Uncategorized
This 16-year-old turned her grandmother’s Holocaust survival story into a novel
(New York Jewish Week) — In May of 1937, 7-year-old Inge Eisinger lived in a luxurious Vienna apartment with a pantry stocked with favorite foods and a staff to keep her company. Though she had a strained relationship with her mother and an absent father, Inge, who was mostly raised by her maternal grandmother Anna, was living a charmed life.
This is the scene that opens “Running for Shelter,” a young adult novel about the Holocaust written by a young adult herself: 16-year-old Suzette Sheft, who is a junior at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. In the novel, Sheft retells her grandmother’s story of surviving the Holocaust.
Published by Amsterdam Publishers, which specializes in Holocaust memoirs, the book is a delicate and powerful reminder of the importance of recording one’s family history. It’s a lesson Sheft learned too early in life: Her father died of pancreatic cancer when Sheft was just 13 and she soon realized she was forgetting all the stories he told her about his childhood.
“I fantasized about rewinding time, so I could go back and record my favorite stories about his childhood,” Sheft writes in an author’s note. “I wished I had taken the time to write these stories down when I had the chance, because his death allowed me to understand the vitality of preserving the stories of our loved ones before it is too late.”
In memory of her father, Sheft recorded the story of his mother, her grandmother Monique Sheft, who was once the Viennese school girl Inge Eisinger.
In pre-war Austria, Eisinger had been living a completely assimilated life — so much so that her parents never even told her that she was Jewish. Following the Nazi takeover of Austria, her mother managed to whisk the two of them away to Switzerland, then Paris, but soon abandoned her. After a twisting and tragic story, Eisinger eventually reunited with her grandmother and moved to a village in Central France to wait out the war, changing her name to the more French “Monique.”
Sheft’s novel ends in 1946, when the two are on the boat to New York after the war and Eisinger’s grandmother reveals to her that she and her family are actually Jewish.
In spite of this — or perhaps because of it — Sheft, who lives in Manhattan with her mom, her twin brother and two dogs, is very committed to her Jewish identity. “Although my grandmother never really practiced Judaism, my dad was very involved in the Jewish world,” she said. “He was very passionate about Jewish causes and just Judaism, in general. So I felt very connected to the Jewish world because of him.”
The New York Jewish Week talked with Sheft about what the book means to her, why its subject matter is important and what she learned in the process of putting it together.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
New York Jewish Week: What was the process of writing the book; how did the idea begin and how did you collect your grandmother’s story?
Suzette Sheft: I had heard a lot of my grandmother’s stories from my dad. I always had an interest in the Holocaust — I would go to Holocaust museums in every city I visited, and I almost exclusively read books about World War II and the Holocaust growing up. So I kind of knew in the back of my head that I wanted to do something like this, but [my father’s death] sparked and ignited the necessity of doing it as soon as possible.
As for the process, a few summers ago I spent a week with my grandmother, interviewing her every day about her escape from Austria to France. At first she shared physical elements of her life, like her apartment and her family dynamics and her school life, but then she began to talk to me about the time leading up to the war — the years before the Germans invaded Austria. As she spoke, I recorded everything she said in bullet point form and I would periodically stop and ask for more detail. The next day, at the beginning of the conversation, I would recap what we had talked about, and then allow her to elaborate or clarify the story.
Later, I wanted to widen my perspective and uncover other stories and details that she may have forgotten, so I watched an interview she did with the USC Shoah Foundation. This was really helpful because there were some details that she had forgotten or that she had left out.
Even though the book is about your grandmother’s life, you wrote it as fiction. How much of the story came from your grandmother’s details, and how much did you have to research or create on your own?
Every event that happens is true, and everything actually happened to her, but there are some small details that I embellished. For me, it was really helpful because, while I love creativity and writing, I sometimes struggle to pick an idea. So the fact that she had all these little stories, and I could expand from those, was something I loved while writing this. I had to use fiction when describing the atmosphere of certain places and also to write the dialogue because I can’t know exactly what they said or how they said it.
Do you have a favorite story your grandma told you that you made sure to get in the book?
Inge goes to a boarding school [in France] with her host family and there the children play a game where they pick someone to be the “torturer,” who is usually whoever they think the ugliest person is. My grandma had red hair and green eyes, and I guess she wasn’t the traditional standard of beauty. They picked her to be the torturer and she would have to pull people’s hair and scratch them. There would also be a queen, who was usually the prettiest girl with blond hair and blue eyes, and she would be protected. I thought it was interesting because to me it was the children’s way of understanding what was going on in the world around them. It’s a bit complicated, but when she told me this story I was completely shocked. It was really fascinating.
For people your age, why do you think Holocaust education is still relevant and important?
Some people my age don’t know anything about the Holocaust. I recently came across a statistic that talked about how little Gen Z knew about the Holocaust. There’s also been a spike in antisemitism and a decrease in awareness of history. For example, with Kanye West, who has a lot of followers, saying antisemitic remarks, a lot of people are going to just go along with what he says. There’s also just been a lot of hate crimes towards Jewish people, especially during COVID.
