Rachel Feldhay Brenner, the Elaine Marks WARF Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, died on Thursday, February 4 in Madison. She was 74.
Born in Zabrze, Poland, Brenner moved to Israel with her family in 1956. She studied at the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and the University of York in Toronto before coming to Madison, where she joined the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies in 1992. In addition to chairing the department from 2004 to 2007, Brenner was an active member of the George L. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, the Middle East Studies Program, and the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia. She was also a senior fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities.
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Feb. 11, 2021
Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority said on Thursday it was “profoundly concerned” over this week’s libel verdict by a Warsaw judge requiring two senior historians to apologize for allegations in their book that a mayor of a Polish village during the Holocaust had turned Jews over to the Nazis.
The verdict came in a civil suit filed by the late mayor’s niece.
“[Yad Vashem] again stresses the importance of academic freedom in comprehensive historical research,” the statement said, adding that the Jerusalem-based authority acknowledges the Polish court’s verdict but “but remains deeply disturbed by its implications. Any attempt to limit academic and public discourse through political or legal pressure is unacceptable and constitutes a substantive blow to academic freedom.”
Flory Jagoda, flame keeper of traditional Sephardic music, dies at 97 Ryan Di Corpo Flory Jagoda, a Bosnian-born guitarist and accordionist who brought the traditional ballads of her Sephardic ancestors and the melodies of the Ladino language to American audiences through performances and recordings, died Jan. 29 at a memory-care center in Alexandria, Va. She was 97. The cause was complications of dementia, said her daughter Lori Lowell. In an early life marked by war, persecution and dislocation, Mrs. Jagoda said she found comfort in her heritage and the teachings passed down by her maternal grandmother her nona in the mountain village of Vlasenica.
The tragic love story of gay Jewish couple Manfred Lewin (left) and Gad Beck (right) will be told by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The true story of Gad Beck and Manfred Lewin, a Jewish gay couple who “resisted through love”, is being highlighted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In 1942, when Gad was 19 and Manfred 21, Lewin’s family were classified as Jewish by the Nazis, and were “deported” to “work camps” in the east.
Gad’s father was born Jewish, but his mother converted later, and so he was allowed to remain in Berlin longer because of his ancestry.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum presents a Facebook Live event on straight and gay couples that resisted through love during the Holocaust on Feb. 12 at 9:30 a.m.