forced to pose for a photograph in his tallit and tefillin (prayer shawl and phylacteries) in front of his home in the ghetto Orthodox Jews suffered greatly during the Holocaust yet their experiences have been inadequately studied by scholars By examining diverse sources—including diaries and photographs—we can shed light on previously unknown aspects of Orthodox Jewish life during the Holocaust by exploring themes—such as the early days of occupation and rescue efforts—we can advance the field of Holocaust studies as a whole Join us in person or virtually for this program exploring new research into the experiences of Orthodox Jews in German-occupied Poland and its impact on Holocaust studies Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies This program is free and open to the public The in-person program will be followed by a dessert reception in the Hall of Witness you will receive a YouTube link upon registration For more information, please contact calendar@ushmm.org Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship enables the Mandel Center to bring a distinguished scholar to the Museum each year to conduct innovative research about the Holocaust and disseminate this work to the public The scholar in residence also leads seminars lectures at universities in the United States Joseph and Morton Mandel Center’s mission is to ensure the long-term growth and vitality of Holocaust studies it is essential to provide opportunities for new generations of scholars The vitality and the integrity of Holocaust studies require openness and free inquiry so that new ideas are generated and tested through peer review and public debate or after their activities with the Mandel Center do not represent and are not endorsed by the Museum or its Mandel Center REGISTER TODAY Learn more about past lectures presented by the Museum’s Jack The Mandel Center supports scholarship and publications in the field of Holocaust studies promotes the growth of Holocaust studies at North American universities seeks to foster strong relationships between American and international scholars and initiates programs to ensure the ongoing training of future generations of scholars Violent antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany It is important to stand up to antisemitism in all of its forms today Poland — The heart of Europe isn't in Brussels it's in the small town of Kolbuszowa in the southeast of Poland — that's at least if you take the country's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at his word in America — they consider themselves the navel of the world," he said at a recent political rally there Brussels or Moscow — it's places like Kolbuszowa." Despite the grandeur of the event — some of the 2,000 spectators had arrived two or three hours early in anticipation of Morawiecki's visit last month many dressed in their Sunday best and carrying Polish flags — you'd be forgiven for not having heard of Kolbuszowa Located 30 kilometers north of regional capital Rzeszów and surrounded by rolling farmland and patches of forest Many of its 9,000 residents work in furniture manufacturing and construction It’s places like this that could prove decisive on October 15, when Poles elect a new government Four years ago, Morawiecki and his right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party swept more than half of the rural vote nationwide offsetting losses in large metropolitan areas to win a second term the main opposition group led by former European Council President Donald Tusk To woo voters, PiS has long relied on appealing to their traditional religious and conservative values — although the numbers are declining, 84 percent of Poles still identify as Catholic — and spending billions on welfare subsidies Aided by state television, radio and websites that broadcast its messages day and night, it targets almost exclusively villages and small towns like Kolbuszowa that have fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. All this with a very folksy flair It is impossible to win an election in Poland without the support of the countryside "This is what the last 30 years have shown us," he said referring to the period since the first partly free elections in 1989 that ended communist rule Today, about 40 percent of Poles live in rural areas, and more people are moving to the countryside, in a trend toward suburbanization. While large cities have lost an average of 3 percent of their population over the past decade But the countryside has also undergone a tectonic demographic shift since PiS came to power Rural newcomers also tend to hold more liberal values and commute to white-collar jobs in nearby cities instead of working on the land For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls the PiS government is largely ignoring this group focusing its campaign on us-versus-them narratives and archetypal rural issues as well as promises of easier access to agricultural subsidies more financial support for having children "It goes something like this: We throw money at you and you are happy and vote for us, because when the evil wolf Tusk comes, he will take it away from you," Radosław Markowski, a political scientist at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, told the Polish news portal Money.pl PiS's strategy of pandering to conservative values and providing generous subsidies while underplaying the more structural problems of rural areas has remained unchanged for more than a decade is building a grain silo with his son Andrzej Gryn, who lives on an 870-hectare farm in the village of Rogów, led a wave of protests earlier this year over uncontrolled imports of Ukrainian grain. The protests toppled Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk “We have to fight for ourselves because the agricultural unions we used to rely on are just a bunch of stage activists.” Fearing that the social unrest would shake its traditional rural base, the PiS government closed the border to Ukrainian produce in April. The move violated the EU’s common trade rules and has driven a wedge between Kyiv and Warsaw which has been among the strongest backers of Ukraine’s fightback against Russia's war of aggression PiS has tried to capitalize on the move, with the party’s leadership claiming to be putting the interests of Polish farmers first “Farmers like me are surviving in spite of the government Gryn plans to vote in the general election for the Tusk-led Civic Coalition opposition — the lesser of two evils the Polish countryside has managed to change much better than But Tusk, who served as Poland's prime minister from 2007 to 2014, hasn't been able to shake his reputation for neglecting rural areas, Gryn added, exemplified by his recent alliance with controversial protest leader Michał Kołodziejczak whom many farmers see as a wannabe politician and not their real voice many of Gryn’s fellow protesters will not be following his lead Instead, they plan to vote for the Confederation, a far-right party whose leaders have advocated leaving the EU and have spoken out against Ukraine The shift is occurring across rural Poland with smaller groups such as the Confederation and the centrist Third Way vying for voters disillusioned by eight years of PiS rule In 2019, the Confederation came fourth in southeast Poland with 7.3 percent of the vote This year it is polling around 14 percent in the region, above its national rating, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls Despite the cracks, PiS is still on course to win the rural vote in the October election albeit by a much smaller margin than in previous