Lastly, the number of living Holocaust survivors is diminishing by the day. Gen Z is the last generation probably that is ever going to have the ability and the opportunity to speak with Holocaust survivors before they’re all gone. It’s important that we share this book now and then we educate people now before it’s too late.
—
The post This 16-year-old turned her grandmother’s Holocaust survival story into a novel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Israeli tourists could soon be required to show 5 years of social media history to enter the US
(JTA) — Israelis seeking to visit the United States could soon be required to submit five years of social media history, according to draft regulations published by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security this week.
The regulations would apply to tourists from 42 countries, all allies of the United States, that are enrolled in the government’s Visa Waiver Program that allows passport holders to visit for up to 90 days without a visa.
Israel was first designated into the Visa Waiver Program by DHS in September 2023. The same year, Israeli tourism to the United States reached 376,439, followed by 417,077 in 2024, according to Statista.
The proposed regulations come as the Trump administration seeks to tighten borders. In April, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it would scrutinize the social media accounts of people applying to immigrate and international students for “antisemitic activity.” But the regulations mark a shift toward examining the records of people who are trying to visit, not move to, the United States.
In response to a question from a reporter Wednesday about whether the new requirement would cause a “decline in tourism,” President Donald Trump demurred.
“No. We’re doing so well,” Trump said. “We just want people to come over here, and safe. We want safety. We want security. We want to make sure we’re not letting the wrong people come enter our country.”
The new regulations would overhaul the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, an online application that tourists included in the Visa Waiver Program have recently been required to submit before entering the country.
It was not immediately clear how tourists would submit their social media history under the proposed regulations, or even what such a request could constitute in an era when people maintain many social media accounts and post prolifically on them.
The DHS notice began a 60-day period for public comment on the regulations this week. A spokesperson from Customs and Border Protection told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement that the notice was preliminary.
“Nothing has changed on this front for those coming to the United States. This is not a final rule, it is simply the first step in starting a discussion to have new policy options to keep the American people safe,” the statement read. “The Department is constantly looking at how we vet those coming into the country, especially after the terrorist attack in Washington DC against our National Guard right before Thanksgiving.”
The Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members by a suspect who is an Afghan national triggered several restrictions on immigration by the Trump administration. The suspect entered the country legally and has not been publicly alleged to have had a social media track record that might have elicited alarm.
The potential regulation comes as Israeli soldiers have faced scrutiny for their posts on social media during the war in Gaza, with some soldiers fleeing countries they have visited that are less friendly than the United States to Israel over the threat of potential war crime inquiries.
The post Israeli tourists could soon be required to show 5 years of social media history to enter the US appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
6 hostages murdered in Gaza lit Hanukkah candles in captivity, newly released footage shows
(JTA) — Two months after they were taken hostage, and eight months before they would be murdered, the Israelis who would later be known as the “Beautiful Six” were herded into a new section of the Hamas tunnel where they had been held.
There, their captors took hours of video of the young adults as they lit a makeshift menorah, sang traditional Hanukkah songs and, after being prompted, offered holiday greetings to the camera.
“Where are the sufganiyot?” asked Eden Yerushalmi.
“We’re waiting for Roladin in the land [of Israel],” joked Hersh Goldberg-Polin, referring to one of the most prominent purveyors of Hanukkah donuts in Israel.
The other hostages — Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lubanov and Carmel Gat — sit with their fellow captives. Sarusi appears visibly distressed as he makes the blessing over the candles, and the cameraman captures wrenching comments as the six young adults sing the song “Maoz Tzur.”
Goldberg-Polin explains that there are six verses in the song, “one for each time they tried to kill us and failed.” Yerushalmi responds, “We need to add another verse.”
In another video, Lubanov is instructed to shave the heads of his fellow male hostages. While shaving Danino, he recalls the movie “The Pianist,” set during the Holocaust, and says he is like a barber in that setting.
“This situation is not that far from the Holocaust,” Danino replies, looking at a mirror that a third person, possibly from Hamas, is holding up.
Some of the footage appeared intended to fuel the kind of hostage videos that Hamas released intermittently during the war, but Hamas never put it out. Instead, the footage was recovered by the IDF about three months ago during a raid on a hospital in Khan Younis and was delivered to the families of the hostages about six weeks ago, according to YNet News. It was released publicly on Thursday.
The video adds to accounts that many of the hostages sought to maintain Jewish practices and traditions while in captivity, though it is the first to suggest that such practices might at times have been facilitated or coerced by their captors.
“Lighting Hanukkah candles in that dark place captures the essence of the Jewish spirit: light prevailing over darkness,” the hostages’ families said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“Hamas filmed these videos as propaganda, but the humanity of the beautiful six shines through this footage. It is stronger than any terrorist organization. These videos bear witness to evil and failure. The entire world must see our loved ones in these moments, their unity, strength, and humanity even in the darkest times. They were taken alive, they survived in captivity, and they should have come home alive,” the statement continues. “Nothing will bring our loved ones back to life. Only bringing the truth to light, only genuine accountability at the national level, can bring justice and healing to all our hearts.”
