Uncategorized
I can’t forget what the Nazis did to my family, but I can be grateful to a repentant Germany
(JTA) — Picture a cute-looking, 6 1/2-year-old girl with curly braided hair. She is standing on a sidewalk, on a cold, dreary day in Leipzig, Germany, together with her parents and my wife and me. My granddaughter Vivi is staring intently at a 75-year-old worker, kneeling on the ground. He is digging a hole through the pavers to install several 4” x 4” brass plaques mounted on cement cubes — memorials to relatives who perished at the hands of the Nazis more than 80 years ago.
In February, we traveled 9,500 miles round-trip to dedicate 12 Stolpersteine plaques in memory of relatives I never knew, or even knew I had. (All 16 of my family members would have stood with us that day, but Germany’s airport worker strike canceled the others’ flights.) They were just some of my late father’s aunts, uncles and cousins who were murdered in the Holocaust, and we regarded the ceremony as a pseudo-levaya, a quasi-funeral that would be the final act of respect and farewell Hitler had denied my relatives.
I couldn’t have imagined, 60 years earlier when I first visited Germany, that I would ever return in a spirit approaching forgiveness, or that I’d feel a deep connection to a country that was once synonymous with brutality, pain, humiliation and suffering.
Stolpersteine, a German word meaning “stumbling block,” refers to a design brilliantly conceived by the non-Jewish German artist Gunter Demnig in the early 1990s. Installed in front of the homes where innocent Jewish victims last freely lived, the brass plaques simply and artistically memorialize, honor and personalize those brutally persecuted. On each plaque are engraved the victim’s name, dates of birth and death. As Demnig once said, “A person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.” Hence, 100,000 of his plaques throughout Europe remind us that Jews are part of a shared history, and a common memory.
Whether consciously or not, the “stumbling pedestrian” instantly recalls the extraordinary evil unleashed by ordinary people, on once vibrant Jewish communities, and the terrorized Jewish neighbors who lived within them. This evil was driven by a blind loyalty to a gratuitous hatred of “the other,” meaning non-Aryans.
Who were these relatives I recently memorialized? Recently uncovered documents suggest my relatives were all decent, law-abiding citizens who contributed to Leipzig’s economy, enriched its cultural life and strengthened its social fabric. Sadly, being model citizens did not spare them from torturous fates.
One of those relatives, Elfriede Meyerstein, my paternal grandfather’s sister, was born Feb. 27, 1871 in Breslau. At 20, she came to Leipzig where her husband Menny ran a textile trading company with his family. They lived at the same address for many years. By 1931, after Menny’s death, she lived with her daughter Käthe Huth.
The Nazis, once in power, immediately expropriated Elfriede’s assets, comprising foreign stocks meticulously accumulated by Menny. The Nazi “Ordinance on the Registration of Jewish Assets” of April 26, 1938, forced her to surrender those securities to the state. In 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht on Nov. 9-10, 1938, the Nazis collected a “reimbursement tax” as “atonement,” from Elfriede and the rest of Germany’s Jewish community, for the damage Nazis did that night.
Just prior to her Sept. 19, 1942 deportation to Theresienstadt at age 71, Elfriede was forced to sign a “home purchase agreement,” the Nazis’ final act of expropriation. The document falsely and cynically promised her a “retirement home,” with free lifetime accommodation, food and medical care, but paid for by her, in advance. The Reich Security Main office confiscated 65,000 Reichsmarks ($300,000 in today’s currency). Her “retirement home” was in a ghetto with disastrous hygienic conditions, starvation, and no medical care. Elfriede died one month later.
After considerable soul-searching and three visits to Germany, spaced over 60 years, my attitudes and feelings today, vis a vis Germany and its citizens, are dramatically different from when I first visited in 1966.
Then, I came with unprocessed emotional baggage. In 1939, my father, Ralph Meyerstein, fled Dusseldorf and my mother, Cecily Geyer, fled Dresden, both for England. My paternal grandparents, Alfred and Meta Meyerstein, were deported from Dusseldorf on Nov. 8, 1941, to Minsk, where they were killed. My maternal grandmother, Salcia, was deported to Riga in January 1942; in November 1943 she was sent to Auschwitz and murdered.
