Railroad Tracks Donated to Philadelphia Holocaust Memorial
Stockton University on Sept. 7 donated three segments of railroad track from Bialystok, Poland that were part of a network of rail lines that moved Holocaust victims to concentration camps to the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation.
The track will be used in Philadelphia’s new Holocaust Memorial Plaza slated to open to the public in late October.
The Galloway, N.J.-based university obtained the tracks in 2008 and used them in the entrance to its Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center. The donated segments were left over from the center’s entrance project.
“The train tracks will be embedded in the paving of the plaza to remind all visitors of the systematic persecution and mass deportation orchestrated by the Nazi regime,” Foundation Director Eszter Kutas said.
Film Curator Jennifer Steinberg Dies at 57
Local film curator and programmer Jennifer Steinberg died Sept. 3 from cervical cancer. She was 57.
Steinberg became director of the Temple University Cinematheque on Walnut Street in 1989, and became general manager of the Roxy Screening Room.
Later, Steinberg served as manager of both the Jewish Film Festival and the Israeli Film Festival at the Gershman Y on Broad Street. While at the Y, she created and launched “Movies on the Avenue,” which evolved into Cinema Salon, a weekly film discussion group that Steinberg led until shortly before her death.
In 2001, Steinberg joined the Philadelphia Film Festival as its shorts film curator and later became its documentary film curator. She also programmed films for the inaugural year of the Trenton Film Festival and taught adult-education courses at the Main Line School Night Center.
PLO Offices in Washington, D.C., Ordered Closed
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington, D.C., was closed by the order of the Trump administration on Sept. 10, JTA reported.
“We have permitted the PLO office to conduct operations that support the objective of achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between Israelis and the Palestinians since the expiration of a previous waiver in November 2017,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
“However, the PLO has not taken steps to advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel. To the contrary, PLO leadership has condemned a U.S. peace plan they have not yet seen and refused to engage with the U.S. government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise.”
Stephen Miller Criticized by Childhood Rabbi
President Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller has a new critic — his childhood rabbi, JTA reported.
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels of Beth Shir Shalom in Santa Monica, Calif., used his Rosh Hashanah service to criticize Miller — architect of Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policies — for not learning from his Jewish education and describing him as a purveyor of “negativity, violence, malice and brutality.”
“Honestly, Mr. Miller, you’ve set back the Jewish contribution to making the world spiritually whole through your arbitrary division of these desperate people,” Comess-Daniels said.