We will never forgive and we will never forget how our hostages were treated by Hamas in Gaza.
Despite the horrific torture and humiliation, our brave and courageous hostages never lost hope, and even continued to light Hanukkah candles to bring light into a world of darkness. pic.twitter.com/wv3PSnbQZk
— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) December 11, 2025
The release of the footage has renewed grief over the murder of the hostages, which closely followed the collapse of ceasefire negotiations in July 2024. Some of the hostages, including Goldberg-Polin, who lost an arm on Oct. 7, had been on the list for release had a deal come together. Since then, Israeli officials have counted the hostages, whose bodies were retrieved soon after they were killed, among those rescued by the Israeli military.
“What heroes,” Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, told Channel 12, according to the Times of Israel. “Six young luminous people who did everything right and they stayed alive and they did their part, and for us to claim we brought them back, in bags, bags of children to their parents, please don’t count Hersh among the people you saved.”
News of their deaths triggered mass protests in Israel opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to reach a deal the month before. In September 2024, Netanyahu issued an apology to the hostages’ families.
The video comes as the body of the last remaining hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili, has yet to be returned to Israel, two months after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that required the release of all of the remaining hostages. Twenty living hostages and 27 deceased hostages, most but not all killed on Oct. 7, have since been returned.
The video appeared to be taken months before the group of six were killed in Hamas captivity in Rafah on August 29, 2024, shortly after the collapse of ceasefire negotiations with Hamas that could have led to the release of some of them.
The post 6 hostages murdered in Gaza lit Hanukkah candles in captivity, newly released footage shows appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
How Montana teachers use a Hanukkah kit to teach students who’ve never met a Jew
In Montana, students across the state — from Hutterite colonies to Native American reservations — are learning about Hanukkah in school: playing dreidel, lighting candles, and reading a picture book that tells the true story of Billings residents who united against antisemitism.
That’s thanks to the Montana Jewish Project, which is in its third year of distributing 50 “Hanukkah curriculum boxes” to public school teachers around the state, many in rural areas with few to no Jewish students in their classrooms. Teachers who sign up for the box receive it free of charge.
“A teacher at a school with a large Mennonite population went out of her way to email us and say, Thank you so much. This resonated so much with my students,” said Rebecca Stanfel, executive director of the Montana Jewish Project. “It makes a lot of sense, because the lesson plan is really about accepting everyone in your classroom, whatever their faith tradition.”
Montana, home to the most hate groups of any state and a Jewish population of a few thousand, tends to be the subject of alarming headlines: “Neo-Nazis urge armed march to harass Montana Jews” and “Jewish man attacked in Montana by self-proclaimed Nazi on Oct. 7,” most recently.
But the state has also been a national model for how to effectively push back against hate. In 1993 in Billings, neo-Nazis threw a brick through a 6-year-old Jewish boy’s bedroom window, which was displaying a menorah. In response, the Billings Gazette printed a full-page picture of a menorah for readers to cut out and tape to their windows. Thousands posted the menorahs to show solidarity.
So when it came to teaching Montana’s students about Hanukkah, Stanfel knew she wanted to go beyond the Maccabees and include that local story — one that counters common stereotypes about Montana as a white Christian nationalist safe haven. Each Hanukkah box includes a copy of The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate, which recounts the Billings story, along with suggested discussion questions.
One prompt asks students: “What would you have done if you were in Billings at the time? Would you have encouraged your family to display a menorah? Why or why not?”
Heather McCartney-Duty, a fifth grade teacher at an elementary school in the city of Choteau, population 1,700, knows of three Jewish students at her school — and they’re all siblings. That made it all the more important to teach about Hanukkah, she said, both to educate non-Jews and help her Jewish students feel included.
With the help of Montana Jewish Project’s box, she read her students the picture book, taught them to play dreidel, lit candles, decorated the classroom in blue and white, and even displayed a “mensch on the bench.”
“The news stories that hit out of Montana are, Oh, the Unabomber. Oh, the Freemen. What crazy thing has Montana done today?” McCartney-Duty said. “So to have this massive effort towards pushing back against hate and pushing back against bullies, it’s very significant to kids that it happened in Montana.”
Another teacher using the Hanukkah box, Courtney Hamblin, is adapting the lesson for her older students at a high school in Billings. She’s coupling the story with watching the PBS documentary Not in Our Town and reading newspaper archives about the display of solidarity.
That lesson will prepare her students to read Night by Elie Wiesel in the coming months, she said, helping them become more familiar with Jewish references in the book.
To her, the Billings story shows students “that something local can become national,” Hamblin said. “I’m trying to teach them that little acts of kindness can balloon into these big things.”
The post How Montana teachers use a Hanukkah kit to teach students who’ve never met a Jew appeared first on The Forward.