The latest in our Nazi Monument Project, a visit to the Warsaw Ghetto, how to honor the 85% of survivors who spoke Yiddish, and our Bintel podcast returns – to confront a Holocaust denier.

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Of marches and monuments

Every New Year’s Day, supporters of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera gather on his birthday for a torchlight march in Kyiv. The photo above is from the 2021 event. Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited Ukraine’s glorification of Bandera and other collaborators as a pretext for the current war.

The Holocaust may have ended 77 years ago, but across Europe, far-right forces and white-supremacist movements still congregate for rallies around Nazi monuments. For this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, we’ve curated a series of photographs showing recent rallies and how they connect to their fascist forebears.

The photo spread is the latest installment in the Forward’s Nazi Monument Project. Around the world, some 1,500 such monuments stand to Nazi-collaborators and perpetrators of the Holocaust. There are statues and plaques, streets and schools across 29 countries, including the United States. Lev Golinkin, an investigative journalist, has spent the past two years documenting them for an evolving database that we’ve published on our website.

Impact journalism: A Belgian town square removed references honoring Nazis after we first posted our investigation.

Dispatch from Poland

Our Nora Berman is attending the March of Living today, joining some 2,000 people – including at least eight Holocaust survivors — on the mile-long trek from Auschwitz to Birkenau.

On Wednesday, she was in Warsaw where many tourists are familiar with the towering Monument to Ghetto Heroes. Most are less familiar with the unassuming sewer nearby. It’s a little-known monument made by survivors after World War II.

“The sewer,” Nora’s guide explained, “was chosen as it brought forth life in the ghetto. It was the source of weapons, of food, of information traveling back and forth between the Aryan and Jewish parts of the city.”

Read Nora’s latest dispatch ➤

New York after the Holocaust

Arthur Nunberg, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, seen here in a DP camp.

Thirty years after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in 1973, the Yiddishist rank and file met outside Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan to demand that New York City fund a monument for that historic event and for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. It’s still not there.

What remains to history is the impassioned speech given that day by Arthur Nunberg, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. Chana Pollack, the Forward’s archivist, has translated it into English and added context around its highlights. Read the story ➤

Meanwhile, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that the state would boost funding for a program to assist Holocaust survivors by $2.6 million. “It is our duty not just as New Yorkers but as citizens of the world,” she said.

Yom Hashoah in Israel

Fleeing war yet again, 21 Holocaust survivors from Ukraine touched down in Israel on rescue flights. As is the custom on Yom Hashoah, the country came to a standstill this morning for a two-minute moment of silence. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks, drivers pulled over their cars and stood beside them with heads bowed as a siren wailed. This year’s siren was activated by Reuven Eyal, a Holocaust survivor whose granddaughter serves in the military unit responsible for the national-alert system.

A closet full of prisoner uniforms. A moth-eaten teddy bear. Shabbat candlesticks. These are among the items in the vast archives and storage vaults at Yad Vashem, where the temperature is kept low to preserve more than 42,000 artifacts. Jewish Insider went behind the scenes. “Every object tells a story,” said Michael Tal, the Holocaust museum’s curator, who said they continue to receive items each week.

And more …

OUR PODCAST IS BACK

Our “Bintel Brief” advice podcast returns today for Season 2! In the debut episode, hosts Ginna Green and Lynn Harris tackle a pressing issue of the day: Holocaust denial and distortion. A listener wrote in asking what she should do about a friend who downplays the number of Jews killed during World War II and refuses to say the word Israel. “Once you’ve heard your friend say these things, you can’t avert your ears and you need to open your mouth,” Lynn advises. “When you minimize, you make something actually more palatable.”

Chana Pollack, the Forward’s archivist, joins the hosts with a letter we received back in 1969 also about two friends having a different difficult conversation. “The concept of betrayal reads to me in both of them in a similar kind of fashion,” Chana says.

