Eduardo Weinstein of Santiago, Chile, earned the 2012 Label A. Katz Young Leadership Award, named for the youngest person to achieve the office of international president of B’nai B’rith. Weinstein received his award at B’nai B’rith’s 2012 policy conference on Sept. 9 in Washington, D.C.

The award goes to individuals under 45 who have demonstrated outstanding service to the totality of B'nai B'rith and have worked to achieve the goals of the B'nai B'rith Young Leadership program.

The honor has proven a good measure of future achievement in B’nai B’rith, as many presidents and top organizational leaders have won the Label A. Katz award.

Weinstein has volunteered with B’nai B’rith for the past 10 years. He was a founding member and the first president of the Dayan Lodge, the first new Chilean lodge formed in 20 years. Under his watch, the lodge has seen a healthy growth in membership.

In 2005, Weinstein broadened his spectrum of work from the Dayan Lodge to District 27, a region that includes Chile and Bolivia, eventually joining the district’s Executive Committee in 2007. His rise in leadership continued when he became the second deputy president of the district in 2009, as well as the head of the Institutional Development Committee, where he oversaw the creation of three new lodges that successfully brought in young members.

Continuing his ascension within the organization, Weinstein will be installed as the president of District 27 in November.

In February 2010, Weinstein was instrumental in coordinating his district’s disaster relief efforts after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of central Chile, causing damage in Santiago and Maule, Chile.

Weinstein resides in Santiago with his wife, Deborah, and their five children.

Other winners of the 2012 Label A. Katz award are: Ralph Attie of Panama; Edwige Ouaknine of Lev, France; Rebecca Saltzman of Denver; Jorge Silberberg of Montevideo, Uruguay; and Stephen Stern of Annapolis, Md.

Stephen Stern of Annapolis, Md., has earned the 2012 Label A. Katz Young Leadership Award, named for the youngest person to achieve the office of international president of B’nai B’rith. Stern received his award at B’nai B’rith’s 2012 policy conference on Sept. 9 in Washington, D.C.

The award goes to individuals under 45 who have demonstrated outstanding service to the totality of B’nai B’rith and have worked to achieve the goals of the B’nai B’rith Young Leadership program.

The honor has proven a good measure of future achievement in B’nai B’rith, as many presidents and top organizational leaders have won the Label A. Katz award.

While Stern has only been a part of B’nai B’rith for five years, he is a vital member of the organization.

Stern is an active participant in B’nai B’rith’s policy and advocacy work. He has represented B’nai B’rith at U.N. Advocacy Days, in meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and at foreign embassies. He is currently the vice chair of the Center for Human Rights and Public Policy.  

In the Washington, D.C., community Stern works to engage young people in the B’nai B’rith Young Professional Network (YPN). He participates in YPN embassy receptions and programs in the “Conversations Around the World” series, where he promotes the work of the organization.

Additionally, Stern serves on the B’nai B’rith Board of Governors, Executive Committee and Constitution Committee. He is also a two-time appointee to the B’nai B’rith Nominating Committee.

Stern is a partner at Hyatt & Weber, P.A. in Annapolis, Md., where he resides with his wife and three daughters.

Other winners of the 2012 Label A. Katz award are: Ralph Attie of, Panama City, Panama; Edwige Ouaknine of Lev, France; Rebecca Saltzman of Denver; Jorge Silberberg of Montevideo, Uruguay; and Eduardo Weinstein of Santiago, Chile.

Jorge Silberberg of Montevideo, Uruguay, earned the 2012 Label A. Katz Young Leadership Award, named for the youngest person to achieve the office of international president of B’nai B’rith. Silberberg received his award at B’nai B’rith’s 2012 policy conference on Sept. 9 in Washington, D.C.

The award goes to individuals under 45 who have demonstrated outstanding service to the totality of B’nai B’rith and have worked to achieve the goals of the B’nai B’rith Young Leadership program.

The honor has proven a good measure of future achievement in B’nai B’rith, as many presidents and top organizational leaders have won the Label A. Katz award.

Silberberg’s involvement in B’nai B’rith began as a founding member of the IAJAD-18 Unit, a lodge formed by young professionals. The lodge took its name from the Hebrew word for together and the number from the street address in the Warsaw Ghetto where the last bunker of the Jewish resistance stood. He eventually went on to serve as the unit president.

