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):

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.

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):

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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.

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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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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.

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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.” 

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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. 

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.”