Category: B'nai B

Video: Kristallnacht Commemoration Ceremony In Uruguay (Spanish)

11/21/2014

B'nai B'rith International joined forces with B'nai B'rith Uruguay to host an interfaith Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) Commemoration Ceremony in Montevideo.

Speakers included the Archbishop of Montevideo, Monseñor Daniel Sturla; B'nai B'rith Uruguay President Morris Segal and B'nai B'rith International Director of Latin American Affairs Eduardo Kohn.

Asuntos Públicos published a full video recording of the ceremony. Watch below (Spanish):

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Real Estate Weekly Spotlights B'nai B'rith Monthly Luncheon

11/12/2014

Caption: B'nai B'rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin discussed “Issues Facing World Jewry Today” at the October B’nai B’rith Real Estate luncheon at the The Cornell Club in New York City.

Pictured (L-R): Robert Shapiro, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, Gerald Morganstern,Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP, Pres. Allan Jacobs, B'nai B'rith International, Mariaschin, Lydia Sklar, Sklar Realty Group, Greg Kraut, Avison Young, Jeff Mitzner, First American Title Insurance, and Harry Zlokower, Zlokower Company Public Relations.

Veteran Spotlight: B'nai B'rith Remembers Gilbert Steingart

11/11/2014

On Veterans Day 2014, B'nai B'rith International honors all of the men and women of the armed forces sacrificing and defending against tyranny so that future generations might be free.

B'nai B'rith has played a role supporting the military and its members dating back to the American Civil War. Over time, that role has evolved as needed, providing resources before and after combat, while members have answered the call to take up arms.

One such member was Lt. Gilbert Steingart, a dentist in the Navy during World War II. Lt. Steingart served in the Pacific Theater, leaving behind his wife, Eleanor, and children--as well as his leadership posts at the local B'nai B'rith lodge. However, he maintained regular contact with his wife and friends at the lodge, writing more than 500 letters during the war.

Read all of his letters mentioning B'nai B'rith, here.

The following are highlights from his letters, posted online by his daughter, Linda Frumkes:

Can't attend B'nai B'rith Past Presidents Night:

Lt. (j.g.) Gilbert Steingart
U.S.S. Ocelot, F.P.O. San Francisco
Friday 15 September 1944

Dear Earl,

          Just received your letter and am answering immediately.  I sure wish that I could attend the lodge meeting Past Presidents' night and help initiate the new members.  That being impossible will you please act as my proxy and convey my best wishes to the lodge and my congratulations to the new initiates.

          Through the bulletin and the news Eleanor writes me I am keeping up on lodge activities.  However, I have been wondering how the War Service Committee is getting along.  You know it was my baby last year and at the present time I feel it is as important a committee as any that we have.

How is the letter writing project going?  I never realized how important that was until I shipped out.  When a fellow is thousands of miles from home it's amazing to see how much of a lift a letter brings.  I sincerely hope that my not having received letters is no indication that the project has fallen by the wayside.

[...]

Who Is B'nai B'rith War Service Chairman?

Lt. (j.g.) Gilbert Steingart
U.S.S. Ocelot, F.P.O. San Francisco
Tuesday 2 Janaury 1945, 10:15 PM

Dearest Eleanor,

          Hello darling, here I am again.  I forgot to mention in yesterday's letter that when I went ashore I ran into a Dr. Arnerich, who graduated a year before I did.  He is on a tender and has been out here for five months.  It's twelve years since I last saw him.  Yet we recognized each other immediately.  Guess we haven't changed much at that.  Oh yes, I shaved off my beard but I still have a moustache.  If and when I get some film I'll take a picture and send it on.

[...]

          Darling, who is War Service Chairman for the B'nai B'rith?  Please let me know, as I have a request to make of the lodge through him

          Do you remember when I was chairman myself and the money we raised every meeting for men overseas?  Well after the war we'll see what time will bring.

[...]

Holocaust Rescuer: 'What I did Is What Everybody Should Do'

11/10/2014

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Last week, in a ceremony in New York City, B'nai B'rith International recognized Berta Davidovitz Rubinsztejn for her heroic actions halfway around the globe and a lifetime ago, honoring her with the Jewish Rescuers Citation.

During the time of Nazi occupation in Budapest, Rubinsztejn, only in her early 20's at the time, became a hero and mother for Jewish children that would have otherwise perished in the Holocaust.

Rubinsztejn believes her selfless actions were common sense. Meir Brand, one of the children she rescued, attended the ceremony and had a much different perspective.

“I am standing here only because of you, Berta,” Brand told Rubinsztejn and the gathered attendees.

