Let's demand the immediate release of Americans wrongfully detained in Russia

Journalism is not a crime.

Russia must release Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan❗

An editorial echo published in the Maine newspaper, the Bangor Daily News:

Editorial - There are far more questions than answers about what happened in Russia when the Wagner group was marching toward the Kremlin in Moscow.  (Maine Writer- when the attempted coup turned out to be not so much of a coup.) What will continue to happen? What may have been an almost-coup and uncertainty about the strength of President Vladimir Putin’s position. 

Amid the uncertainty, at least one thing remains clear: Russia must release the people it has wrongfully detained.

For example, Maine’s two U.S. senators joined with a bipartisan group of their colleagues recently to show support for journalist Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter and Bowdoin College graduate detained in Russia since late March. 

Symbolic steps like this are necessary until Russia gives up on its wrongful detention and releases someone who was just doing his job.

“We are fully committed to bringing you, Paul [Whelan], and every wrongfully-detained American home at the earliest opportunity. Every day you spend in Russia is a day too long,” U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, Angus King and colleagues wrote in a June 13 open letter to Gershkovich. “Please know that the support for you and Paul go well beyond the walls of the United States Senate, and that the American people are with us in demanding your release.”

A Russian court rejected Gershkovich’s appeal to be released from his pre-trial detention. 

He is accused of espionage without Russian officials offering any evidence to back up the charge — a charge that he, his employer and the U.S. refute. One federal official described the legal proceedings against Gershkovich as a “sham” ahead of the hearing.

“We’ve been very clear that Evan is wrongfully detained — being wrongfully detained and targeted for simply doing his job as a journalist,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Wednesday.

Journalists from the U.S. and abroad have rallied to Gershkovich’s cause, condemning Russia’s hostility to press freedom and calling for his release. The senators highlighted Gershkovich’s critical role as a truth-teller in their recent letter as well.

“We believe that a free press is crucial to the foundation and support of human rights everywhere,” the group of more than 30 lawmakers wrote. “We applaud you for your efforts to report the truth about Russia’s reprehensible invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that has resulted in untellable atrocities, tragedies, and loss of life. Your courageous efforts have demonstrated how these atrocities have affected everyday Ukrainians and helped inform accountability efforts here in Washington.”

Gershkovich had lived and reported in Russia for several years before his arrest. Both of his parents, Mikhail Gershkovich and Ella Milman, left the former Soviet Union for the U.S. decades ago, and were in the Moscow courtroom for Thursday’s hearing.

“Any parent who loves their kid would travel to the end of the world to be with them for five minutes,” Milman told the Wall Street Journal after a previous hearing in May.

Gershkovich was able to chat and smile with his parents when they attended the Russian hearing. But this moving and brief interaction once again put his wrongful detention in stark focus. 

Sadly, Gershkovich and his parents should not be spending a few minutes together through a glass cage. They should be at home, free from the authoritarian whims of a Russian government that has shown little regard for press freedoms — and has seen significant instability in recent days.

“His wrongful detention is a blow to press freedom, and it should matter to anyone who values free society,” Wall Street Journal leaders said in a June 13, statement welcoming the bipartisan show of support from the group of senators. “We will not rest until he is free.”

As we did with basketball player Brittney Griner, we will continue to call on Russia to release wrongfully detained Americans like Evan Gershkovich, and Paul Whelan and to push President Biden's administration to help secure that release.

Let's support buying banned books on sale in Florida!

https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/4043876-our-goal-is-to-spread-literature-florida-couple-sells-banned-books-at-new-book-store/

‘Our goal is to spread literature’: Florida couple sells banned book. Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

An echo report published in Changing America: Shared Destiny, Shared Responsibility- published in The Hill* blog by Jack Royer:

"Books were always very important to me. So when I found out someone was throwing away 10,000 pounds of books a week away, I was like 'What? We can't have that.'"

Pinellas County couple selling banned books at new book store.

George and Sarah Brooks have turned their love of books into a full-time job after opening their store, The Book Rescuers, in Pinellas Park.

Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

They maintain a shelf of books banned across the state and country.

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (WFLA) — A couple in Florida is seeking to provide the people of Pinellas County with more accessible, affordable books — including some titles that have been banned by schools in the area.

George and Sarah Brooks have turned their love of books into a full-time job after opening their store, The Book Rescuers, in Pinellas Park. Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

The Brooks’ effort began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they found out some online booksellers were trashing titles that had little resale value.

