Author: Glen Berd

David S. Wisnia, 94, Holocaust survivor and cantor known for his deep baritone Mr. Wisnia sang for the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his voice keeping him alive there for three years. David Wisnia spent three years at Auschwitz, where, he says, only his singing voice saved him from death.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer Wisnia was born Aug. 31, 1926, in Sochaczew, Poland, west of Warsaw. He attended the Yavneh-Tarbut Hebrew School System, learning multiple languages and gaining vocal training from renowned cantors. Wisnia sang in synagogues, theaters and on Polish radio after his family moved to Warsaw. Auschwitz survivor David S. Wisnia, who served as cantor at two area synagogues and also spoke about his wartime experiences, died June 15 at a senior facility in Langhorne. He was 94. In the beginning, in Poland, David Wisnia sang in opera houses and dreamed of stardom. In the dreaded in-between, he sang to survive, so the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau wouldn’t kill him for being Jewish. And toward the...

We are delighted to announce that we are now a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and also t0 announce, and congratulate, Michelle Morris who is our Deputy. Michelle can be contacted via the CONTACT page on this website, and your comments can also be left below.   “The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the voice of the British Jewish Community and is the first port of call for the Government, the media and others seeking to understand the Jewish community’s interests and concerns. The Board of Deputies defends Jewish communities and individuals from antisemitism, persecution and discrimination and defends religious practices. The Board of Deputies stands up for the right to quality Jewish education. The Board of Deputies supports and advocate on behalf of the State of Israel. The Board of Deputies promotes good relations between people of all faiths and none. The Board of Deputies is the only democratically elected, cross-communal representative body in the Jewish community and comprises over 300...

Reginald Levy - Airline pilot who showed great courage during his Boeing 707's hijacking in 1972, which ended in a raid by Israeli commandos at Lod airport Levy was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, but raised largely in Lancashire, where his Jewish father, Cyril, was a cinema manager. He was educated at the Liverpool Institute high school for boys and Blackpool grammar school. Reginald Levy. Photograph: Anonymous/AP Though Reginald Levy, who has died aged 88, was a former RAF bomber pilot with a distinguished second world war record, his most celebrated moment in the air came quite unexpectedly in 1972. By then, Levy was living in Slough, Berkshire, and working as a captain with the Belgian airline Sabena. His plan for his 50th birthday, on 8 May that year, was to celebrate with dinner in Tel Aviv, accompanied by his wife, Dora. On his birthday, he was flying a Boeing 707, with Dora and 89 other passengers, from Brussels to Lod airport, near Tel Aviv,...

On this day: The hijacking that would lead to Operation Entebbe Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked on June 27, 1976, 45 years ago. Entebbe Airport, 1976 (photo credit: GPO) Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked on June 27, 1976, 45 years ago, kicking off an infamous incident that saw the IDF storm the Entebbe Airport and rescue the hostages. The flight was hijacked after a short layover in Athens by four terrorists — two from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two from the Bader-Meinhof gang in Germany. They forced the captain to land at Benghazi airport in Libya, then shortly after flew to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where Ugandan soldiers and president Idi Amin supported the hijackers and help trapped the hostages. This marked the beginning of Operation Entebbe. The hijackers separated the roughly 100 Jewish and Israeli hostages from the rest of the captives; the non-Jewish passengers were freed. The hijackers demanded...

A small service was held on Friday 25th June 2021 at the Blackpool Arboretum for Armed Forces Week. On a cold, very wet, midsummer (!) day in Blackpool, the St. Anne's Hebrew Community contingent attended the ceremony comprising prayers and songs, following an Invitation from the Arboretum service who have erected a plaque to commemorate Jewish lives lost in conflict Photos by courtesy of Marilyn Gaus...

Jelle Elkerbout, Director of Research & Project Development at The Jewish Heritage Alliance  My Great uncle Louis Trompetter (My mother’s uncle), a Jeweller in Utrecht, the Netherlands, during the war, gave a number of golden ten Guilders coins to a neighbour for safekeeping. Shortly after this he was deported to Kamp Westerbork, a Dutch concentration camp, from where he was then put on transport to Eastern Europe, where he was murdered on the hands of the Nazi regime. One of the coins has now resurfaced, and as a family we decided to donate it to the collection of Remembrance centre of Kamp Westerbork. My second cousin Edward Janning together with his father Andre Janning, did deliver my uncle Louis Trompetter’s golden ten Guilders coin last week to the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork. The coin will soon be part of the collection of the museum, and will be exhibited there together with a story about Louis Trompetter’s life. I hope that by giving the coin to this...

Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Samuel W. Chomsky lights the Hanukkah candles at a USO-Jewish Welfare Board dinner and show in Hollywood, California, Dec. 19, 1954. (Courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society) Jews in Hollywood, 1930-1950 American Jews and the making of the movie industry. Philip French’s The Movie Moguls and Nolan Zierold’s The Moguls give good overviews and collective/comparative portraits of the small group of top-level Jewish-born entrepreneurs who fashioned the [Hollywood] dream factories, Marcus Loew, Adolph Zukor, Sam Goldwyn, Carl Laemmle, the Selznicks, Jesse Lasky, William Fox, the Warner Brothers, Louis B. Mayer, B. P. Schulberg and Harry Cohn. Having either been born in America or come from Europe in their childhood or youth, most of the moguls could be classified as second-generation American Jews, from poor or modest-income families. They were exceptionally industrious and ambitious, and, interestingly, quite a few came to the motion picture industry from various retail trades, particularly the garment industry. Zukor and Loew, for example, began as furriers, Fox and Laemmle...