Some 5,000 Lone Soldiers – Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers with no immediate family in Israel – gathered at Shefayim Water Park - Israel’s largest waterpark, just outside of Tel Aviv, for a day of rest and recuperation, earlier today. The “Fun Day” was hosted by Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF ) in partnership with the IDF and Yachad Le’maan Ha’chayal (The Association for the Wellbeing of Israel's Soldiers and The LIBI Fund). There are some 6,116 Lone Soldiers from 80 countries serving in the IDF today. About 810 came from the United States, 546 from Ukraine, 459...

Holocaust survivor Sophie Tajch Klisman reunited with U.S. Army veteran Doug Harvey yesterday at her suburban Detroit home and thanked him for helping liberate her from the Salzwedel concentration camp in Nazi Germany during World War II. Harvey, 95, learned about Klisman, 89, while reading a Detroit News story about Klisman’s plan to return to Poland and Israel as part of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) “From Holocaust to Independence” mission . He took particular interest as a veteran of the 84th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, which liberated the camp in which Klisman was held....

More than 40 Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) supporters from across the country, with Holocaust survivors and alongside 45 soldiers and officers representing all branches of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), concluded today the FIDF Mission to Poland and Israel. Joining the delegation was Holocaust survivor Sophie Tajch Klisman , 89, of Detroit. Klisman, along with her sister Felicia , survived the Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Salzwedel concentration camps. The youngest of four children, she was only 10 years old when Nazi Germany occupied her hometown of Lodz, forcing the family into the Lodz ghetto of 68,000 Jews. Both...