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They Survived the Holocaust. Now, They Are Fleeing to Germany.

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They Survived the Holocaust. Now, They Are Fleeing to Germany.

HANOVER, Germany — Their earliest recollections are of fleeing bombs or listening to whispers about massacres of different Jews, together with their family. Sheltered by the Soviet Union, they survived.

Now aged and fragile, Ukraine’s Holocaust survivors are escaping battle as soon as extra, on a outstanding journey that turns the world they knew on its head: They’re looking for security in Germany.

For Galina Ploschenko, 90, it was not a call made with out trepidation.

“They informed me Germany was my best choice. I informed them, ‘I hope you’re proper,’” she mentioned.

Ms. Ploschenko is the beneficiary of a rescue mission organized by Jewish teams, attempting to get Holocaust survivors out of the battle wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Bringing these nonagenarians out of a battle zone by ambulance is harmful work, infused with a historic irony: Not solely are the Holocaust survivors being delivered to Germany, the assault is now coming from Russia — a rustic they noticed as their liberators from the Nazis.

Per week in the past, Ms. Ploschenko was trapped in her mattress at a retirement heart in Dnipro, her hometown in central Ukraine, as artillery strikes thundered and air raid sirens blared. The nurses and retirees who may stroll had fled to the basement. She was compelled to lie in her third-floor room, alone with a deaf lady and a mute man, bedridden like her.

“That first time, I used to be a toddler, with my mom as my protector. Now, I’ve felt so alone. It’s a horrible expertise, a painful one,” she mentioned, comfortably ensconced after a three-day journey at a senior care heart in Hanover, in northwestern Germany.

So far, 78 of Ukraine’s frailest Holocaust survivors, of whom there are some 10,000, have been evacuated. A single evacuation takes as much as 50 folks, coordinating throughout three continents and 5 nations.

For the 2 teams coordinating the rescues — the Jewish Claims Convention and the American Joint Distribution Committee — simply convincing survivors like Ms. Ploschenko to depart shouldn’t be a simple promote.

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Many of the frailest and oldest survivors contacted have refused to depart dwelling. These prepared to go had myriad questions: What about their medicines? Had been there Russian or Ukrainian audio system there? May they bring about their cat? (Sure, because it turned out.)

Then there was essentially the most awkward query of all: Why Germany?

“One in all them informed us: I received’t be evacuated to Germany. I do wish to be evacuated — however to not Germany,” mentioned Rüdiger Mahlo, of the Claims Convention, who works with German officers in Berlin to prepare the rescues.

Based to barter Holocaust restitutions with the German authorities, the Claims Convention maintains an in depth checklist of survivors that, underneath regular circumstances, is used to distribute pensions and well being care however that now serves a method to establish folks for evacuation.

For a lot of causes, Mr. Mahlo would inform them, Germany made sense. It was simply reachable by ambulance by way of Poland. It has a well-funded medical system and a big inhabitants of Russian audio system, together with Jewish emigrants from the previous Soviet Union. And his group has an intimate relationship with authorities officers there after many years of restitution talks. Israel can be an choice, for these properly sufficient to fly there.

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Ms. Ploschenko now has “nothing however love” for Germany, although she nonetheless remembers “all the pieces” in regards to the final battle she survived — from the headscarf her mom wrapped round her physique, at one level her solely piece of clothes, to the radio bulletin that delivered her the information that hundreds of Jews, amongst them an aunt and two cousins, had been killed in cell gasoline wagons the locals known as “dushegubka,” or soul killer.

Her father, who left to battle with the Soviet military, disappeared and not using a hint.

“I wasn’t afraid of Germany,” she mentioned. “I simply couldn’t cease pondering: Papa died in that battle. My cousins died in that battle.”

Ms. Ploschenko believes that she, her mom and 5 of her aunts survived by singing — whether or not working the cotton fields in Kazakhstan, the place they discovered momentary refuge, or huddling beneath umbrellas in a roofless house after the battle.

“We might sing together with the radio,” she remembers with a smile. “It’s what saved us. We sang all the pieces, no matter there was on — opera, people songs. I actually wish to sing, however I don’t know that I can anymore. I don’t have the voice for it. So as an alternative, I simply bear in mind all of the occasions I sang earlier than.”

Perched amid pillows in a sunlit room on the AWO senior heart, Ms. Ploschenko directs the music in her thoughts with a trembling hand. As caretakers bustle out and in, she practices the German phrases she has rigorously recorded on a notepad: “Danke Schön,” many thanks. “Alles Liebe,” a lot love.

“Within the scheme of all this horror, some 70 folks doesn’t sound like rather a lot,” mentioned Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Convention. “However what it takes to deliver these folks, one after the other, ambulance by ambulance, to security in Germany is extremely important.”

