving Russia has declined, the country still accounted for the largest number of immigrants to Israel in 2025, with roughly 8,300 arrivals, according to data released Monday by Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry.
This figure marked a nearly 60 percent drop from 19,500 last year and a small fraction of the 74,000 who immigrated in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Israel suspends operations of multiple humanitarian organizations in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders
The Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is halting the operations of more than three dozen humanitarian groups in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders.
The ministry announced on Tuesday that the affected organizations failed to meet its new requirements for non-governmental organizations providing humanitarian aid in Gaza, which were posted online in November. The requirements included providing a full list of its Palestinian employees.
“We emphasize that the registration process is intended to prevent the exploitation of aid by Hamas, which in the past operated under the cover of certain international aid organizations, knowingly or unknowingly,” wrote the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees aid in Gaza, in a post on X.
The ministry said that 37 of the NGOs working in Gaza did not have their permits renewed for the coming year, according to the Associated Press.
Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, posted a link to a Ynet article about the suspensions on X Tuesday, writing, “An ongoing scandal ignored by UN & European enablers shows why @Israel has to decertify some of the NGOs who have terrorists on their payroll.”
The suspensions, which will begin on Jan. 1, come as President Donald Trump has put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to usher the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel into its second phase, which would include the reconstruction of Gaza.
Speaking beside Netanyahu at a press conference Monday, Trump said that he believed reconstruction efforts in the enclave were “going to begin pretty soon,” adding that work to improve sanitary conditions had already begun.
But aid groups in Gaza have said that Israel has continued to block aid from entering the enclave as storms and flooding have battered the region’s residents in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders warned in a blog post that Israel’s new registration guidelines “risk leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza without lifesaving healthcare in 2026.” The United Nations’ Humanitarian Country Team also lambasted the requirements, writing that aid groups had warned they were “vague, politicised and impossible to meet without breaching humanitarian principles.”
But COGAT minimized the impact of the suspensions in its post, writing that “the implementation of the government decision will not result in any future harm to the volume of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.” It said that the combined contributions of the groups affected amounted to 1% of the total aid volume in Gaza.
In June 2024, Israel accused Doctors Without Borders, which is also known by its French acronym MSF, of employing a Hamas operative. In response, MSF said it was “deeply concerned by these allegations and is taking them very seriously.”
“MSF chose not to cooperate with the registration process and refused to provide Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs with a list of its employees, as required by a government decision,” the post continued.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel suspends operations of multiple humanitarian organizations in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders appeared first on The Forward.