Listen to the new season on our website or wherever you get your podcasts.

We need your input: An advice podcast is only as good as its listeners’ questions. Send yours to bintel@forward.com or leave a voice message at 201-540-9728.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

This Passover countertop liner ended up being a little too sticky, say disgruntled customers. (Courtesy Kosher Dekal)

🤦 For observant Jews who have long covered their kitchen countertops in tin foil during Passover to keep them clear of any errant bits of chametz, a new peel-and-stick product similar to wallpaper seemed an elegant and welcome solution. But then things got sticky. “After Pesach ended, the nightmare began,” said one of many customers who complained on the Instagram page of the company, Kosher Dekal. The company said it has given more than $100,000 in refunds to people struggling to remove its rubbery residue from their countertops. (NY Jewish Week)

🇺🇦 The parents of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have refused interviews. But a new article in an Israeli magazine gives a rare glimpse into their lives. Rabbi Liron Ederi, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary, said the couple has helped him on multiple Jewish initiatives. “What good is having the president for a son if not for that?” Ederi said. (JTA)

🏫 Several swastikas were found in the residence halls at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Meanwhile, at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the student government passed a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. (Algemeiner, MarquetteWire)

🙏 Madeleine Albright’s daughter tearfully paid tribute to her mother and the family’s Jewish past during a funeral on Wednesday at the National Cathedral. “Envision her leading our family along the magical streets of Prague,” Katie Albright said, “gleefully recounting the legends that trolls and water pixies, and then guiding us through the sorrowful exhibits of Terezin, where more than two dozen of our ancestors were imprisoned during the war because of their Jewish faith. None survived.” (PBS)

🛑 The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly has suspended Cleveland Rabbi Stephen Weiss, who was arrested last week for attempted sexual contact with a minor. Weiss faces up to 3.5 years in prison, and likely expulsion from the rabbinate once the criminal case concludes. (Forward)

🪦 Many Jewish veterans of World War II were buried under crosses instead of Stars of David. A nonprofit organization called Operation Benjamin is traveling this week to four cemeteries to help correct the error. “It’s our obligation to the dead,” said the group’s CEO. (Insider)

What else we’re reading ➤ The pandemic and the subsequent scapegoating of Jews may have led to a rise in antisemitic incidents across the globe, according to a new report … Would you watch a movie about how “Fiddler on the Roof” became a movie? … Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night Live” will star in a new comedy series with a very Yiddish name, “Bupkis.”

ON THE CALENDAR

Harper Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. (White House)

On this day in history: Harper Lee, the bestselling novelist, was born on April 28, 1926. Writing for the Forward in 2015, Alexandra Levine examined the comparisons Lee noted in “To Kill a Mockingbird” between the persecution of Jews and racial injustices in the American South, particularly the scene where a student asks why the government didn’t try to stop Hitler. “Hitler is the government,” the teacher replied. She then explained that the United States did not believe in persecuting people based on prejudice like Germany had — words at odds with the rest of the classic story.

Just in time for National Superhero Day, this week’s episode of Marvel’s “Moon Knight” was its most Jewish one yet.

Friday at noon ET: We traveled to Utah to watch a Mormon production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Meet the cast on Zoom. Register now ➤

VIDEO OF THE DAY

David Wisnia always believed that he survived the horrors of Auschwitz by entertaining the Nazi guards with his beautiful singing voice. In a new documentary, “How Saba Kept Singing,” Wisnia’s curious grandson, Avi, suspects there’s more to the story. So the pair embarked on a journey that led them into the mysteries of the past, including a previous relationship that may be the reason his life was spared.

The film, executive produced by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, is set to have its world premiere this Sunday. Watch an exclusive clip above featuring Wisnia singing in Yiddish.

Wisnia died last year at 94.

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Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)

Thanks to Laura E. Adkins, Nora Berman, Karen Markoe, Amanda Rozon and Talya Zax. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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