Such evacuations are inevitably suffering from logistical snags with nail-biting moments. Ambulances have been despatched again from checkpoints as preventing flared. Others have been confiscated by troopers, to make use of for their very own wounded. Confronted with destroyed roads, drivers have navigated their ambulances via forests as an alternative.

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Most logistical issues are dealt with from 2,000 miles away, the place Pini Miretski, the medical evacuation group chief, sits at a Joint Distribution Committee scenario room in Jerusalem. The J.D.C., a humanitarian group, has an extended historical past of evacuations, together with smuggling Jews out of Europe in World Conflict II. For the previous 30 years, its volunteers have labored to revive Jewish life in former Soviet nations, together with Ukraine.

Mr. Miretski and others coordinate with rescuers inside Ukraine, as soon as serving to them attain a survivor shivering in an house with a temperature of 14 levels, her home windows shattered by explosions. In one other case, they helped rescuers who spent per week evacuating a survivor in a village surrounded by fierce battles.

“There are over 70 of those tales now, every of them like this,” he mentioned.

For Mr. Miretski, this operation feels private: A Ukrainian Jewish emigrant to Israel, his great-grandparents had been killed at Babyn Yar, also referred to as Babi Yar, the ravine in Kyiv the place tens of hundreds had been pushed to their deaths after being stripped and shot with machine weapons from the years 1941 to 1943. The memorial to these massacres in Kyiv was struck by Russian missiles within the early days of its invasion.

“I perceive the ache of those folks, I do know who they’re,” Mr. Miretski mentioned. “These scenes, these tales now — in a method, it’s like life goes full circle. As a result of lots of these tales grew to become actual.”

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Not less than two Holocaust survivors have died because the battle started in Ukraine. Final week, Vanda Obiedkova, 91, died in a cellar in besieged Mariupol. In 1941, she had survived by hiding in a cellar from Nazis who rounded up and executed 10,000 Jews in that very same city.

For Vladimir Peskov, 87, evacuated from Zaporizhzhia final week and now residing down the corridor from Ms. Ploschenko on the dwelling in Hanover, the round feeling this second battle has given his life is demoralizing.

“I really feel a type of hopelessness, as a result of it does really feel like historical past repeats itself,” he mentioned, hunched in a wheelchair, stroking a mug that belonged to his mom — one of many few keepsakes he delivered to Germany.

But he additionally has discovered a measure of closure, too.

“In the present day’s battle has ended any unfavourable feelings I felt towards Germany,” he mentioned.

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Simply exterior his room, a gaggle of survivors not too long ago arrived from the jap metropolis of Kramatorsk sat round a desk within the dwelling’s sunny kitchen. They loudly lamented the thought of fleeing battle once more. However they declined to share their ideas with a Western newspaper reporter.

“You’ll not inform the reality,” one man mentioned, trying away.

Their hesitancy displays one of the painful elements of this second exile, significantly for these from Ukraine’s Russian-speaking jap areas: Reconsidering one’s view of Germany is one factor, acknowledging Russia as an aggressor is one other.

“My childhood goals had been to purchase a motorcycle and a piano, and to journey to Moscow to see Stalin,” Ms. Ploschenko mentioned. “Moscow was the capital of my homeland. I used to like the tune, ‘My Moscow, My Nation.’ It’s laborious for me to consider that nation is now my enemy.”

Flipping via a photograph ebook, she pointed to footage of her youthful self, posing in a washing swimsuit on the seashore in Sochi, the waves crashing round her.

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“Typically I get up and overlook I’m in Germany,” she mentioned. “I get up, and I’m again on a enterprise journey in Moldova, or Uzbekistan. I’m again within the Soviet Union.”

However Germany will likely be her dwelling for the remainder of her days. It’s an thought she has now made her peace with, she mentioned. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”

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Movie Review: A family is torn apart under Brazil’s dictatorship in ‘I’m Still Here’

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Movie Review: A family is torn apart under Brazil’s dictatorship in ‘I’m Still Here’

It’s easy to fall in love with the Paiva family. Filmmaker Walter Salles makes sure of that in “I’m Still Here.”

He drops the audience into the warm everyday of the beautiful home of Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), in 1970s Rio de Janeiro, where their five kids run freely between the beach and their living room. Life is calmly chaotic, full of affection, gentle familial teasing and various life stages (one is about to lose a tooth, another about to go to university). Someone always seems to have wet hair, be covered in sand, or bringing in a mangy stray, as their youngest, Marcelo, does in the film’s lovely opening. Even if their life is technically worlds away from any one person in the audience, it feels familiar and close.

