World News Roundup 01/12: Canadian-Israeli fighting for Kurds is seized by ISIS

World Roundup 041214

Country: United States
Two Polish women have been reunited after nearly 70 years for a special Thanksgiving in New York. Mira Wexler, who is Jewish, recalled how, aged six, Nazi soldiers surrounded the farmhouse where she was hiding, and how Helena Weglowski ignored the risk to hide her and her family during the Holocaust.

Country: Canada
A barely-literate former Orthodox man from Quebec is suing the government for £1.25 million for doing nothing to prevent him having a poor education. Yonanan Lowen, 37, was educated in a privately-run Chasidic school. He learnt Aramaic but not English or French. ‘I feel like a six-year old,’ he said.

Country: Syria
A Jewish woman fighting alongside Kurdish forces in battle against Islamic State has reportedly been captured by the terrorist group. Gillian Rosenberg, 31, a Canadian-Israeli who served as an instructor in an Israeli army search-and-rescue unit, is believed to have been seized near the Syrian city of Kobani. 

Country: Australia
On his first official visit to Australia, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has inaugurated the first official full-time rabbi in the Australian capital Canberra – home to 1,000 Jews. Rabbi Alon Meltzer, 26, from New Zealand, becomes the first rabbi in the community’s 63-year history. Local leaders said it was ‘a watershed’.

Country: Russia
Former ‘prisoner of Zion’ Yosef Mendelevitch has made his first visit to St. Petersburg since he was arrested there in 1970 for attempting to hijack a plane to Israel. Before speaking at Limmud, Mendelevitch, 67, said: ‘I’m certainly not nostalgic. Israel is the only place to which I have an emotional attachment.’ 

Country: Venezuela
Zionists financed Hitler, according to a Venezuelan lawmaker speaking at an event sponsored by anti-Israel group Hezbollah. Congressman Adel El Zabayar added: ‘If you study the history of the killing of the Jews in Europe, you find Hitler killed those Jews who belonged to progressive organisations.’