Silberberg was also treasurer of the district encompassing Paraguay and Uruguay from 2009 to 2011 and is currently a director of the district’s Human Rights Commission.

When Montevideo was selected to host the 2011 B’nai B’rith Policy Conference, Silberberg was appointed treasurer of the Host Committee. During the conference he worked collaboratively with the Host Committee chair, organizing and managing the logistics of the conference.

Silberberg resides in Montevideo with his wife Karina, who is also an IAJAD-18 Unit member, and their three daughters.

Other winners of the 2012 Label A. Katz award are: Ralph Attie of, Panama City, Panama; Edwige Ouaknine of Lev, France; Rebecca Saltzman of Denver; Stephen Stern of Annapolis, Md.; and Eduardo Weinstein of Santiago, Chile.

Rebecca Saltzman of Denver has earned the 2012 Label A. Katz Young Leadership Award, named for the youngest person to achieve the office of international president of B’nai B’rith. Saltzman received her award at B’nai B’rith’s 2012 policy conference on Sept. 9 in Washington, D.C.

The award goes to individuals under 45 who have demonstrated outstanding service to the totality of B'nai B'rith and have worked to achieve the goals of the B'nai B'rith Young Leadership program.

The honor has proven a good measure of future achievement in B’nai B’rith, as many presidents and top organizational leaders have won the Label A. Katz award.

Saltzman is a second generation Label A. Katz winner; her father, Gary P. Saltzman, received the award in 1989. Rebecca and Gary are the only legacy pair to win the award. Growing up in a B’nai B’rith family set Rebecca Saltzman on a path to become a Jewish leader in her community. Throughout her time serving the organization she has increasingly taken on programs, initiatives and leadership roles locally, nationally and internationally.

As a member of the Denver Lodge, Saltzman has worked with the city’s homeless, organizing a gift box program for people to sponsor homeless families at Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, and starting an annual underwear drive for those less fortunate. She serves on the lodge’s board of directors as chair of the Young Professional & Outreach Committee and as vice president of programming. Saltzman also has played a significant role increasing membership, and boosting fundraising and programming.

Saltzman was appointed to the B’nai B’rith Board of Governors in 2009 and has been actively involved in the National Young Professional Network, Marketing Committee and Leadership Committee. She has also been a B’nai B’rith delegate to the World Zionist Organization in Jerusalem.

Saltzman resides in Colorado where she is a psychotherapist working with children, adolescents and adults struggling with trauma, adoption issues and life transitions.

Other winners of the 2012 Label A. Katz Award are: Ralph Attie of, Panama; Edwige Ouaknine of Lev, France; Jorge Silberberg of Montevideo, Uruguay; Stephen Stern of Annapolis, Md.; and Eduardo Weinstein of Santiago, Chile.

Edwige Ouaknine of Lev, France, earned the 2012 Label A. Katz Young Leadership Award, named for the youngest person to achieve the office of international president of B’nai B’rith. Ouaknine received her award at B’nai B’rith’s 2012 policy conference on Sept. 9 in Washington, D.C.

The award goes to individuals under 45 who have demonstrated outstanding service to the totality of B’nai B’rith and have worked to achieve the goals of the B’nai B’rith Young Leadership program.

The honor has proven a good measure of future achievement in B’nai B’rith, as many presidents and top organizational leaders have won the Label A. Katz award.

Ouaknine has been involved in B’nai B’rith since 1996 when she joined the youth lodge of B’nai B’rith in Nice, France. During her 14 years with the youth lodge, she was involved in the cultural, social and political departments. From 2007 to 2009 Ouaknine served as president of the Nice Lodge, organizing conferences and roundtable debates around cultural, economic and political topics for both Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Ouaknine also actively raised funds through dinner parties and theater performances.

After her time as Nice Lodge president, Ouaknine was appointed national president of the Youth Coordination Body of B’nai B’rith France in 2010 and still serves in that capacity. The same year, she became the co-chairwoman of the B’nai B’rith Europe Young Adult Forum in Zurich.

Ouaknine was recently appointed to the Marinette Artman Lodge Expansion Committee. The lodge is located in Boulogne, a suburb of Paris. She will be responsible for developing new, young members through a wide variety of activities.