Anyone coming to “I’m Still Here” will surely know that this domestic tranquility does not and cannot hold. It was about seven years into Brazil’s military dictatorship, which would last until 1985. And while the film suggests that there was a semblance of normalcy in their day to day, there are also ominous signs of change and oppression — reports of ambassadors being kidnapped on the news, and tense “random” traffic stops that their eldest daughter endures one night. Some left-leaning citizens are making plans to leave, but the Paiva family is not in a terrible rush. They’re even making plans to build a new home.

So when three men in civilian clothes enter their home one afternoon and tell Rubens, a former left-leaning congressman, that he needs to come in for questioning, it happens with little incident. Everyone is on guard — they’re not naive — but you sense that Eunice believes he will come back that night. Maybe even the next day. Rubens is calm changing into a collared shirt and tie and lying to his daughter that he is going into the office, even though it’s a holiday. But he also savors this moment with her, perhaps because he knows he’s likely to not return.

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The film is based on a memoir written by Paiva’s son, Marcelo, but you don’t need to know that to know that it is first and foremost a memory piece. It is deeply personal and imbued with the kind of tenderness that is extremely difficult to see or appreciate in the moment. And although it’s certainly idealized and wistful, we accept any assumed white lies because we all wish that for ourselves: to truly recognize what we have before it’s gone.

This story is not about the abduction, however, or what may have happened to Rubens after that day. It’s about how Eunice continues on, through uncertainty, absence and, ultimately, the loss of hope. Salles chooses to tell this story in a rather straightforward manner, which works well, allowing the compelling narrative and the talented actors to carry the audience through.

At the heart of it is Torres, who has already won a Golden Globe for her performance and whose portrayal of Eunice is a true marvel. Mothers and wives often get the short shrift in movies like this, about Big Important Topics decided on by men, but Torres instills Eunice with a deep emotional and practical intelligence that’s beautifully feminine, whether she’s dealing with a misogynist banker, a dead dog in the street or the thugs surveilling her home. She’s fascinating and resilient in a way that so many women are in times of historical strife but rarely celebrated for.

In one particularly poignant scene, she and the kids are being photographed by a journalist hoping to tell their story. They smile together, as they did earlier in the film when Rubens was there. Now he’s not, and the reporters are confused. They ask Eunice to try a more serious expression. She laughs, “They want us to look sad,” and instructs her kids to keep smiling. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the complex spirit of the movie. Political disappearances don’t begin and end with the victim, or the toppling of a regime — they are generational traumas that live on in the survivors and alter everything in their wake.

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“I’m Still Here,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in limited release Friday (expanding on Jan. 24), is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “smoking, drug use, brief nudity, some strong language, thematic content.” Running time: 135 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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Hostage families in Israel express cautious optimism after cease-fire deal: 'We hope they’ll come back alive'

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Hostage families in Israel express cautious optimism after cease-fire deal: 'We hope they’ll come back alive'

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TEL AVIV — Israeli negotiators have reached agreement with the Hamas terror group for a hostages-for-cease-fire deal that will also reportedly see the release of thousands of Palestinian security prisoners, many with blood on their hands, and an Israeli military withdrawal from key areas of the Gaza Strip.

“I am trying to breathe,” Efrat Machikawa, the niece of Israeli captive Gadi Moses, told Fox News Digital in response to the development.

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“We will not know for sure that it is really happening until we will get the phone call to come see Gadi at the hospital. Although I am optimistic by nature, I am trying to control myself because we were very close to so many deals since the last one when my aunt Margalit was released,” Machikawa said.

ISRAEL-HAMAS CEASE-FIRE, HOSTAGE RELEASE DEAL REACHED

Pictures of loved ones who have been captured by Hamas are shown during a Defend Israeli Democracy UK press conference at Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London by Sharon Lifschitz and Noam Sagi, two London-based British Israelis whose parents are among the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. (Lucy North/PA Images via Getty Images/File)

In November 2023, a weeklong Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement saw 105 hostages freed from Gaza.

Palestinian terrorists are still holding 98 hostages in Gaza, 94 of whom were abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. Thirty-six of the hostages have been confirmed dead.

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“I am disappointed that this agreement does not talk about all the hostages. It is unacceptable that the second phase is not defined in a way that shows when my son will be released from captivity,” Ruby Chen, the father of American-Israeli IDF Sgt. Itay Chen, told Fox News Digital.

Chen visited Qatar last week to meet with U.S. negotiators.

