Nazi Guard Caught! Extradition to Germany....

AP reports on the latest findings of Nazi war criminals. John Demjanjuk is a former autoworker from suburban Cleveland who was thought to have been Ivan the Terrible and was extradited to Israel in 1986. After receiving evidence another Ukrainian was the real Ivan, the Israeli high courts freed him and his U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998. although Germany is seeking extradition the defense is claiming he's too old to be deported.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said there are allegations from a fellow guard that Demjanjuk played "an active part in the mass murder of Jews deported to the Sobibor death camp."

"I very much welcome the decision made by the German authorities to seek the extradition of Demjanjuk and hope that it will be expedited so that he can be prosecuted in Germany and punished for his crimes," Zuroff said.

He noted that Demjanjuk is No. 2 on the center's "most wanted" list of Nazi war criminals — below only the brutal SS doctor Aribert Heim, whose whereabouts are unknown.

"The issue is that he was involved in mass murder; for some of our suspects, we have proof that they were responsible for individual murders, but here we are talking about someone who participated in the process that led to the annihilation of a quarter million Jews" at Sobibor, Zuroff said.

Remembering the Holocaust

As you may have read, May 1st marks the day of remembrance of the Holocaust. There are many events taking place to commemorate the tremendous tragic loss of six million Jews. I'm doing my part in a Yom Hashoah program performing in a choir which will commemorate this day along with the survivors living in our neighborhood. If you would like to see some excellent videos remembering this important day click here.

Miraculous Story: Torah Found in Polish Cemetery Restored

The NYT has a fantastic story of a Torah that was found buried in a Polish cemetery. The scroll was hidden by a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried them before the Nazis could steal and burn them. The Torah was hidden for more than 60 years and was miraculously discovered by Rabbi Menachem Youlus of Wheaton, MD. who based on stories told to him by survivors decided to take a trip to the cemetery in question. Using a metal detector the Rabbi attempted to locate the lost torah but to no avail. After his 13 yr old asked if the cemetery was the same size in 1939 the Rabbi went back and after aiming it at a burial plot for damaged holy writings the detector beeped and he found a torah but it was missing 4 pages. After taking an ad in a polish paper saying he would pay top dollar for parchment with hebrew lettering a Priest stepped forward. The Polish priest offered the Rabbi the missing 4 pages which after intense scrutiny was said to be a match. The priest who was born Jewish and was an Auschwitz survivor explained that he was given the pages by Jewish prisoners who asked him toafeguard it after they died.

Rabbi Youlus said that nearly half the Torah’s lettering needed repair, work that the foundation has done over the past few years. Thirty-seven letters were left unfinished: 36, or twice the number that symbolizes “life” in Hebrew, will be filled in by members of the congregation before the service on Wednesday, the 37th at the ceremony.

Learning About Humilty From a Gentile

I was very moved by a recent article in Haaretz. Sir Nicholas Winton, was released from a hospital in Prague after a brief battle with bronchitis and went home to England on a Czech military plane. You may be asking who is Sir Nicholas Winston? Sir Nicholas is responsible for saving 669 Czechoslovak-Jewish children on the eve of World War II from the Nazis by arranging for them to go to Britain.His great heroic deed may have gone unnoticed had his wife not found a scrapbook in the attic with information regarding his heroism. He kept it all to himself and no one knew for 50 years what remarkable things he had done. That is humility in it's greatest form. Sir Nicholas Winton is 98 Years old, may he continue to live a long and healthy life.

Hey That Street is Named After Hitler.....

Well not exactly but close. Believe it or not unbeknown to many people (until now) there is a street in the very Jewish neighborhood of Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn that is ironically named after an Anti-Semite. It was recently discovered that Austin Corbin, a 19th century Brooklyn Land Developer and one time head of the Long Island Railroad was also an outspoken anti-Semite, and president of the American Society of the Suppression of Jews.There is now a movement to rectify this situation.