In addition to her work with B’nai B’rith, in 2010 she was selected to be one of several candidates to represent France at the Diplomatic Seminar for Young Jewish Leaders, organized by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Other winners of the 2012 Label A. Katz award are: Ralph Attie of Panama City, Panama; Rebecca Saltzman of Denver; Jorge Silberberg of Montevideo, Uruguay; Stephen Stern of Annapolis, Md.; and Eduardo Weinstein of Santiago, Chile.

Ralph Attie of Panama City, Panama, earned the 2012 Label A. Katz Young Leadership Award, named for the youngest person to achieve the office of international president of B’nai B’rith. Attie received his award at B’nai B’rith’s 2012 policy conference on Sept. 9 in Washington, D.C.

The award goes to individuals under 45 who have demonstrated outstanding service to the totality of B’nai B’rith and have worked to achieve the goals of the B’nai B’rith Young Leadership program.

The honor has proven a good measure of future achievement in B’nai B’rith, as many presidents and top organizational leaders have won the Label A. Katz award.

Attie is a leader of B’nai B’rith Panama and assumed the presidency of the lodge in 2008. B’nai B’rith Panama has more than 120 active members, making it the biggest lodge in a district that encompasses the Caribbean, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru. Under his leadership the region saw an increase in membership and the formation of two new lodges.

During his presidency he also assisted in the development of the social issues improvement program known as “JUPA,” the Youth Leadership Program and the Human Rights Commission.

In addition to his work with B’nai B’rith, Attie volunteers with social campaigns that help natural-disaster victims.

Other winners of the 2012 Label A. Katz award are: Edwige Ouaknine of Lev, France; Rebecca Saltzman of Denver; Jorge Silberberg of Montevideo, Uruguay; Stephen Stern of Annapolis, Md.; and Eduardo Weinstein of Santiago, Chile.

_B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:

B’nai B’rith International commends the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee for electing Yuval Shany of Israel to serve on the body.

Shany, the dean of Hebrew University’s law faculty, will serve a four year term with the committee that looks to ensure countries that have signed and ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are adhering to international laws on human rights.

B’nai B’rith welcomes the election of Shany, as he is a well-respected diplomat and legal mind.

_B’nai B’rith International sent a letter to Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, after the school’s student group unanimously passed a resolution in favor of an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

In the letter, B’nai B’rith International President Allan J. Jacobs and Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin begin: “[w]e write to express dismay and outrage over the vote by Wits University's Student Representative Council, at the urging of the Wits Palestine Solidarity Committee, to call for a ‘full cultural and academic boycott of Israeli institutions.’"

The letter continues:  “Such a call is both utterly unjust and profoundly counterproductive. Far from advancing peace and reconciliation, or even the actual interests of Palestinians themselves, it instead betrays a wholly skewed understanding of the tragic, complex Middle East conflict. Indeed, while framed in terms of justice and even, outrageously, fighting ‘apartheid,’ it instead is itself a manifestation of aggression and discrimination.
 
Israel has been, and remains, by far the freest nation in the Middle East, and one that has made unparalleled, concrete overtures and sacrifices for peace even as it has -- uniquely in the international community, just as it is the world's only Jewish state -- been relentlessly subjected to existential threat and brutal attack over the full course of its history.
 
The question thus must be asked: why must Israel be singled out for punitive measures such as those endorsed by Wits students? Why not all of Israel's adversaries -- violent tyrants and terrorist fanatics alike -- and the roster of the world's unsurpassed human rights violators? Why is it that Israel's diverse liberal democracy includes and integrates a very significant Arab minority, but Jews must be condemned for living in the heart of their historic homeland?
 
Indeed, the Wits decision reveals the crude expansiveness of its bigoted, uninformed rationale -- applying, as it does, not merely to Israeli society in its entirety but specifically to cultural and academic institutions. Beyond violating apolitical realms held sacred for the exchange of art, knowledge and ideas, this approach plainly fails to appreciate that Israeli academic and cultural life is not merely diverse in political perspectives and in demographics -- serving and empowering countless Arab citizens, and contributing vital innovations that better our world -- but has so often been distinguished by pointedly progressive thought.
 
The Wits students' decision truly is a blow to free academic exchange and international dialogue, to justice and peace.”

B’nai B’rith will continue to monitor the situation.

_B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:
   
B’nai B’rith condemns the vandals who defiled the Latrun Monastery in Latrun, Israel, near Jerusalem.

On Sept. 4, in the middle of the night, vandals burned the wooden front door of the Latrun Monastery and spray painted anti-Christian graffiti on the front of the building. The vandals also spray painted the words “Migron” and “Maoz Esther” on the monastery, in reference to the recently evacuated outposts in the West Bank.

