The war in Ukraine has been raging for over six months and the hostilities have taken a heavy toll on the Jewish population in the country. At least 70 Jews lost their lives in the war, according to an estimate by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine (FJCU). About a third of the casualties were killed in Mariupol and the rest in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Bucha as well as Jewish soldiers on the battlefield. Four hundred Jews were wounded since the war began and about 50,000 Jews were uprooted from their homes. At least 150 Jewish families lost their homes in Russian strikes. Additionally, out of Ukraine’s 180 Jewish communities, 27 of them are now living under Russian occupation.

A Moscow court on Tuesday handed a 15-day prison sentence to a Jewish politician who drew parallels between Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s regime and Nazi Germany. Leonid Gozman, 72, who also holds Israeli citizenship, was sentenced for his 2020 Facebook post, in which he mocked the Russian legislation that banned likening the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany, saying that “it’s wrong to put an equal mark between them — Hitler was an absolute evil and Stalin even worse.” On Tuesday, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court ruled that Gozman’s remark violated the law. Gozman, a vocal critic of the Kremlin’s campaign in Ukraine, left Russia when it started but returned in June in what he has described as a “moral” choice.

As Jews around the world fret over the pending nuclear deal with Iran, frum Jews in Tehran held a joyous celebration on Sunday. The kehilla gathered together for a hachnasas Sefer Torah and a Siyum Mishnayos. The celebration was an especially joyous one as it comes after two years of COVID lockdowns and limits on gatherings. Rav Yehudah Gerami, the Rav of Tehran, has revolutionized the kehilla by providing a bounty of Torah shiurim, raising the level of chinuch, and establishing an extensive kashrus system throughout the country. Prior to the COVID pandemic, there were 60 operating shuls in Iran. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

Eyal Haddad, h’yd, a 34-year-old Jewish resident of the French town of Seine-et-Marne (Longperrier) in northern France, was brutally murdered by his Muslim housemate, Mohamed Dridi, over a week ago. Dridi killed Haddad by crushing his skill with an axe. He then burned his face and began burying the body in a wooded area near his home. The murder was discovered after Haddad’s family, who live in Be’er Sheva, became concerned after not hearing from him for two days. They called Haddad’s housemate – the murderer – who subsequently turned himself in to the police, confessed the crime and told them where to find the body. According to Jewish sources in France, the media and the government have maintained silence on the grisly incident, which occurred on August 20.

A message sent in 1949 to Viktor Abakumov, then the Minister of State Security in the Soviet Union, reported on the establishment of an “anti-Soviet center” in New York by the Frierdiker Rebbe, HaRav Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, z’tl, Chareidim10 reported. The message, sent by KGB agents operating in New York, stated: “The American espionage system established an anti-Soviet center in New York under the cover of a Rabbinic training school, and it is headed by the Jewish tzaddik Schneersohn, who was deported from the USSR in 1928.” The Frierdiker Rebbe was sentenced to death by the Soviet regime in 1927 for the “counter-revolutionary activities” of spreading Torah and Yiddishkeit.

A tiny village in Spain that bore the name “Fort Kill the Jews” from 1627 until 2015 was sprayed with anti-Semitic graffiti on Wednesday ahead of a Jewish family moving in, JTA reported. According to an El País report, a Jewish family is planning on soon moving into the village, joining another Jewish family that moved there earlier this year – the first Jews to do so since medieval times. The word Auschwitz was sprayed on one of the village’s signs, the name “Fort Kill the Jews” was sprayed on a sign leading into the town, and several garage containers throughout the village were lit on fire. The town was originally called Castrillo Motajudíos, or Jew’s Hill Fort, in 1035 – when Jews fleeing a pogrom settled in the village.

A Saudi cleric prayed for G-d to “bring annihilation upon the plundering and occupying Jews” in a Friday night sermon at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, according to a video translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute. “Oh Allah, bring annihilation upon the plundering and occupying Jews for they are no match for you,” said Imam Saleh Bin Al-Humayd. “Oh Allah, bring down upon them Your punishment from which criminals cannot escape. Oh Allah, we make You our shield against them and take refuge with You against their evil.” Al-Humayd is currently one of the nine Imams of the Grand Mosque of Mecca. He is also a member of the Assembly of Saudi Arabia since 1993 and served as Speaker of Majlis al-Shura from February 2002 to February 2009. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

A Maryland auction house has sold a wristwatch that once belonged to Adolf Hitler for $1.1 million. Alexander Historical Auctions in Chesapeake City had estimated the value between $2 and $4 million, describing the watch as a “World War II relic of historic proportions.” News outlets report that Jewish leaders and others objected to the sale this week, saying it had little to no historical value. Thirty-four Jewish leaders wrote an open letter slamming the auctioning of items “belonging to a genocidal murderer and his supporters.” Rav Menachem Margolin, the chairman of the European Jewish Association said: “The sale of these items is an abhorrence.

Lufthansa Airlines is creating a senior management position dedicated to the prevention of antisemitism and discrimination several months after an entire group of frum Jews was discriminated against for the behavior of a few individuals, JTA reported. The incident occurred in May when a large group of chassidim was scheduled to fly from Germany to Hungary to visit the kever of Reb Shayale, zt”l, in Kerestir. One or two of the passengers became involved in a conflict with the crew over the airline’s mask mandate, and in response, the staff banned all Jews from catching their connecting flights.

A Jewish applicant to a teacher training scholarship in the UK was quite surprised when he was told that a Jewish woman who was dismissed from her university teaching position by the Nazis was “too white to be diverse,” The Jewish Chronicle (JC) reported. Izzy Posen, a 27-year-old graduate of Bristol University, recently applied to the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications for a £26,000 scholarship for teacher training. At his interview, he was requested to provide an example of a “diverse mathematician.” He responded by naming Emmy Noether, a prominent member of the math department at the University of Göttingenin in Germany in the 1930s who fled to the US after the Nazis dismissed all Jews from university positons.