Read more about the event, as covered in articles in New York Daily News, Bronx News 12 and VIN News:

NY Daily News:

“I was the only survivor of my whole family,” [Meir] added.

[...]

Rubinsztejn — now a great-grandmother who has called the Bronx home for 55 years — was given the Jewish Rescuers Citation by B'Nai B'Rith at Thursday’s event.

“What I did is what everybody should do,” Rubinsztejn said of her courageous work.

“Give children your love and the world grows up a better place.”

VINNews.com:

Brand lived on the streets of Budapest alone for almost a year before Rubinsztejn found him and took him in.

One month later, Rubinsztejn and Brand were on a train headed for Spain in a deal made with the Nazis by journalist Rudolf Kasztner to provide safety to Jews leaving Hungary in exchange for trucks.

After spending months at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the pair were sent to Switzerland, then Israel.

Brand made his home in Israel, while Rubinsztejn has lived in the Bronx for 55 years.

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Vis A Vis: Recapping B'nai B'rith Argentina's Human Rights Awards

11/6/2014

On Tuesday evening, B'nai B'rith Argentina held its annual recognition ceremony for the Human Rights awards recipients. Embassy representatives from Germany, Brazil, Greeze and Bulgaria joined B'nai B'rith and community leaders attending the event.

This year's four winners are: Beatriz Pellizzari from The Plant, a project dedicated to helping people with disabilities to have a better life; Rabbi Alexander Avruj and Father Jose Maria (Pepe) Di Paola for the work they have done combating homelessness and hunger over the last decade; and Dr. Fernando Polack from the Infant Foundation, working to prevent infant and adolescent deaths through disease prevention and education.

The event has been covered extensively by Vis A Vis in tweets and articles (links here and here), highlights of which can be found, below (Spanish):

@rabaleavruj: "Este premio ratifica el rabino que soy hoy, y me ayuda a definir el rabino que quiero ser" http://t.co/aNS1wd8qqV @BnaiBrith
— VIS A VIS (@visavistv) November 5, 2014

Vis A Vis Event Q&A:

El vicepresidente Ejecutivo de la B`nai B`rith Argentina, Jorge Burkman, dialogó con VIS A VIS a un día de realizarse la entrega del "Premio Derechos Humanos 2014", y comentó acerca del significado del reconocimiento, como así también, sobre la elección de los ganadores, en esta ocasión a personas que se dedican a ayudar a quienes más lo necesitan.

-¿Qué significado tiene para la institución la entrega de estos premios?

- El Premio B'nai B'rith Derechos Humanos fue instituido en el año 1988 en oportunidad de cumplirse el 40° aniversario de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos por parte de las Naciones Unidas. Desde entonces son candidatos a recibir la distinción personas u organizaciones que se destacan en la promoción y defensa de los derechos humanos de acuerdo a dicha declaración universal.

- ¿Por qué eligieron a este grupo de personas?

- Los miembros de B'nai B'rith Argentina proponen a sus candidatos y luego de una compulsa interna se los elige. En esta oportunidad se dio especial importancia a aquellos que se destacan por su labor solidaria dando apoyo a los más necesitados. Tal es el caso de los premiados, quiénes desde distintas posiciones ayudan a ese fin; Beatriz Pellizari de La Usina trabaja para ayudar en su inserción laboral a personas con capacidades diferentes. El Padre Pepe y el Rabino Avruj han desarrollado y lo siguen haciendo con trabajos muy importantes en villas de emergencia de Buenos Aires creando comedores y talleres con salida laboral. El Dr. Polack a través de su Fundación Infantil investiga y aporta soluciones médicas en poblaciones de bajos recursos.

Premios @BnaiBrith: Los derechos humanos como estandarte para la solidaridad http://t.co/nDNMo4nEim @DAIAArgentina @gc_producciones
— VIS A VIS (@visavistv) November 5, 2014

Vis A Vis Event Recap:

Al comienzo del acto se hizo el encendido de la Menorá a cargo de personas de la comisión directiva de la institución o por personas que fueron distinguidas con este premio en otros años.

Luego el vicepresidente primero en ejercicio de la presidenta, Santiago Kuperwajs, quien realizó un discurso en el que resaltó que actualmente los derechos humanos están distorsionados por el uso político que se hace de ellos.

Luego comenzó la ceremonia de premiación; en primer lugar fue condecorada la Licenciada Beatriz Pellizzari, quién hace un gran trabajo con "La Usina" que es un proyecto que se dedica a ayudar a las personas discapacitadas a tener una mejor vida, desde el trabajo que puedan llegar a conseguir hasta en la vestimenta que puedan utilizar para no sentirse menos en una sociedad que todavía le cuesta ver al otro como un igual.