My parents met in Ware, a small town north of London, where some German Jews took refuge. They moved to London where they married during the Blitz and we came to the United States in December 1947.
The German-issued ID card of Max Israel Meyerstein, the author’s great-uncle, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1942 at the age of 80. (Courtesy Michael Meyerstein)
As an only child, I shouldered much of my parents’ guilt over abandoning their parents, even though it was their parents who, thankfully, had urged them to flee Germany. When retelling their survival story, my eyes still well up with tears, revealing a lifetime of trauma I’ve absorbed on their behalf. That first visit felt almost adversarial in tone. It was I, representing my parents’ personal losses and those of the Jewish people, versus Germany and Germans. I reacted viscerally to hearing guttural Deutsch being spoken. I eyeballed Germans on the street and asked myself: How old are they? Did they commit heinous crimes against my family and my people?
By 2018, when I dedicated a Stolpersteine in my maternal grandmother’s memory, my judgmental attitudes and harsh feelings had softened. Maybe I realized that 75 years later, the ordinary citizen on the street could not be held responsible for the carnage of the Holocaust. Also, working with non-Jewish German volunteers in planning the ceremony showed me their humanity, sensitivity and outright remorse for Nazism’s impact on my family and their German state. Their kindness was an atonement for a past not of their making.
My visit in February shed further light on my evolving relationship with Germany and Germans. Today’s Germany is doing teshuva, or repentance, by strengthening democracy, creating an inclusionary society, responding resolutely to far-right extremism, educating its young about the Holocaust, offering sanctuary to Jews fleeing Russia and Ukraine and being a true friend to the State of Israel. It also is supporting Jewish communal institutions, paying reparations to Israel, to individual victims and their descendants.
My relationship became much more nuanced upon learning that Germany was once home to five generations of my family, as far back as 1760, in the small town of Grobzig where Matthias Nathan Meyerstein was born. On our visit to its mid-17th-century Jewish cemetery, I gazed incredulously at the graves of Meyersteins. I saw schutzbriefen, documents issued by the reigning duke, that assured my ancestors protection, commercial privileges and religious rights. In the old Leipzig Jewish cemetery, I visited 12 relatives’ graves from the 1800s and 1900s, which reflected much about their secure socio-economic status.
Before my retirement, I never knew that Grobzig or Leipzig or other towns were in my family’s history. This discovery led to one conclusion: Unquestionably, 1933 to 1945 was a tragic anomaly in human history, and especially Jewish history. However, I must also gratefully acknowledge the Germany that sustained my family for over 300 years, and Jewish communal life for 1,700 years.
Nazi Germany’s ill-treatment and intolerance of “the Other” still affects me today as I mourn my relatives’ death. On the other hand, I feel heartened by this sentiment written by a non-Jewish German who funded research about my family: “For me, as I am part of this country and its history, it will be a never-ending task to find ways to deal with this horrible past and most importantly, never to forget,” she wrote.
Navigating this complex relationship with Germany and Germans is intellectually and emotionally messy for Jews. My engagement with “the Other,” however, has been profoundly satisfying.
—
The post I can’t forget what the Nazis did to my family, but I can be grateful to a repentant Germany appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Hamas Doubles Down on Refusal to Disarm as Trump Pushes Phase Two of Gaza Peace Plan
Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard at a site as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
As the United States and its allies prepare to roll out phase two of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, Hamas has doubled down on its refusal to disarm, clouding hopes for a breakthrough.
In an interview with the Qatari media network Al Jazeera on Wednesday, senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk said the Palestinian terrorist group — which ruled Gaza before its war with Israel and still controls nearly half the enclave’s territory — never agreed to lay down its weapons under the ceasefire agreement.
“Not for a single moment did we talk about surrender the weapons, or any formula about destroying, surrendering, or disarmament,” the terrorist leader said, echoing repeated statements by Hamas officials saying they have no intention of disarming.
