Matthias Weniger put on a pair of white cloth gloves and carefully lifted a tarnished silver candleholder, looking for a yellowed sticker on the bottom of it. The candlestick is one of 111 silver objects at the Bavarian National Museum that the Nazis stole from Jewish families during the Third Reich in 1939. That’s when they ordered all German Jews to bring their personal silver objects to pawn shops across the Reich — one of many laws created to humiliate, punish and exclude Jews. What started with anti-Jewish discrimination and persecution in 1933, after the Nazis were voted to power in Germany, led to the murder of 6 million European Jews and others in the Holocaust before World War II ended with Germany’s surrender in 1945.

Several Jewish groups, politicians and an alliance of civil society groups gathered for a memorial ceremony and a protest rally against a concert by Roger Waters in Frankfurt on Sunday evening. The protest was held in the wake of Waters’ recent concert in Berlin, during which he wore a SS officer’s uniform and compared Nazi victim Anne Frank to Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The police in Berlin launched a criminal investigation into the incident following complaints of incitement. The concert took place in the city’s Festhalle, where in November 1938 more than 3,000 Jews were rounded up by the Nazis, beaten and abused, and later deported to concentration camps.

Police in Berlin said Friday that they have opened an investigation of Roger Waters on suspicion of incitement over a costume the Pink Floyd co-founder wore when he performed in the German capital last week. Images on social media showed Waters firing an imitation machine gun while dressed in a long black coat with a red armband. Police confirmed that an investigation was opened over suspicions that the context of the costume could constitute a glorification, justification or approval of Nazi rule and therefore a disturbance of the public peace. Once the police investigation is concluded, the case will be handed to Berlin prosecutors, who would decide whether to pursue any charges.

A Jewish middle school teacher in Wisconsin was arrested for making terrorist threats toward students who drew swastikas on a paper in his classroom, police said. The Grafton Police Department, north of Milwaukee, has not identified the seventh-grade teacher they say told the students that he had 17 guns in his basement and that he wasn’t afraid to use them. The John Long Middle School teacher, who police say is Jewish, was angered by the drawings and also threatened to send his daughter to students’ homes with a baseball bat, WTMJ-TV reported. “At first he kind of just acted normal, he just put it on his desk like, ‘I’m going to tell the office about this,’” seventh-grader Ethan Poulos told the television station.

HaRav Mendy Chitrik, the Rav of the Ashkenazi Jewish kehilla in Turkey and the chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, visited Djerba and Tunis last week following the tragic murder of two Jews in the shooting attack in Djerba on Lag B’Omer. “What an emotional day it was!” Rav Chitrik wrote, saying that as a representative of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, “I have come to Tunis and Djerba to show support and solidarity to this unique community, following the heinous attack on the La Ghriba Synagogue – and came out strengthened and full of hope.” “The somber day started in Tunis [where the taharos for the niftarim took place before they were flown out of the country].

Yossi Barda, an Israeli singer who performed in the El Ghriba shul in Djerba a few minutes before the shooting attack which killed cousins Ben and Aviel Hadad, H’yd, spoke to Radio 103FM on Wednesday morning. Barda first spoke about the moments before the attack. “I can tell you that the security – the Tunisian police and soldiers treated all the Israelis with great respect – above and beyond,” Barda said. “Really, with such friendliness – I have no words.” “I sang and 20 minutes later as I was leaving, I realized that something happened. Shots rang out. Witnesses said that the Tunisian security guards and soldiers protected the Jews with their bodies.

A 17-year-old Jewish teenager with autism who wears a yarmulke returned from his Las Vegas public school with a swastika carved on his back last month His mother discovered the swastika on her non-verbal son’s back. The mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, told JewishPress.com that the school claimed that “nothing happened at school.” Her son’s shadow claimed that the teen wasn’t out of her sight and nothing happened. The family filed a complaint with the Clark County School District Police on March 13. “As far as I know the 1:1 (ed: shadow) is still working at CCSD (Clark County School District). Her job was to be with my son. If she did not do it I believe she knows who did,” the mother told JewishPress.com. “The shadow has kept [my son] from class in the past,” she continued.

The 22nd annual Anti-Semitism Worldwide Report by the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry in Tel Aviv University, published in collaboration with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), was published on Monday ahead of Yom HaShoah, which begins on Monday evening, April 17. The report states that Chareidi Jews are the main target of physical anti-Semitic attacks in the West, such as hitting, spitting and throwing objects. The report is based on an analysis of dozens of reported physical attacks in New York, where the largest number of such attacks occurred in the US in 2022, in London, where the largest number of such attacks occurred in Europe, and other cities throughout the world.

By Chaim Gold “I did not know what learning just a half hour of Mishnah Berurah could do to my life! At the beginning of the machzor a friend of mine told me that a chaburah was forming in our shul and asked if I could join. After a bit of cajoling, I agreed. What can I say? Now, from the time I wake up in the morning until the time I go to sleep, every action is done through the prism of the halachos that I have learned in Daf HaYomi B’Halacha! I started with the halachos of waking up in the morning and then I learned so much about tzitzis and tefillin, kriyas shema – halachos that I had never known.” Those were the words of R’ Yosef P of Lakewood, a Daf HaYomi B’Halacha learner who has been learning as part of the Daf HaYomi B’Halacha ever since the start of Chelek Aleph.

Mala, a Burmese worker in the Chabad house in Bangkok, Thailand, recently sang Vehi Sheamda together with dozens of Chabad bochurim. The amusing video was published on the Hebrew-language Chabad COL website. The bochurim are in Thailand to assist in the preparation of the huge public sedarim offered at Chabad houses throughout the country on Pesach. Chabad shliach in Bangkok Rav Nechemia Wilhelm spoke to Artuz Sheva last month about the new Chabad Center in Bangkok. “After so many years in Thailand, finally we have our own place, a place for the Jewish people where everybody can come here and make himself at home,” he said. “Every year in Thailand we used to have about 5,000 guests. Now after COVID, we have much more.