A continuación fue premiado el Rabino Alejandro Avruj y el Padre José María (Pepe) Di Paola por el trabajo que vienen haciendo hace más de 10 años en las villas poniendo comedores para que la gente que viva allí , al menos tenga un plato de comida para no pasar hambre.

Durante el corto discurso que brindó el rabino Avruj expresó que hace poco tiempo junto al Padre Pepe inauguraron un nuevo comedor llamado "Shalom" en Villa la Carcova y también hicieron lo mismo en la Comunidad Amijai en Belgrano. Por último se le entregó una plaqueta al Dr. Fernando Polack, infectólogo, de la Fundación Infant que hace el trabajo de prevención por la muerte de niños en nuestro país por diferentes enfermedades que son poco difundidas.

B'nai B'rith Questions Heinz Endowment On Controversial Grant

11/5/2014

B'nai B'rith International contacted The Heinz Endowments, expressing dismay and deep concern over a grant previously given to Pittsburgh eatery Conflict Kitchen, which has served anti-Israel propaganda to diners as part of it's "Palestine" campaign.

The Heinz Foundation responded, denouncing the kitchen's current campaign and clarifying the timing of its one-time $50,000 grant (given in 2013).

The release was covered in articles run on The Algemeiner and the Jewish News Service. Read highlights from those reports, below:

JNS.org:

In an Oct. 31 statement on the correspondence, B’nai B’rith International called on Heinz Endowments to go further by issuing a “public disavowal” of its $50,000 grant to Pittsburgh-based snack bar Conflict Kitchen, which sells sandwiches wrapped in paper bearing anti-Israel slogans.

[...]

Conflict Kitchen, located near Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, says it aims to use its menu to teach students about conflict between the U.S. and the countries it features in its cuisine selection.

The information spread via the anti-Israel food wrappers includes quotes defending terrorism against Israel. One wrapper reads, “How can you compare Israeli F-16s, which are some of the best military planes in the world, to a few hundred homemade rockets?”

The Algemeiner:

The head of Heinz Endowments, a foundation chaired by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz, wrote a letter to a Jewish organization that criticized the anti-Israel activity of one of the foundation's recently revealed grant recipients.

[...]

“I want to be especially clear that [Conflict Kitchen’s] current program on Palestine was not funded by the endowments and we would not fund such a program, precisely because it appears to be terribly at odds with the mission of promoting understanding. … [Heinz Endowments] emphatically does not agree with or support either the anti-Israel sentiments quoted on Conflict Kitchen’s food wrappers or the program’s refusal to incorporate Israeli or Jewish voices in its material,” Oliphant wrote.

TOI: New EU Foreign Policy Chief’s First Destination Is Israel

11/4/2014

The European Union's new Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini will make Israel her first destination in office.

This comes one week after B’nai B’rith International hosted the EU’s Israel Relations Chair Fulvio Martusciello at the World Center in Jerusalem.

According to an article in the Times of Israel, this is a return trip for Mogherini, who visited the country as Italy's foreign minister during the height of Operation Protective Edge this summer.

Read more about her visit and views in the article's highlights, below:

[...]

On November 1, Federica Mogherini will succeed Catherine Ashton as the union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. Less than a week later, she is scheduled to arrive in Israel for her first official visit, sources in Jerusalem confirmed Tuesday.

Mogherini — currently Italy’s foreign minister — will arrive in the region on November 7 and stay for two days. She is expected to also visit senior Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah.

“It’s very important that Ms. Mogherini comes to Israel on November 7. It’s her first official visit,” said Fulvio Martusciello, a member of the European Parliament from Italy and the new president of its delegation for relations with Israel.

Having known her for a while, he believes she understands Israel’s many predicaments, he added, but refused to elaborate.

“I hope we will be able to work together,” Martusciello, who is currently visiting Israel at the invitation of B’nai Brith International, told The Times of Israel Tuesday during an interview in the Knesset.

[...]

Mogherini is a member of Italy’s center-left government led by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who is known to be generally friendly toward Israel and tough on Iran’s nuclear program.

[...]

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Argentina: B'nai B'rith Human Rights Award 2014 Announced

11/4/2014

B'nai B'rith Argentina announced the recipients of their 2014 Human Rights awards, which will be bestowed on four individuals in a ceremony on Tuesday, Nov. 4 in Buenos Aires.

The announcement was featured in a blog post on Vis a Vis, and can be seen below in its entirety (Spanish):

B´nai B´rith Argentina realizará el acto de entrega del "Premio B´nai B´rith Derechos Humanos 2014" el próximo martes 4 de noviembre a las 18.30 horas en su sede de Juncal 2573, Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

El reconocimiento distingue a personalidades e instituciones que se destacan por su labor en la promoción y defensa de los derechos humanos.