years Experts say the many opposition groups have failed to reach the party’s key constituency; people with conservative values who benefit from the welfare state They also seem to have missed many of its less radical supporters not everyone in the crowd was buying into Morawiecki’s talking points “This kind of polarizing rhetoric doesn’t really speak to me,” said Marcin Przydział referring to PiS’s attacks on the opposition Przydział complained that the current government hasn’t invested nearly enough in areas like education “I’ve recently started making minimum wage," he said The reason is simple: Przydział is also a volunteer firefighter and the PiS government recently granted his team half a million złotys to cover the cost of a new truck “I can’t imagine Tusk doing the same,” he said industry-led policy and deepening ethical and biological risks are exposing flaws in the world’s most efficient meat machine Dutch government buys time for farmers but tests the limits of domestic courts and EU environmental law exposing the reach of ultra-persistent chemicals in Europe’s food chain Brussels is chockablock with people trying to influence new rules on everything from Big Tech to pesticide use Here’s where they’ve put most of their efforts Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders Complete digital access to quality analysis and expert insights complemented with our award-winning Weekend Print edition Terms & Conditions apply Discover all the plans currently available in your country Digital access for organisations. Includes exclusive features and content. See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. While reviewing the table of contents for this edition I could not help but be amazed by the wide-ranging topics included in this issue David Berger’s insightful critique of Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s new book The Living Tree: Studies in Modern Orthodoxy to our look at the diverse and growing communities in Yehuda and the Shomron this issue is filled with a variety of thought-provoking and inspirational material it is easy to overlook the enormous effort that went into its planning I would like to take this opportunity to thank the devoted members of our exceptional editorial committee: Rabbi David Bashevkin Planning each issue entails endless debates and discussions not to mention countless hours spent reading and reviewing e-mails and submissions dedicate their time and effort to Jewish Action because they believe in the importance of providing such a forum for the Orthodox world provides the “glue” that keeps the vision and its implementation together Jewish Action has an advantage over weeklies and monthlies Jewish Action takes the time to reflect and provide thoughtful thoroughly researched articles that are crafted with care OU Senior Writer Bayla Sheva Brenner spent months interviewing members of various families in order to weave together these wonderfully inspiring narratives that tell of sacrifice and devotion to Yiddishkeit Reading these accounts of Jews who came to these shores in the late 1800s or early part of the twentieth century was particularly moving for me as my own family has a similar story in which he managed to build a successful women’s apparel business Chaya was convinced one could not remain frum in the “treifa medina.” So Chaim returned married and raised a large family in his hometown a terrible pogrom took place in Kolbuszowa So many Jews were murdered and maimed in Kolbuszowa that it attracted international attention an estimated 25 percent of the town’s Jews emigrated to America—Chaim and Chaya Schreck among them If life was hard in Poland because of the virulent anti-Semitism in America the struggles were equally great I won’t go into the formidable challenges—the various accounts in our cover story describe them in great detail my grandparents and parents managed to pass on Yiddishkeit to their children only because of their deep emunah and strong Jewish home life we also focus on the OU’s early history and some of our heroic leaders including OU Presidents Rabbi Herbert Goldstein and Harold M each of whom waged different battles in an attempt to strengthen Jewish life in America our food columnist Norene Gilletz and nutrition writer Shira Isenberg provide recipes and tips on how to eat healthfully over yom tov I hope you find this issue as interesting as I do. We look forward to reader feedback. Feel free to e-mail your thoughts and comments to ja@ou.org Wishing all of you a chag kasher vesomeach one of several remaining Holocaust survivors in Memphis It's a modern Jewish holiday established in 1951 when Notowitz was a student at Vanderbilt University That was 10 years after the Nazis murdered Notowitz's father older sister and younger brother because they were Jewish "My mother and the rest of my family went to Belzec and they were marched to long trenches that bulldozers dug and machine-gunned into them." The killers put 14-year-old Notowitz to work in a slave labor camp in Poland I volunteered to work and proved I was a hard worker Other slave laborers helped him escape before they all were sent to Nazi death camps But a man asked me 'Are you coming with us?' I didn't know what to say Notowitz found his way to Memphis where he had a cousin I tried to contact everyone who knew me or my family." He was 21 when he enrolled at Christian Brothers High School "Here I was a man with a funny accent in school with these kids." He graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1952 and went into the insurance business and became a big success Notowitz received a lifetime achievement award from The Estate Planning Council of Memphis in 2015 He was a member of the insurance industry's Million Dollar Round Table Membership requires a certain level of premium commission or income and adherence to strict ethical standards Members also "must love helping others with their financial needs and ensuring that they are prepared in the event of a catastrophe." Notowitz spent his entire adult life working to ensure others against catastrophe He is also survived by 20 Holocaust survivors in Memphis (37 if you include German and Russian Jews who fled Nazi occupation) A dozen of them took part in Monday's Yom Hashoah commemoration at the Memphis Jewish Community Center They screened a new film produced by high school students at Margolin Hebrew Academy It's called "Names Not Numbers" and it features several Memphis survivors Yom Hashoah is commemorated a week after Passover and a week before Israel's Memorial Day The holiday's full Hebrew name is Yom Ha'Shoah Ve-Hagevurah -- Day of (Remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism Notowitz didn't think of himself as a hero He also never thought of himself as a victim Rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel teaches a class at Memphis Theological Seminary It's called "The Shoah and Its Roots." Each semester "After one of Max’s talks," Greenstein remembered Tuesday 'It’s not just your courage and bravery I admire so much it’s your resilience and commitment to life no matter what happens.' history or what you have heard about Jews and Judaism but because of Max's Notowitz's example – a man who was all about life a spiritual resistance beyond the physical which said to the Nazis and the world "I will go on living and respond to everything with life -- even death."  Notowitz shared his life story with hundreds of teachers and students "I tell this story simply because it happened to me I’d much rather it hadn’t happened to me." This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.