Abu Marzouk also reaffirmed that Hamas has moved to “restore order” in parts of the Gaza Strip from which Israeli forces withdrew as part of the ceasefire deal.
Currently, the Israeli military controls 53 percent of Gaza’s territory, and Hamas has moved to reestablish control over the rest. However, the vast majority of the Gazan population is located in the Hamas-controlled half, where the Islamist group has been imposing a brutal crackdown.
Disarmament “was never even presented to us,” Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera.
“After a battle of this magnitude … and with the inability of Israel, America, and the West to disarm or destroy Hamas’s weapons, did they think they could obtain it through talks?” he continued.
The comments came one day before Trump said that Hamas would in fact give up its weapons.
“A lot of people said they’ll never disarm. It looks like they’re going to disarm,” Trump told a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
The US president also asked his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, for an update on the situation.
“We’ve got the terrorists out of there and they’re going to demilitarize. They will because they have no choice,” Witkoff said. “They’re going to give it up. They’re going to give up the AK-47s.”
Last week, Trump warned that Hamas “will be blown away very quickly” if it refuses to disarm and cooperate with the second phase of his administration’s 20-point peace plan.
According to multiple media reports, Washington is expected to announce a deadline in the coming days for the terrorist group to lay down its weapons, in an effort to set the terms of the disarmament process.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that the next phase of the ceasefire deal would focus on disarming Hamas and demilitarizing the enclave, rather than on reconstruction.
“We are at the threshold of the next phase: Disarming Hamas and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli leader told parliament, shortly after he officially announced that the remains of the last hostage had been recovered.
“The next phase is not reconstruction,” he continued. “We have an interest in advancing this phase, not delaying it. The sooner we do so, the sooner we will complete the objectives of the war.”
Under phase one of Trump’s peace plan, a ceasefire took effect and Hamas was required to release all remaining hostages, both living and deceased, who were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The body of the final hostage, Israeli police officer Ran Gvili, was returned on Monday, and he was buried on Wednesday.
In exchange for Hamas’s releasing nearly all the hostages, Israel freed thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences for terrorism, and partially withdrew its military forces in Gaza to a newly drawn “Yellow Line,” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west.
The second stage of the US-backed peace plan is supposed to establish an interim administrative authority, a so-called “technocratic government,” deploy an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to oversee security in Gaza, and begin the demilitarization of Hamas.
In an effort to advance his regional peace initiative, Trump launched the so-called Board of Peace last week, inviting several countries — including Turkey — despite Israel’s opposition to its participation.
Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected any Turkish role in Gaza’s postwar reconstruction, warning that Ankara’s push to expand its regional influence could bolster Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure, as Turkey has been a longtime backer of the Islamist group.
Under Trump’s Gaza peace plan, the newly created Board of Peace will oversee the interim technocratic Palestinian government in the enclave, supported for at least two years by the ISF.
The ISF — comprising troops from multiple participating countries — will oversee the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, train local security forces, secure Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, and protect civilians while maintaining humanitarian corridors.
In addition, the ISF would seemingly be expected to take on the responsibility of disarming Hamas. Even though several countries — including Hamas backers Qatar and Turkey — have expressed interest in joining the international peacekeeping force, no final agreement has been reached.
Further Israeli military withdrawals in Gaza are tied to Hamas’s disarmament.
During his Wednesday interview, Abu Marzouk declared that “nobody can enter Gaza without understandings with Hamas,” emphasizing that the group will not give up control of the enclave.
“If Hamas doesn’t agree to the administrative committee, it cannot enter the Gaza Strip,” he told Al Jazeera, asserting that the group has the final say over who sits on it.
Trump’s peace plan, which has been endorsed by the United Nations, calls on Hamas to relinquish any governing role in Gaza.
Despite Hamas’s comments, the peace plan is moving forward with a transitional technocratic Palestinian administration in Gaza. The newly established 15-member body is led by Ali Shaath, a former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority.