El premio se entrega desde el año 1988 instituido en el 40 aniversario de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas.

En esta oportunidad serán distinguidos: la licenciada Beatriz Pellizzari, directora general de la Asociación civil La Usina; el Padre José María (Pepe) Di Paola; el rabino Alejandro Avruj; y el doctor Fernando Polack, director de la Fundación Infant.

The Indelible Bond Between A Holocaust Victim And His Rescuer

10/30/2014

Via JID: Meir with Berta on the occasion of her 90th birthday.

On Nov. 6, B'nai B'rith International will host a ceremony in New York City, bestowing the Jewish Rescuers Citation on Berta Davidovitz Rubinsztejn for her heroic efforts saving orphans of the Holocaust from certain death.

Part of the reason that date was selected was to accommodate the arrival of Meir Brand from Israel, one of the then children that Rubinsztejn saved.

Although both were living under Gentile indentities in Budapest when they met in 1944, they would become family, bonded by their circumstances and liberation. They call themselves mother and son.

Read the highlights of their story in an article on Jewish Ideas Daily:

In 1941, when Berta was 18, her family of five fled Poland and crossed the Carpathian Mountains into still-unoccupied Hungary, where Jews were being persecuted but not yet hunted down. One night the family was hiding, crowded together, in a sheep stall, when Berta’s father, fearing his children would be killed, cried, “For what did I bring you into the world?” From her father’s desperation Berta took the conviction that sustained her for the next five years: “Better to be killed than to hide!”

Berta made her way to Budapest in 1942, where she began working for the Zionist underground through the youth movement Dror Habonim. She assumed a Gentile identity and the name Bigota Ilona and wore a crucifix around her neck.

[...]

In May, 1944, Rudolf Kasztner made a daring deal to provide trucks to Adolf Eichmann in exchange for the safe passage of Jews out of Hungary by train, to the neutral country of Spain and ultimately to Palestine. The goal of Dror Habonim became getting Jewish children onto Kasztner’s train.

Meir Brand was one of those children. He was born in 1936 in Bochnia, Poland, and his family was forced into the Jewish ghetto there in 1942. After the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Meir remembered, “everyone knew the whole ghetto”—in Bochnia—“was going to Auschwitz.” Soon afterward, “the whole family,” three sets of parents, “convened to decide what to do.” They determined that one child of each set of parents would escape.

[...]

Meir, homeless like hundreds of other Budapest refugees, took shelter under the city’s bridges.

Berta found him there after seven months—alone, frozen, and covered in blisters. “Jude?” she asked. “I am Dudac Josef!” he answered.

"I didn’t trust anybody,” Meir remembered, “because I was under such strict instructions not to connect with anyone.” Still, “I trusted Berta. Why, I don’t know.” When Meir said he was Dudac Josef, Berta thought, “That means, ‘I am a Jew.’ Somehow I knew he was a Jew. And I said, ‘I am Bigota Ilona.’” About that moment, Berta later told Meir, “I looked you in the eye and said to myself, that’s it, you’re mine.”

[...]

The train carrying Berta and Meir, with 1,684 passengers in all, was diverted to Bergen-Belsen. There, Berta recalled, “I was with the halutzim,” while Meir was in a barracks with the other children. Still very weak, he couldn’t clean himself or eat properly. Berta devoted herself to his care, and nursed him back to health.

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WFB: Nazi War Criminals Still Receiving Social Security Checks

10/29/2014

After news broke that the United States government has continued to pay Social Security benefits to Nazi war criminals who left the country willingly before deportation, B'nai B'rith International called for a close in the loophole.

Since moving abroad, these former Nazis have often collected entitlements from the governments of the countries in which they reside. B’nai B’rith urges these governments to cease providing benefits to such individuals and force them to stand trial.

Excerpts from the article in the Washington Free Beacon are below:

Nazi war criminals are still receiving Social Security benefits from the U.S. government despite their past crimes against Jewish people, prompting outrage from numerous Jewish organizations.

“Nazi war criminals who once lived in the United States and faced investigation by the Justice Department continue to collect Social Security payments through a legal loophole, despite having left the country and renounced their U.S. citizenship,” B’nai B’rith International (BBI) wrote in a recent press release calling on Congress to change the law.

“Since moving abroad, these former Nazis have lived undisturbed lives, collecting additional entitlements from the governments of the countries in which they reside,” the group wrote. “B’nai B’rith urges these governments to cease providing benefits to such individuals and force them to stand trial.”