Daily Archives: September 20, 2005

Handwritten Torah finished in Poughkeepsie

About 200 people from different Jewish congregations and affiliations turned out Sunday in Poughkeepsie to witness the completion of a handwritten Torah scroll.

They saw a rabbi from Montreal, Canada write the last of the 600,000 characters in Hebrew letters for the Mid-Hudson Valley Community Torah.

A police escort then led the Torah on a parade through Poughkeepsie’s business district to the Chabad House where a celebration was held.

Hindy Borenstein of the Chabad House said the Torah, written on parchment, is the same unaltered text for thousands of years, regardless of Jewish affiliation.

Holocaust Survivor Simon Wiesenthal Dies

Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down Nazi war criminals following World War II, then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died Tuesday. He was 96.

Wiesenthal, who helped find one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann and the policeman who arrested Anne Frank, died in his sleep at his home in Vienna, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

“I think he’ll be remembered as the conscience of the Holocaust. In a way he became the permanent representative of the victims of the Holocaust, determined to bring the perpetrators of the greatest crime to justice,” Hier told The Associated Press.

A survivor of five Nazi death camps, Wiesenthal changed his life’s mission after the war, dedicating himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust.

Police Commander Retires; Racial Tensions Simmer at Precinct

Deputy Inspector William McClellan, Commanding Officer of the 71st Precinct, has resigned from the police force to accept a job in the private sector, it was announced at Thursday night’s regular monthly meeting of the 71st Precinct Community Council, an organization that serves as a liaison between the civilian community and the local precinct. The precinct’s Executive Officer, Captain Daniel Sosnowik – an Orthodox Jew who wears a yarmulke with his police uniform – has been in charge pending the scheduled arrival this week of a new Commanding Officer, another Deputy Inspector.

Most police precincts in New York City are commanded by a Captain. However, the 71st precinct, which includes all of Jewish Crown Heights south of Eastern Parkway, has long been considered a particularly responsible post, in part because of the potentially volatile mix of races and religions within its borders. Accordingly, the Commanding Officer in Crown Heights has, for many years, consistently been someone of the rank of Deputy Inspector (the next higher rank above Captain).