• Fewer than 200,000 Holocaust survivors — half in Israel — are still alive worldwide, according to data released by the Times of Israel. The number is down from about 220,000 only one year ago. New York is home to the largest population of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, with an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 living in the metropolitan area. 

 

• Ilana Kantorowicz Shalem, 81, is one of the youngest living survivors of the Holocaust. She was born at Bergen-Belsen, 30 days before the concentration camp was liberated.

 

• Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the parents of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, would tape the number of days over their hearts until all hostages were home, a practice now ended.

 

• A new exhibit mounted by the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, titled “And that’s True Too: The Life and Work of Lore Segal,” opened on Jan. 22. Segal, who was raised in England by a foster mother, having arrived on the Kindertransport, died in 2024 at the age of 96. Her work includes an autobiographical novel, Other People’s Houses, decades of stories in The New Yorker, and a children’s book, Tell Me a Mitzi.