According to media reports, Hamas is looking to position around 10,000 members of its police force within the new Palestinian administration for Gaza.
Uncategorized
Forverts podcast, episode three: The cemetery
דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם דריטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „דער בית־עולם“. די פֿאַרגאַנגענע וואָך איז זי געווען „ליבע“. צו הערן ביידע קאַפּיטלען גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
אין דעם איצטיקן קאַפּיטל לייענט שׂרה־רחל שעכטער פֿאָר צוויי אַרטיקלען, „אַ טראַדיציאָנעלער מינהג געפֿירט פֿון פֿרויען: פֿעלדמעסטן און קנייטלעך לייגן“ פֿון אַנאַבעל כּהן, און „דאָס אַרײַנלייגן אין דר׳ערד: די פֿאַרשידענע ווערטער און אויסדרוקן פֿאַרן וואָרט ׳בית־עולם׳“ פֿון הערשל גלעזער.
אויב איר ווילט אויך לייענען דעם געדרוקטן טעקסט פֿון די אַרטיקלען, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ און קוקט אונטן בײַם סוף פֿון דער זײַט.
אין דעם וואָכיקן פּאָדקאַסט לייענט די פֿאָרווערטס־רעדאַקטאָרין שׂרה־רחל שעכטער פֿאָר געקליבענע אַרטיקלען וואָס דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט געדרוקט במשך פֿון די יאָרן. דערווײַל איז דער פּאָדקאַסט בלויז אַ פּראָבע פֿון פֿינעף קאַפּיטלען. אויב ס׳וועט ווײַטער וואַקסן דער אינטערעס צו אים, וועט ער ווערן אַ געוויינטלעכער טייל פֿונעם פֿאָרווערטס.
טאָמער האָט איר קאָמענטאַרן אָדער פֿאָרלייגן, שרײַבט אַ בריוול דעם פֿאָרווערטס: schaechter@forward.com
The post Forverts podcast, episode three: The cemetery appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Police Arrest Driver for Ramming Car Multiple Times Into Chabad Headquarters in Brooklyn
Police control the scene after a car repeatedly slammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The driver was taken into custody. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Police have arrested a man for repeatedly driving his vehicle into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, on Wednesday night, an incident which is now being investigated by authorities as a hate crime.
The driver in custody, who has not been identified, struck his 2012 Honda Accord once into the back door of the 770 Eastern Parkway building in Crown Heights before reversing the car and ramming the same door multiple times, as seen in footage that was shared on social media.
A car just drove into the side doors of 770 at Chabad Headquarters. Baruch Hashem, there are no injuries. Witnesses report the driver yelled for people to move as he drove in. It appears intentional. The synagogue has been evacuated as a precaution.
Please stay away from the… pic.twitter.com/ljsoZ0sIE7
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) January 29, 2026
The case is being investigated as a hate crime by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) Hate Crimes Task Force, Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference on Wednesday night. As a cautionary measure, the NYPD have increased security around houses of worship across the city’s five boroughs.
The vehicle was found mounted on the sidewalk at the scene. No injuries were reported and no explosives were found in the vehicle, according to Tisch. The car had a New Jersey license plate.
Yaacov Behrman, head of public relations at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, said witnesses heard the driver yell for people to move out of the way as he intentionally rammed his car into the building. The man previously trespassed at a Chabad house in New Jersey and was removed from the scene by police officers, according to Behrman.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited the crash site on Wednesday and called the collision “deeply alarming” and a “horrifying incident.”
“Any threat to a Jewish institution or place of worship must be taken seriously,” he added. “Antisemitism has no place in our city, and violence or intimidation against Jewish New Yorkers is unacceptable.”
Wednesday marked the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson being chosen as the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, an influential force in Orthodox Judaism that operates around the world.
The iconic 770 building in Crown Heights became the world headquarters of the Hassidic movement in 1940.
The ramming incident occurred amid an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City.
Jews were targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to data issued by the NYPD. A recent report released last month by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, which was established in May, noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of 2025, despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising just 11 percent of the city’s population.