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German zoo gets $26 million from widow of animal-loving Holocaust survivor
(JTA) — The zoo in Cologne, Germany, has gotten its first check from the $26 million gift promised by the widow of a Holocaust survivor who credited the city’s residents for saving him during the war.
Elizabeth Reichert willed the funds to the Cologne Zoological Garden in 2017 in honor of her husband Arnulf, who died in 1998. Both Reicherts were born in Cologne and met during World War II, when Elizabeth was part of the local anti-Nazi resistance network and Arnulf, a German Jew, was in hiding with the network’s help.
“They only survived the war in Germany thanks to the help of courageous people from Cologne, who offered hiding places to the Jew Arnulf Reichert,” the zoo said in a statement in German this week.
Though they moved to Israel and, after five years, America after the war, Arnulf and Elizabeth maintained affection to the city for the rest of their lives.
“We were born in Cologne and we remember forever Cologne,” Reichert said in 2017.
In the United States, they settled in New Jersey, where the couple started and ran a successful pet wholesale business. They never had children. Reichert chose the zoo out of all institutions in Cologne because of her and Arnulf’s love of animals.
“Arnulf wanted to give the money someplace where it would do good,” Elizabeth Reichert said in 2017 when she announced the planned gift. “When you think about leaving money, memories play a major role.”
Reichert died in February 2021, at the age of 96, and it was not until recently that her estate was settled and funds could be disbursed. The zoo reported that it had received the first payment from the trust, of more than $700,000 dollars, and said it expected annual disbursals to top $1 million in the future. The gift, a zoo official said in 2017, was unusual in Germany where large philanthropic gifts are rare and would be used to improve the zoo for animals and visitors alike.
The zoo said it is planning to name its South American section after Arnulf Reichert.
Athletes run past sea lions at the Cologne zoo during the Zoolauf, where children and adults can run past animals, June 24, 2022. (Roberto Pfeil/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Reichert had been giving a monthly donation of over $7,000 since announcing the gift. But her giving to the zoo goes all the way back to 1954, when she and Arnulf donated a soft-shelled turtle they brought from the Jordan River to Germany by boat on a nine-day journey, feeding it cold cuts of meat along the way.
Cologne’s zoo is not the first in Europe to be associated with Holocaust survivors. Zookeepers in Warsaw sheltered 300 Jews from the Nazis inside the zoo, in a dramatic story that was the subject of a novel and then a 2017 movie adaptation starring Jessica Chastain.
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The post German zoo gets $26 million from widow of animal-loving Holocaust survivor appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.