“It blew our mind. We were like, ‘That’s insane, can we take your trash and sort it?'” Sarah Brooks remembered.

“Books were always very important to me. So when I found out someone was throwing away 10,000 pounds of books a week away, I was like ‘What? We can’t have that,'” she added.

Among the books available at The Book Rescuers are titles banned in some school districts across Florida and around the country. 

A shelf dedicated to these “banned books” contains entire sets donated by teachers who were told they needed to remove them from their classrooms.

The store’s owners, however, insist their efforts have nothing to do with politics.

“I understand that people don’t want their kids reading certain things and I also feel like you don’t have a right to tell me what my kids can read,” she added. 

*(NEXSTAR) – (By Alex Martichoux in April 2023) Attempts to ban books in libraries and schools reached a 20-year high, the American Library Association said. The group announced it had documented 1,269 demands to censor more than 2,500 titles in 2022.

That’s the highest number recorded since the ALA, which advocates for expanding libraries, literacy and intellectual freedom, started keeping track in 2001.

The 13 most challenged titles in 2022, according to the ALA, were:

“Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe
“All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
“Flamer” by Mike Curato
“Looking for Alaska” by John Green
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie
“Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez
“A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas
“Crank” by Ellen Hopkins
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews
“This Book Is Gay” by Juno Dawson

The ALA defines a challenge as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.”

T

Let's write about the illiterate people that want to ban books!

 Stand up to moral police, book banners

This echo opinion letter was published in TCPalm Stuart News in Florida:

Dear editor: I want to address the book bans happening in this state- Florida.

Parents essentially can now pull a book they think is questionable. Many have done so without even reading the book. How can you deem something inappropriate you yourself have not read?

The ignorance and audacity of these people is astounding. They are literally saying with their actions, "Well, I don't know what it's about, so it must be bad; let's ban it."Case in point, a young Black poet's work can no longer be read by younger students. Not one person who called for the ban has read it. They are banning things they know nothing about, perpetrating ignorant, baseless moral decisions for every Floridian.

I don't need moral police❗😠

This is America, not Afghanistan, where the moral police walk around punishing those they deem immoral.

Wake up, Florida! 

For every ignorant person that bans a book, there should be thousands of us fighting it. Personally, I encourage everyone to read the banned books. I've read almost all of them — some as a child, some as a teen and some as an adult.

My favorite book at 9 years old was "To Kill a Mockingbird" and I can honestly say it did not harm me in any way. All it did was help me be a more empathetic person to others. I don't see any of the myriad of ignorant reasons these people have come up with for banning books like this.

So Florida, stand up to ignorance. Read and share these books and use your voices and votes against this moral policing done by the extremists who haven't even read the books in question.

Reading kills no one; but ignorance does.

Adele Burich, Vero Beach

Let's write about mindfulness

 Nine unknown laws about mindfulness that will change your life by Matt Caron published in Sivana East

Since modern science has confirmed many claims of mindfulness, the practice has enjoyed a huge spike in popularity.

But, this powerful and simple practice has been around for centuries due to the teachings of Buddha. 

According to tradition, the historical Buddha lived from 563 to 483 B.C

In fact, the basis of this ancient technique is being aware of the present moment without judgment. And while the practice has tons of benefits, you need to really keep it up in order to reap the rewards.

Here’s how.

1.  Negative Thoughts are only Powerful when You Believe Them

In the east, it’s believed that thoughts are universally, and not individually, rooted. This means that in many cases, we don’t have the control over our thoughts the way we think we do. 

This is why you can take a step back and observe the thoughts. Suffering from negative thoughts only occurs when we attach ourselves to them.

2.  You Must Walk Your Own Path

The harsh reality of life is that we must save ourselves from our inner conflicts. Once we do that, the outer life begins to bounce off us like water in green leaves.

3.  The ONLY Reality is this Moment

The interesting thing about the human brain is its capacity to dwell in the past and the future over and over again. Ironically, these don’t exist! The only thing that truly exists is the present moment. Everything else is a figment of your imagination.

4.  An Easy Life is not a Victorious Life

Unfortunately, struggle is woven into the fabric of the universe. But eventually, you come to realize that it molds you into a stronger person. While every step may be tough, as long as you know you’re on the right path, it leads you to where you want to go. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it! In fact, that’s all the more reason to keep on.

