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Our Hebrews: The Tuscan Mountain Village that Rescued its Jewish Population
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 8 PM TUSCANY • 9 PM JERUSALEM
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Little Jerusalem: that is how the locals refer to the town of Pitigliano in southern Tuscany, because of its striking resemblance to Israel’s ancient city. Through the medieval stone walls, the fascinating story of centuries of harmonious co-existence between Jews and Christians is told for the first time, including the heroic acts performed by the locals during the Holocaust. (more…)
Fleeing Mussolini — Italian-Jewish Refugees in the United States
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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This program is about the exile of Italian Jews to America. Fleeing Mussolini’s racial laws, roughly two thousand Italian Jews landed in America in the 1930s and 40s. They didn’t fit in with either the Italian-American community or the Jewish-American community, yet many Italian Jewish refugees became leaders in their professions and productive contributors to American life.
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“Mrs. Judy” – The Canadian Woman Who Secretly Rescued the Jews of Syria
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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On this Chanukah program we honor Judy Feld Carr, a woman of exceptional courage and valor who chose to make a difference. Over a 28-year period, she secretly brought to freedom 3228 Jews prohibited from emigrating from Syria. Working with smugglers and bribing government officials, she removed most of that community from veritable bondage. In addition, she clandestinely smuggled out of that country priceless ancient articles of Jewish worship. Until Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Israeli Intelligence Organizations publicly acclaimed her activities, the world, including the Jewish world, had no inkling of this Canadian Jewish woman’s covert life. She is the subject of historian Dr. Harold Troper’s The Rescuer, now in its second edition. The rescue was the best-kept secret in the Jewish world. (more…)
Shared Legacies: The African-American and Jewish Civil Rights Alliance
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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This program is about African-Americans and Jewish-Americans who have been involved in each other’s historic struggles. Meet Susannah Heschel, daughter of the Jewish civil rights hero Abraham Joshua Heschel. And meet Alexis Scott, daughter of the African-American liberator and Holocaust educator William Alexander Scott III. The discussion will be moderated by the filmmaker Shari Rogers, whose documentary Shared Legacies will be shown.
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The Lost Book of Moses
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible, tells the story of the oldest Bible in the world, how its outing as a fraud led to a scandalous death, and why archaeologists now believe it was real — if only they could find it. At once historical drama and modern-day investigation, the book simultaneously explores the 19th-century disappearance of a controversial Bible and the author’s hunt for the manuscript across eight countries and four continents.
Otto von Habsburg, Saved by Sousa Mendes
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 8 PM VIENNA
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Otto von Habsburg, the last Crown Prince of Austria, was on Hitler’s enemy list. He and his family were rescued with visas from Aristides de Sousa Mendes. During the war he was a leading figure in the war against Hitler, and after the war he was one of the founders of the European Parliament.
Hans and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Anti-Nazi Resistance Movement
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Sophie Scholl was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, co-founder of the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-Nazi leaflets throughout Germany with her brother, Hans Scholl. They dropped hundreds of these leaflets from a high gallery at the University of Munich down on crowds of students milling about below — arguably the only full-fledged public protest against Nazism to have occurred. Meet Holocaust historian and anthropologist Dr. Jud Newborn, the world’s leading authority on Hans and Sophie Scholl, who will inspire you and motivate you to speak truth to power. (more…)
Irene Gut Opdyke, a Woman of Valor
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 8 PM MUNICH
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Irene Gut Opdyke was a Polish nurse who risked her life in World War II by hiding Jews in a cellar beneath a German major’s villa — a story of courage that decades later would make her an internationally known speaker. She was declared a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1982. She recounted her story in two books: In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer and Into the Flames: The Life Story of a Righteous Gentile and later was the subject of the Broadway play Irena’s Vow. (more…)
The Border of Truth
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Like so many children of survivors and refugees, author Victoria Redel grew up in the shadows of her parents’ different escapes from war. For a writer, such ambiguity is rich soil. Redel’s father left Europe with a visa authorized by the Holocaust rescuer Aristides de Sousa Mendes. From Lisbon he embarked on the Portuguese ship the Quanza and was among the 86 passengers retained on the ship in New York and then in Mexico to be sent back to Lisbon and then presumably to be repatriated into Nazi-occupied Belgium. The ship, after refueling with coal in Virginia, was saved by the remarkable efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt in outsmarting Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The Border of Truth is a fictionalized account of this dramatic story. (more…)
Rose Valland, the Art Spy
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 8 PM PARIS
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When the Nazis entered Paris, they stole artwork and other valuables from Jewish collectors, art dealers and ordinary families. The Jeu de Paume Museum became the main depot for the looted artwork. A young French curator named Rose Valland witnessed this massive spoliation, and she surreptitiously kept meticulous notes. Thanks to her action, thousands of these paintings were recovered after the war. She became one of the most decorated women in France but died a forgotten hero. (more…)