“We will continue the fight until all the hostages come out,” he said. “With the inauguration of President-elect Trump next week, my hope is that in his speech he will say, ‘Mr. Chen, I am able to get your son back.’”

hostages

From left, American hostages being held in Gaza: Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Keith Siegel, Omer Neutra, Judi Weinstein Haggai, Gadi Haggai and Itay Chen (Ruby Chen’s son) (Fox News)

“My focus is on the second phase when my son will be released,” Yehuda Cohen, the father of IDF soldier Nimrod Cohen who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists near Kibbutz Nirim on Oct. 7, 2023, told Fox News Digital. 

“He is one of the youngest and one of three living soldiers who were captured in uniform. I assume he will be one of the last to be released,” Cohen continued. “He would have been in captivity for about a year and a half then, and I don’t know what condition he is in physically or mentally. Our private fight to get him back to normal life will soon start.”

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WIFE OF US HOSTAGE KEITH SIEGEL PLEADS FOR HOLIDAY MIRACLE: ‘WE NEED TO GET THEM BACK’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, meets with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, meets with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. (Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)

The breakthrough in long-stalled negotiations came after the U.S. Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend in Jerusalem. The two held a “tense” meeting, according to local media, with Witkoff having demanded significant concessions.

Trump warned on Monday that the failure to reach an agreement would have consequences.

“If they don’t get it done, there’s going to be a lot of trouble out there like they have never seen before,” he stated.

During Hamas’s terror invasion 467 days ago, the Bibas family, including mother Shiri, husband Yarden and their children, Ariel, 4, and 9-month-old baby Kfir, were taken by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nir Oz.

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Relatives and friends of people killed or abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza react to the cease-fire announcement as they take part in a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025.

Relatives and friends of people killed or abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza react to the cease-fire announcement as they take part in a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

“We hope they’ll come back alive and we can get them treated, to do the best for them to readjust. But we don’t know in what situation they will return. We are very afraid,” Jimmy Miller, Shiri Bibas’s cousin, told Fox News Digital.

“I hope for the best, but I don’t want to be disappointed if something bad happens. I try not to think about it too much before it really happens. We thought it would happen before. Saturday is Kfir’s [second] birthday. Maybe he can celebrate it with us even a few days later,” he added.

New York hostage vigil

A woman holds a poster of Israeli hostage Omer Neutra during a memorial vigil held in New York City on Nov. 1, 2023, for the people killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel. (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum Headquarters issued a statement, “We, the families of 98 hostages, welcome with overwhelming joy and relief the agreement to bring our loved ones home. We wish to express our profound gratitude to President-elect Trump, President Biden, both administrations, and the international mediators for making this possible. Since November 2023, we have been anxiously awaiting this moment, and now, after over 460 days of our family members being held in Hamas tunnels, we are closer than ever to reuniting with our loved ones.

“This is a significant step forward that brings us closer to seeing all hostages return – the living to rehabilitation, and the deceased for proper burial,” the statement continues. “However, deep anxiety and concerns accompany us regarding the possibility that the agreement might not be fully implemented, leaving hostages behind. We urgently call for swift arrangements to ensure all phases of the deal are carried out.”

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“We will not rest until we see the last hostage back home.”

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NATO Chief Mark Rutte calls for 'shift to a wartime mindset'

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NATO Chief Mark Rutte calls for 'shift to a wartime mindset'

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte emphasized that NATO currently isn’t ready to meet security challenges and called for increased defence spending.

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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has called for an urgent “shift to a wartime mindset,” warning that the alliance’s members are not prepared enough for an increasing security threat posed by Russia.

In his first major speech since taking office in October, Rutte said, “To prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It’s time to shift to a wartime mindset, and this means we need to strengthen our defences even more by spending more on defence and producing more and better defence capabilities.”

Rutte highlighted that Moscow is preparing for a “long-term confrontation” with Ukraine and NATO, describing the current security landscape as the most perilous in his lifetime.

“We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years,” he cautioned, adding that NATO nations must “turbocharge” their defence spending to adapt to the new reality.

The comments come just weeks before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has questioned America’s commitment to defending NATO allies, at one point arguing that NATO members should spend 5% of their GDP on defence — a suggestion that has been rebuked.

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Rutte expressed urgency ahead of NATO’s next summit in The Hague, which is set for just over five months.

He also noted what officials have warned is an increasingly present diverse security landscape with, “cyber-attacks, assassination attempts, acts of sabotage, and more,” carried out by Russia.

“We used to call this hybrid, but these are destabilisation actions and campaigns. Russia is hard at work to weaken our democracies and chip away at our freedom, and it is not alone—it has China, North Korea, and Iran by its side.”

Rutte concluded by supporting Ukraine and emphasising the critical importance of helping Kyiv shift the war’s trajectory. We all want the war to end, but above all, we want peace to last,” he stated.

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