5.  Inner Peace is Belongs to Yourself and No One Else

Most people are concerned with how other people think of them. But the truth is you don’t look to others to find yourself. Instead, you look within.

6.  You Create in Your Mind First, in the World Second

Our brains literally bridge the gap between us and the universe. Everything starts there. That’s why it’s so important to not act unless you’re completely convinced you know what you’re doing.
If You Believe It, Live It

Sure you can stand on a mountain and preach some amazing wisdom, but are you really living it? Until you do, it’s just intellectual mumbo jumbo. This is where ‘being authentic’ comes into play.

7.  Let Go of Control

Control gives a certain illusion of security, and we like to feel as if we’re protected. But the irony is there’s no such thing as control in the ultimate sense. We have no real control over how things will turn out. The sooner we grasp this the happier we’ll be.

8.  If You Want the Benefits, You Must Embrace the Costs

9.  What in your life is worth suffering for? This will help you figure out what roads to travel down. Always remember everything in life is about giving and taking. 

Symbiotic relationships are what it’s all about!

Author Matt Caron is an enthusiastic Yoga teacher.

Let's write about General Mark Milley's unsent letter of resignation

 General Mark Milley's unsent letter of resignation:

Read more about this letter at Katie Couric media site here.

General Mark Milley Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

An excerpt from the book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, calls attention to the tension that was brewing between Donald Trump and the military generals.

Things hit a breaking point on June 1, 2020, when the nation was still reeling from the terrors of George Floyd’s death, and Black Lives Matter protestors were violently removed from Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Square. A few minutes later, Trump walked into the Square for a photo op, and Milley stood behind him in his military uniform. The pictures were meant to show the President’s forceful response to the protests, but were met with severe criticism.

From General Mark Milley:

I regret to inform you that I intend to resign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Thank you for the honor of appointing me as senior ranking officer. The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.

Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people. The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.

Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal. All men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans. That under these colors of red, white, and blue—the colors that my parents fought for in World War II—means something around the world. It’s obvious to me that you don’t think of those colors the same way I do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.

And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.

General Milley's letter was dated June 8th, a full week after the Lafayette Square debacle.

Let's write about the afterlife!

This delightful essay about the Jeopardy game show host Ken Jennings and his book titled "100 things to see after you die", is written by the Chicago writer, Nicholas Cannariato, published in The Washington Post.

GLENDALE, California. — Forest Lawn cemetery here is the final resting place for many of the boldest boldface names in entertainment history, including Jimmy Stewart, Walt Disney, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Sammy Davis Jr. It’s also the place Ken Jennings happened to visit for the first time on the day he found out Alex Trebek had died.

I met Jennings at the cemetery on a sunny April day to talk about his new book, which is all about the afterlife. If that sounds unexpected, it all started at an airport bookstore. “I saw one of those bucket list travel books,” he said. “I was looking at it upside down, and I thought it said ‘A Thousand Destinations to Die Before You See.’ I came out of the bookstore and I told my friends at the gate, ‘I think I have an idea for a book.’”

The idea would become “100 Places to See After You Die,” which Scribner is publishing Tuesday. In it, the “Jeopardy!” host — and the show’s all-time winningest champion — surveys ideas from around the world about what happens to us after we die. It’s written in the form of a travel guide, with an eclectic mix of 100 accounts, ranging from mythology and religion to ideas floated in books, movies and TV shows. In the introduction, Jennings suggests that readers dip in and out of the book, consulting it as a “post-bucket list.”

“Whatever the end is, whether it exists or not, that’s got the meaning of life in it,” Ken Jennings said. (Christina Gandolfo for The Washington Post)

Threaded throughout are comic asides and passing insights in the form of information boxes with headings such as “Meet the Locals,” “When to Go,” “Best to Avoid,” “Time-Savers” and “Off the Beaten Path.” The book’s tone is light and irreverent, sometimes bordering on shticky. But ultimately it reads a lot like what you expect in a book by Jennings: long on knowledge and mercifully short on claims about the grand truth of things.

“The miracle of life and consciousness seems already so unusual to me that it seems like such a waste if that all just sparks for some shorter time and then vanishes,” Jennings said. “We would love to believe that that’s not true and that it’s not just such a brief flowering. Of course, the other attractive thing about it is that we’re never going to know.”