This senseless and deplorable act cannot be tolerated. B’nai B’rith supports the Israeli authorities in their efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Religious freedom is a fundamental right and to attack a place of worship is despicable and unacceptable.

The B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jews who Rescued Fellow Jews During the Holocaust (JRJ) conferred upon Margot Cohn, 90, the Jewish Rescuers' Citation for her heroic efforts rescuing Jewish children under the Vichy regime in France. Cohn did so at great personal risk during a time when daily life for Jews was unbearable.

This is not the first time Cohn has been recognized for her rescue activities. In 2003 Cohn was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the France’s highest honor.

A Jewish Rescuers' Citation was also presented posthumously to Cohn's late husband, the celebrated Jewish educator Jacques Cohn, in recognition of his own rescue efforts. Some of his work was undertaken with Margot before the two married following the war.

The Jewish Rescuers’ Citation was established in 2011 by the JRJ and B’nai B’rith World Center to bring awareness to the thousands of Jews who were active in rescue efforts throughout Europe. They put their own lives at risk in order to save other Jews from deportation, hunger and death at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Citations have been presented to rescuers who were active in France, Hungary, Germany and Holland.

At the ceremony, French ambassador to Israel Christophe Bigot asked to pay tribute to the men and women, many of them anonymous, who clandestinely organized the rescue of more than 5,000 children and took care of the orphans after the liberation.

“Each step, each breath, each word of these children is a victory over barbarism,” said Bigot. “This barbarism was conducted in France, by French citizens. France is fully responsible for these acts...With this monstrosity, France reached a point of no return. She sent to death her own children. More than 11,000 Jewish children were deported to Auschwitz.”

Bigot also addressed Holocaust denial and the contention between Israel and Iran.

“We also need to continue the struggle against the counterfeiters of history, individuals or nations, which still commit the abomination of denying the Shoah,” said Bigot. “We must act resolutely towards the Iranian regime which seeks not only to have a nuclear weapon, but also denies the very existence of the right for Israel to exist. In front of these words and actions, France will not be a passive witness.”

B’nai B’rith World Center Director Alan Schneider said the goal of the Jewish Rescuers’ Citation is to overcome nearly 70 years during which the heroism of Jewish rescuers was largely overlooked by official memorial and academic institutions in Israel. There is no greater expression of Jewish solidarity than the phenomena of young Jews, like Margot Cohn, who in war-torn Europe could have found a way to escape the constant threat of deportation and murder, but made a conscious decision to remain in order to help others.    

Margot Cohn

Margot Cohn (neé Kahn) was born on July 14, 1922, in Ingwiller, France. When the German army invaded France in May 1940, the Kahn family fled from Alsace Region to the south. Margot volunteered in the Orthodox youth movement, Yeshurun, which established a center for producing study sheets on Jewish subjects, to be sent by mail from Limoges.

In 1942 the movement sent her to serve as a counselor in a children’s summer camp established by Jacques in Ussac. When the children's' parents were arrested in the famous infamous Venissieux raid in August 1942, Jacques, Margot and the young staff established the camp as a permanent home for about 30 children under the sponsorship of the Jewish children’s aid society OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants). Although the venue was in disrepair and without a regular supply of food, Margot and the small number of young counselors persevered until the house was closed.

Cohn was then sent to Lyon by the OSE where she was given the task of finding safe houses for children among the local population and Christian institutions. Margot also engaged in forging and recycling documents and ration cards, for which she could have been severely punished had she been caught.

Cohn worked with a constant awareness of the danger that threatened her, especially after the head of the Lyon OSE branch was arrested and deported to Bergen Belsen in November 1943. Undeterred, she continued her tasks, displaying superb emotional and educational capacities in dealing with the children in their hiding places.
In spring 1944 Cohn was sent to accompany groups of children on the less-patrolled night train from Lyon to Toulouse. Her task was to take them from their hiding place to another anonymous member of the underground so that they could be smuggled into Switzerland.

Margot trained to be a librarian and in 1945 married Jacques Cohn. The couple immigrated to Israel in 1952 and had three children: Elie, Ruth and Daniel.

For further details please contact Mr. Alan Schneider, Director, B’nai B’rith World Center, 02-6251743, 052-5536441, bbrith@012.net.il