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Holocaust refugees

Victor Urbancic conducts a makeshift orchestra in Reykjavik, Iceland, sometime after World War II. (Courtesy Árni Heimir Ingólfsson via JTA)
August 12, 2026, 4:02 am
How 3 Jewish refugees from the Nazis built Iceland’s classical music scene from scratch
Closed borders and antisemitism made the country’s musical genesis story all the more unlikely, but as a newly translated book shows, perseverance and luck helped make history
By Jenna Gottlieb
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins stitches the first Blue Eagle label into a dress during a ceremony marking the inauguration of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) code label for women's dresses in New York City, January 22, 1934. (AP Photo)
May 19, 2025, 4:37 am
How trailblazing US labor secretary Frances Perkins quietly lobbied for Holocaust refugees
While the labor activist is famous for being the first female Cabinet member, on the 60th anniversary of her death, a new book explores her overlooked efforts to help Jews fleeing the Nazis
By Rich Tenorio
The seven Weber siblings upon their arrival at New York Harbor in May 1946. Bottom row from left: Renee, Judith, and Bela. Top row from left: Gertrude, Alfons, Senta, and Ruth. (Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
April 24, 2025, 2:22 am
Netflix tells tale of 7 siblings who miraculously survived the Holocaust to restart life in US
Now streaming, ‘UnBroken’ illuminates story of the Webers, who lived in hiding on a German farm for two years — only to be cruelly separated upon arrival in America
By Renee Ghert-Zand
This undated photo provided by Pelham Communications on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024 of Frank Auerbach. (David Dawson/Pelham Communications via AP)
November 12, 2024, 6:58 pm
German-British artist Frank Auerbach, who fled the Nazis as a child, dies at 93
Born in Berlin, Auerbach was sent to England by his parents in 1939 and went on to become one of the major artists of the 20th century
By AP and ToI Staff
Two Holocaust survivor families on the Vineland, New Jersey-area poultry farm they jointly purchased in 1947. From left to right: Dina and Dorothy Liverant, standing next to a visitor, with Ruth, Bronia, and Nuchim Grin, Seth Stern's mother and grandparents. (Photo courtesy of Stern)
September 2, 2023, 3:47 am
How Holocaust survivors flocked to NJ to start a thriving poultry farming industry
Seth Stern’s new book ‘Speaking Yiddish to Chickens’ tells how his grandparents joined thousands of other Jews in a plucky venture as they rebuilt their lives in rural America
By Rich Tenorio
The Museo Judio de Sosua, which tells the story of the Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in the Dominican Republic during the Holocaust. The museum is closed while the community waits for funding to reopen it. (Dan Fellner/ JTA)
May 11, 2023, 7:54 am
Shuttered museum seeks to tell story of Dominican Republic as haven for Jews in WWII
About 1,000 Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis landed on the island country’s shores. With few relics of that time left, a small Jewish museum wants the government to help it reopen
By dan fellner
A group of children from the Jaeger Kaserne DP camp in Germany read a Yiddish newspaper in an undated photo. (UN Archives via JTA)
January 10, 2023, 9:40 pm
UN exhibit remembers when the world turned its back on stateless Jewish refugees
The YIVO Institute and UN joint project runs through Feb. 23 in NYC, focusing on the day-to-day lives in DP camps of the 250,000 Holocaust survivors with nowhere to go
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
An armed sentry stands guard as civilian aliens, interned by England, walk inside an internment camp in the UK, June 2, 1940. (AP)
November 5, 2022, 10:14 am
They fled persecution in Nazi Germany. Then the British put them behind barbed wire
A new book sheds light on the little-known story of thousands of German Jewish refugees held in internment camps in the UK during World War II – including several of my ancestors
By Amy Spiro
Charlotte gathers her nerves before her entrance exam to Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandte Kunst (United State Schools for Pure and Applied Arts) in Berlin. (Good Deed Entertainment)
April 21, 2022, 8:29 pm
Keira Knightley heads up cast of animated film on Holocaust artist Charlotte Salomon
Opening in the US on April 22, ‘Charlotte’ portrays the first graphic novelist and her feverish 18-month labor of love to chronicle her life before her murder at Auschwitz
By Renee Ghert-Zand
Ludwig Guttmann (Design by Emily Burack; photo via Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images via JTA)
August 25, 2021, 3:48 am
The Jewish doctor who escaped the Nazis and founded the Paralympics
Ludwig Guttmann, who became a leading physician in the UK after the war, was fundamental in introducing sport as a way to rehabilitate paraplegic patients, boost their self-esteem
By EVELYN FRICK
From left: Manfred Gans (Courtesy of USHMM); Peter Masters (Courtesy of Anson family); Colin Anson (Courtesy of Anson family)
June 17, 2021, 3:24 am
Secret WWII Jewish British military commandos finally come out of the shadows
Declassifying records, author Leah Garrett uncovers amazing story of X Troop, a unit of German-speaking refugee volunteers determined to outwit and outfight the Nazis at all costs
By Renee Ghert-Zand
In this Monday, March 12, 2018 file photo, Congolese opposition leader Moise Katumbi speaks to delegates at a three-day forum in a resort hotel near Johannesburg, South Africa. Katumbi returned to Congo on Monday May 20, 2019, one of a number of political exiles coming home after a new president took office this year. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe,)
February 18, 2021, 2:42 am
Son of Greek Jewish Holocaust refugee now one of most powerful leaders in Congo
Moise Katumbi has presidential aspirations, is seen as a reformer in troubled country; while he doesn’t identify as Jewish, he has a ‘warm connection to Judaism and Israel’
By Cnaan Liphshiz
At left: Israel ‘Srulik’ Segalovitch, now Ira Segalewitz and Regina Puter, now Ruth Brandspiegel, in screenshots from a Zoom reunion, top, and together as teenagers, bottom. (Zoom/ Collection of Ira Segalewitz); Top right: A handkerchief from Ruth that Ira kept, along with his DP camp school memory book. (Photo by Scott Segalewitz); Bottom right: Purim in the Hallein DP camp, 1950. Ira is 3rd from left, Ruth is center. (Collection of Ira Segalewitz)
November 20, 2020, 10:35 am
Friends from post-WWII Displaced Persons camp reconnect on Zoom after 69 years
After Ira Segalewitz chanced upon an article with the name of his teenage sweetheart Ruth Brandspiegel, a tearful reunion conjures stories of tribulations and childhood bliss
By Marshall Weiss
David Attenborough at a ceremony for the naming of the RRS Sir David Attenborough at Camel Laird shipyard, Birkenhead, England, September 26, 2019. (Asadour Guzelian/Pool Photo via AP)
September 14, 2020, 11:34 am
UK broadcaster Attenborough, 94, hosts families of his Jewish refugee ‘sisters’
Irene and Helga Bejach, part of the Kindertransport rescue mission from Nazi Germany, took shelter with the British family during WWII
By ToI Staff
Photograph of an internee in a camp uniform, taken by internee Marcell Seidler, Camp N in Sherbrooke, Quebec, circa 1940-1942. Seidler secretly documented camp life using a handmade pinhole camera. (photo credit: Marcell Seidler/Courtesy Eric Koch/Library and Archives Canada)
August 16, 2020, 6:55 am
In WWII, an anti-Semitic Canada kept Jewish ‘enemy aliens’ in barbed wire camps
Online exhibit details how thousands of German and Austrian Jews were arrested in Britain and shipped overseas, where they were kept together with Nazi POWs in harrowing conditions
By Julie Masis
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