Jennings has been interested in death and the afterlife for as long as he can remember. Part of his interest when he was a child stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t yet experienced any deeply personal losses. “And so,” he said, “a lot of my formative experiences with death were fictional characters, like Spock dying, Mr. Hooper dying, Jean Grey from the X-Men. That’s the kind of American experience with death. You talk about it more with Big Bird than with your own loved ones sometimes.”

Jennings describes himself as “a generalist who loves knowing a tiny bit about a million things.” The book stems from his interest in how “people’s ideas about their own culture and priorities change” based on how they see the next world.

Of course, how exactly one sees the afterlife is tricky. In the book, Jennings nods, if only obliquely, to the elephant in the room: The afterlife is the speculation of living people who, you know, haven’t died before. He expresses skepticism with dollops of dry wit, which can feel reflexive but do usefully lighten some very serious, even grim material.

Take, for instance, Islam’s version of hell, Jahannam, which is similar to other hells. Jennings describes it as “a series of vast rings” in a “crater on the underside of the world,” consisting of “seven different layers of torture, called Inferno, Blaze, Flame, Furnace, Fire, Hellfire, and Abyss.” He walks readers through the process that might end in a stay there: “Don’t be alarmed when two blue-black beings with red eyes and terrifying tusks appear to you in the grave. These are the angels Munkar and Nakir, and they’ve come to ask you three questions: ‘Who is your God?,’ ‘What is your religion?,’ and ‘Who is your prophet?’ We recommend going with ‘Allah,’ ‘Islam,’ and ‘Muhammad’ as your answers here.”

Heaven in Islam is called Jannah, which means “garden” or “paradise.” Jennings observes how “most traditional heavens are bright and sunny,” but in Jannah things are more sensuous: “There are aromatic rains of rosewater, while all the cooling water you can drink bubbles up from springs smelling of camphor and ginger.”

But the afterlife is also about our need for abiding connection. Jennings said that part of what motivates his own hopes for it is possible reunion with the people he’s known and loved. “When you think about what you can take with you,” he said, “it’s clearly not material things. But it might be the relationships you have. I would like to think that that continues.” There might not be anything more human than feeling that our bonds with each other are eternal.

Jennings does some of his most entertaining writing in the less-devout sections of the book: those that address how literature, movies and TV have dealt with the subject. One example is his (most excellent) account of the movie “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.” To escape Death in the movie, Jennings writes, you can give him a “melvin, which is a most egregious type of wedgie,” or “you’ll need to challenge Death to a contest, like the game of chess from Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’ — and win. Be warned that Death has only been defeated once — and he was a super-poor sport about it.”

Another conception of the afterlife from Hollywood is even more surprising: Iowa. In “Field of Dreams,” long-dead baseball players emerge from cornfields to play again with the living. Even if the well-rendered schmaltz of the movie is too much for some palates, credit where credit is due: The vast openness of Iowa’s landscape is an inspired choice for a portal to the beyond.

I asked Jennings if his faith — he’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — informed his thoughts about the subject. He said that “coming from a Latter-day Saint background, there’s a real emphasis on [the idea that] even the afterlife has growth — that it’s not just a static cloud, but that you could still learn things and do things.” To him, it’s an attractive part of the faith, “that the afterlife is not just a reward. It’s not just the dessert, but there’s something to do and places to go.”

That’s in part why he chose to write his book in the form of a travel guide, since such books are all about “the vibe of a place,” he said. “You’re trying to convey not just what time the bars close or how regular the buses are, but you’re really trying to convey what you know, what is the spirit of the place that you can’t get at home. And I guess that’s exactly what’s implicit in how we think about God, too. What can you get from him that you can’t get from your loved ones, your king, your boss, your favorite YouTuber? Must be something. Or else, why God?”

Which is to say that religion is important in his life, but more in the present moment than for reasons having to do with the hereafter. Jennings consults it, he said, as a way to wonder: “What kind of person am I going to be today? I think that might be unusual, for a religious person to tell you that. I should be fixated on my heavenly reward maybe, but I’m not. Maybe that’s a sign of a less robust or certain faith.”

Writing the book has changed him, too. “Years and years of working on this book,” he said, “and the funny thing is, I now find myself thinking about the afterlife all the time. Whatever the end is, whether it exists or not, that’s got the meaning of life in it.”

The cemetery was closing as Jennings and I walked back to our cars. There was a sense of an ending. It was only for a short time, in a place of the dead, talking eternity with the king of earthly knowledge, but I felt there was a serenity to our conversation. 

