As rescue efforts at the site of the Surfside disaster continue, more and more details of the horrific events are being revealed. Despite the immensity of the tragedy, with 33 Jews still missing (two were found) as well as over 100 non-Jews, some of the residents experienced nissim and survived the disaster. One frum family, the Nir family, managed to escape a minute before the building collapsed. The mother of the family, Sora Nir, told B’Chadrei Chareidim how she and her children were spared from certain death. Sora, a mother of 6, had returned that night from a Chabad gathering after midnight and began hearing ominous creaking sounds. At first, she thought someone was doing home construction work and wondered who would do such noisy construction work at such a late hour.

Poland on Friday defended planned changes to its property restitution regulations, after Israel said the reforms were “immoral’ and will prevent Jewish claims for compensation or property seized during the Holocaust and communist times. Poland’s lower house of parliament on Thursday passed a controversial draft bill limiting Jewish claims to property seized during the Holocaust. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who is the son of a Holocaust survivor, responded to the law by stating: “The Polish parliament passed a law preventing the return of Jewish property or compensation to Holocaust survivors and their descendants. I have no intention of remaining silent in the face of this law. This is a direct and painful violation of the rights of Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

Rabbi Yona Lunger, a community activist in Miami told Arutz Sheva that many more Jews would have been lost if the building had collapsed in the winter or last year. “Most of the building’s apartments were owned by Jews,” Lunger said. “Most had mezuzos on the doors. But the fact that this disaster happened now, as well as during the summer, means that a far greater disaster was averted. If it had been a year ago this time, the building would have been filled with Jews from New York fleeing the coronavirus regulations, and if it had been last winter, there would have been hundreds of Jews in the building.” Rabbi Lunger stressed that everyone should use the utmost caution in publicizing names of people who are thought to be missing.

Families around the world remained stuck between waning hopes and widening fears Saturday, two days after the stunning collapse of a 12-story condominium near Miami. At least five people were killed and more than 150 people remained unaccounted for as rescuers continued to dig through the rubble of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside. The building was home to an international mix of foreign retirees, South American immigrants and Orthodox Jews, all with anxious loved ones across the globe. Here are the stories of some of the missing: TZVI AND INGRID “ITTY” AINSWORTH Tzvi and Ingrd “Itty” Ainsworth were celebrating the birth of two new grandchildren.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote to the UK’s US ambassador Karen Pierce on Wednesday requesting that the UK suspend all health decisions regarding two-year-old Alta Fixsler. Alta’s father, Avraham Fixler, is a US citizen and Schumer asked that the UK allow Alta to travel to the US with her father. “I urge that all health decisions that are against the wishes of the family be suspended until the citizenship process is complete and Alta can travel to the US with her US citizen father, Mr. Abraham Fixsler,” Schumer wrote. Both of Alta’s parents are Israeli citizens and senior Israel officials have engaged in numerous attempts to intervene in the tragic case, so far to no avail.

When an old high school friend lost a long battle with COVID-19, Jay Kleiman went back for the funeral from Puerto Rico to the condominium where he grew up north of Miami Beach. But hours before the ceremony, the high-rise building in the affluent neighborhood of Surfside collapsed, leaving more than 100 people missing overnight. Now Kleiman may himself be dead, along with his mother and brother staying at the apartment. “It is so tragic that he flew for a friend who died from COVID complications, and ended up there,” said Mark Baranek, who coached both Kleiman and his friend George Matz for a flag football team from their synagogue. Kleiman, 52, is part of a growing list of missing people along with his brother Frankie Kleiman, and his mother Nancy Kress Levin.

Rabbi Rafi Goodwin was evacuated to the hospital after being attacked outside his shul in Chigwell, a town northeast of London, on Sunday, Erev Shavuos. Goodwin, the assistant Rabbi at the Chigwell & Hainault United Synagogue, was attacked by two young thugs who ambushed his car and shouted anti-Semitic epithets, the police said. He suffered cuts to his head and a suspected concussion after being assaulted with an “unknown item.” His phone was also stolen during the attack. The two assailants, 18 and 25, were arrested by police on Sunday afternoon. “Please pray for my dear friend and colleague Rabbi Rafi Goodwin who has been brutally attacked this morning near to his synagogue in Chigwell,” tweeted Rabbi Moshe Freedman, the shul’s security officer.

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Holocaust survivors experience lingering effects from the trauma they suffered in their younger years, increasing the chances of cancer and heart disease, according to a recently published Hebrew University study. The study examined the death records of 22,000 people who were followed from 1964 to 2016, comparing the death rates of Holocaust survivors from cancer and heart disease to non-survivors. Female Holocaust survivors had a 15% higher mortality rate and a 17% higher risk of death from cancer, the study showed. Interestingly, the study showed that the overall mortality rate of male Holocaust survivors wasn’t higher than non-survivors but they had a staggeringly 39% higher risk of dying from heart disease and a 14% higher risk of dying from cancer.

In a rare critique of the French justice system, French President Emanuel Macron said that “going crazy” due to taking drugs is not a valid excuse for a lack of criminal responsibility. “Deciding to take drugs and then ‘going crazy’ should, not in my view, take away your criminal responsibility,” Macron told the French daily Le Figaro in an interview published on Monday, AFP reported. “I would like Justice Minister [Eric Dupond-Moretti] to present a change in the law as soon as possible,” he added. France’s highest court ruled last week that the killer of Sarah Halimi cannot stand trial for her grisly murder because he was too high on marijuana to be criminally responsible for his actions.