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...

Ethiopian-born former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Gezachew Fanta , whose post-army education was sponsored by Ohio supporters of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), ran the 2019 Tel Aviv Marathon today in honor of FIDF, finishing in ninth place . Fanta served in a special operations reconnaissance unit in the IDF Golani Brigade and studied at The Academic College at Wingate in Netanya, Israel, thanks to an FIDF IMPACT! Scholarship – which grants four-year academic scholarships to combat and combat-support soldiers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. His scholarship was generously sponsored by Renay Angel and Dan Mendlovic of Beachwood,...