Yet throughout, he kept getting phone calls. He was polite and apologetic about them, but whatever they were about, they seemed urgent. Acutely aware of our surroundings, I didn’t ask who it was.

ncannariato@gmail.com.

Nicholas Cannariato is a writer and teacher in Chicago.

For more information check out the List of 12 Famous People Buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park by Minda Powers-Douglas, BA in English

Let's write about the Jewish underground in Hungary

Echo essay published in the Los Angeles Times by Alon Bernstein:

78 years on, Jewish Holocaust rescuers want their story told:

KIBBUTZ HAZOREA, Israel —  Just before Nazi Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Jewish youth leaders in the Eastern European country jumped into action: They formed an underground network that in the coming months would save tens of thousands of fellow Jews from the Nazi gas chambers.

Budapest: Most of the murders along the edge of the River Danube took place around December 1944 and January 1945, when the members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party police ("Nyilas") took as many as 20,000 Jews from the newly established Budapest ghetto and executed them along the river bank. (L'Heureux photograph)

This chapter of the Holocaust heroism is scarcely remembered in Israel. Nor is it part of the official curriculum in schools. But the few remaining members of Hungary’s Jewish underground want their story told. Dismayed at the prospect of being forgotten, they are determined to keep memories of their mission alive.

“The story of the struggle to save tens of thousands needs to be a part of the chronicles of the people of Israel,” said David Gur, 97, one of a handful of members still alive. “It is a lighthouse during the period of the Holocaust, a lesson and exemplar for the generations.”

As time passes, historians, activists, survivors and their families are preparing for the time when there will no longer be living witnesses to share first-person accounts about the horrors of the Nazi genocide during World War II. In the Holocaust, 6 million Jews were wiped out by the Nazis and their allies.

Israel, which was established as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, has gone to great lengths over the years to recognize thousands of “Righteous Among the Nations” — non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Accounts of Jewish resistance to the Nazis, such as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, are mainstays in the national narrative but rescue missions by fellow Jews — such as the Hungarian resistance — are less known.

Budapest Synagogue Memorial Park (L'Heureux photograph)

Hungary was home to around 900,000 Jews before the Nazi invasion. Its government was allied with Nazi Germany, but as the Soviet Red Army advanced toward Hungary, the Nazis invaded in March 1944, to prevent its Axis ally from making a separate peace deal with the Allies.

Over the 10 months that followed, as many as 568,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis and their allies in Hungary, according to figures from Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial.

Gur said he and his colleagues knew that disaster was looming when three Jewish women arrived at Budapest’s main synagogue in the fall of 1943. They had fled Nazi-occupied Poland and bore disturbing news about people being shipped to concentration camps.

“They had fairly clear information about what was happening, and saw the many trains, and it was obvious to them what was happening,” said Gur.

Shoes on the Danube River in Budapest (on the Pest side of the river) -L'Heureux photograph- Shoes on the Danube Bank (Hungarian: Cipők a Duna-parton) is a memorial erected on 16 April 2005, in Budapest, Hungary. Conceived by film director Can Togay, he created it on the east bank of the Danube River with sculptor Gyula Pauer [hu] to honour the Jews who were massacred by fascist Hungarian militia belonging to the Arrow Cross Party in Budapest during the Second World War. They were ordered to take off their shoes (shoes were valuable and could be stolen and resold by the militia after the massacre), and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. The memorial represents their shoes left behind on the bank.

In fact, Gur oversaw a massive forgery operation that provided false documents for Jews and non-Jewish members of the Hungarian resistance. “I was an 18-year-old adolescent when the heavy responsibility fell upon me,” he said.

There was great personal risk. In December 1944, he was arrested at the forgery workshop and brutally interrogated and imprisoned, according to his memoir, “Brothers for Resistance and Rescue.” The Jewish underground broke him out of the central military prison in a rescue operation later that month.

The forged papers were used by Jewish youth movements to operate a smuggling network and run Red Cross houses that saved thousands from the Nazis and their allies.

According to Gur’s book, at least 7,000 Jews were smuggled out of Hungary, through Romania to ships on the Black Sea that would bring them to British-controlled Palestine. At least 10,000 forged passes offering protection, known as Shutzpasses, were distributed to Budapest’s Jews, and around 6,000 Jewish children and accompanying adults were saved in houses ostensibly under the protection of the International Red Cross.

Robert Rozett, a senior historian at Yad Vashem, said that although it was “the largest rescue operation” of European Jews during the Holocaust, this episode remains off “the main route of the narrative.”

“It’s very significant because these activities helped tens of thousands of Jews stay alive in Budapest,” he said.

In 1984, Gur founded “The Society for Research of the History of the Zionist Youth Movements in Hungary,” a group that has promoted awareness about this effort.

Last month at a kibbutz in northern Israel, Sara Epstein, 97, Dezi Heffner-Reiner, 95, and Betzalel Grosz, 98, three of the remaining survivors who helped save Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary, received the Jewish Rescuers Citation for their role in the Holocaust. The award is given by two Jewish groups — B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust.

“There aren’t many of us left, but this is important,” said Heffner-Reiner.

More than 200 other members of the underground were given the award posthumously. Gur received the award in 2011, the year it was created.

Yuval Alpan, a son of one of the rescuers and an activist with the society, said the citations were meant to recognize those who saved lives during the Holocaust.

“This resistance underground youth movement saved tens of thousands of Jews during 1944, and their story is not known,” he said. “It’s the biggest rescue operation in the Holocaust and nobody knows about it.”

International Holocaust day falls on the anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, 78 years ago. 

January 27, 1945, the Soviet's Red Army liberates Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland

Israel is home to some 150,600 Holocaust survivors, almost all of them over the age of 80, according to government figures. That is 15,193 less than a year ago.

The United Nations will be holding a memorial ceremony at the General Assembly on Friday, and other memorial events are scheduled around the globe.

Israel marks its own Holocaust Remembrance Day every spring.

Associated Press writers Eleanor Reich and Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Let's write about real space aliens! Really!

Big, shiny eyes. 

Towering nearly 10 feet tall. 100% not human. Aliens.  

The Los Angeles Times echo report- Really! 

By Alexandra E. Petri

That’s the 911 call that came into dispatchers last month from a Las Vegas area resident reporting extraterrestrial life in his backyard, just about an hour after local police witnessed an object falling from the sky.

The paranormal investigation by police did not turn up any answers.

“On May 1, 2023, at approximately 12:29 a.m. LVMPD dispatch received a call about a suspicious situation,” the Las Vegas Police Department said in an email statement. “Officer conducted a preliminary investigation and closed the event as unfounded.”

At around 11:50 p.m. on April 30, body camera footage from an officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police captured a bright, glowing object cutting through the sky, according to local TV channel 8 News Now.

About 40 minutes later, a local resident placed a 911 call to report that something “100% not human” was staring at him from his backyard shortly after he and his family saw an object fall from the sky, the station reported.

“There’s like an 8-foot person beside it, and another one’s inside us, and it has big eyes and it’s looking at us — and it’s still there,” the caller, who said that he and his family had seen something fall from the sky, told the dispatcher.

“I swear to God this is not a joke, this is actually — we’re terrified,” the caller said.

Local TV channel 8 News Now first reported the story and obtained the video and audio from that weird evening, including the 911 call and body camera footage.

The dispatcher clarified the situation with the caller, careful to choose the right words.

“So, there’s two people — there’s two subjects in your backyard?” the dispatcher asked.

“Correct, and they’re very large,” the caller said. “They’re like 8 foot, 9 feet, 10 foot. They look like aliens to us. Big eyes. They have big eyes. Like, I can’t explain it, and big mouth. They’re shiny eyes and they’re human. They’re 100% not human.”

Two officers responded to the caller’s home, KLAS reported.

“I’m so nervous right now,” one of the responding officers said while en route to the house. “I have butterflies bro.” He continues to say that people “saw a shooting star, and now these people say there’s aliens in their backyard.”

Officers interviewed the family on their front lawn.

“What did you see?” one of the officers asks.

“It was like a big creature,” one witness said, adding it was around 10 feet tall.

The officer tells them about the incident his colleague saw just before the call came in.

“I’m not going to BS you guys. One of my partners said they saw something fall out of the sky, too,” the officer said. “So that’s why I’m kind of curious. Did you see anything land in your backyard?”

A man in a robe said some of his family members saw “a big something with light” plummet from above.

Police continued to investigate that evening, asking neighbors if they too had witnessed any unusual objects fall from the sky. KLAS reported the investigation lasted for several days.

The Department of Defense is tracking more than 800 cases of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” often called UFOs, from the past 27 years, according to government officials, who added that only 2% to 5% of cases can be explained.