Some of the Holocaust artifacts stored at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

A moth-eaten teddy bear, a mangled silver spoon, a well-worn headscarf – all inanimate objects, yet each tells a story, in a powerful and sensitive way, of one of the darkest periods of human suffering, shedding light on both the trials and triumphs of individuals during the Holocaust. As Israel prepares for Yom Hashoah, its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day this week, Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash was given a unique look inside the vast archives and storage vaults at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, catching a haunting glimpse into the horrifying experiences of the millions who perished and those who survived.

Careful watch: Michael Tal, curator and director of the artifacts department in the museum’s archives division, keeps careful watch over each item stored in the archive and catalogs new arrivals – a handful of objects are received each week – sent from across the globe by aging survivors or their descendants. He is diligent about researching the backstory of everything that reaches his hands, cross-checking personal stories with the extensive list of names – Holocaust survivors and victims – kept at Yad Vashem and searching out the photographs of each item’s owner and their relatives.

Priceless objects: “Even though I’ve been here for a very long time, I’m still surprised that we keep receiving things,” Tal told JI in an interview. “Gathering artifacts is only one element of what needs to be done, we also need to tell the stories behind them too. That’s what makes an ordinary object so impactful, so priceless. When we receive an object, we try to find out as much information as we can on the person who it belonged to,” he continued, underscoring that in many ways, these belongings are as much testimony to what happened 80 years ago as the writings, artwork and photographs that are also kept at Yad Vashem.

Telling the story: “Every object tells a story,” Tal said, estimating that there are more than 42,000 artifacts stored at Yad Vashem, from the striped uniforms once worn by those imprisoned in concentration camps to unused stacks of yellow stars the Nazis forced Jews to sew onto their clothing, as well as long-lost precious Shabbat candlesticks, Chanukiahs (eight-branch candelabras) and other religious paraphernalia.

Memories from the past: Opening a closet filled with neatly wrapped camp uniforms, Tal explained that for many survivors, such artifacts, even though they are a chilling reminder of the horrors of the past, are also a link to a lost life and lost loved ones, and a way of reminding the world of the terrible injustices to which they were subjected. “As the war continued, people managed to hold on to less and less of their possessions,” he said. “Either they were forced to sell the things they managed to take from home for food, or their belongings were stolen from them. After the war, the artifacts they managed to hold onto represented their past lives and memories.”

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken said on Tuesday that lifting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) would require Iran to take unspecified “steps,” but also argued that, “as a practical matter, the designation does not really gain [the U.S.] much,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Quotable: “The only way I could see [the FTO] being lifted is if Iran takes steps necessary to justify the lifting of that designation. So it knows what it would have to do in order to see that happen,” Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during testimony over the State Department’s 2023 budget request. “It would require Iran to take certain actions and to sustain them.”

Caveats: Pointing to the previous opposition to the designation from top officials in the George W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, Blinken argued that the designation may do more harm than good. “In the judgment of the [George W. Bush and Obama] administrations and senior leadership in President [Donald] Trump’s administration, the gain was minimal and the pain was potentially great,” Blinken continued. “And as a practical matter, the designation does not really gain you much because there are myriad other sanctions on the IRGC” which “will remain on the books irrespective” of a nuclear deal.

Deal or no deal: Throughout the hearing, Blinken acknowledged “imperfections” in the 2015 nuclear deal but said that reentering it would be the best way of staving off Iran’s nuclear ambitions. A deal, he said, “would buy us a decade on the critical sunsets in terms of the stockpile of fissile material, in terms of the enrichment level.” Blinken did not address questions about previous comments by State Department officials that a failure to reach a deal by the end of February would significantly decrease its effectiveness.

Hit list: Questioned about whether Iran is attempting to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other Trump administration officials, as reports have suggested, Blinken confirmed that “there is an ongoing threat against American officials both past and present,” but declined to specify who Iran is targeting. “Within the context of any engagements that we have, directly or indirectly, with Iranians, one of the strong messages we send to them is they need to stop targeting our people, period,” he continued, declining to say how Iran has responded to those demands.

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Leslie Feinzaig

When Leslie Feinzaig had a hard time raising capital for her gaming startup in 2016, she thought the problem was her: her idea, her work ethic, herself. But the problem, she realized, was industry-wide — venture capital funds weren’t investing in companies founded by women. So after founding a community of 25,000 female founders, Feinzaig became a VC herself and started investing in women-led startups. “We’re investing specifically in tech companies,” Feinzaig told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch, “with a goal of reshaping what the NASDAQ looks like by the time my daughters” — they’re 6 and 3 — “graduate from college.”

Fragile footing: Early on in her career, the barrier the Costa Rica-born entrepreneur had to face most regularly was not her gender. It was her lack of a green card. After graduating from Harvard Business School, Feinzaig was drawn to startups and early stage companies, but the precarity of her immigration status and the expense of landing a work visa led her to take a job at Microsoft, where she weathered the Great Recession. “If I lost my job, I would have had 60 days to find a new one or leave the country,” said Feinzaig.   

Dream come true: That she ended up in the U.S. at all represented something of a multigenerational full-circle experience for Feinzaig. Her grandparents had hoped to settle in the U.S. when they fled Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. But strict immigration quotas were the law of the land in the 1930s. Her grandfather and the 10 other Jewish men who had traveled from his village were not allowed to leave their ship when it docked in Ellis Island. Instead, the boat sailed south, and an immigration officer in Costa Rica said anyone could enter the country if they paid a small fee. “They pooled all their money together. They basically just, like, wadded up the cash,” Feinzaig said.

Rough out there: Feinzaig received several rejections when she pitched her gaming startup in 2016. Investment stats show a dismal environment for female founders: In 2021, companies founded solely by women garnered just 2% of funds invested in VC-backed startups in the U.S., according to PitchBook. The amount of money raised by female-founded startups improved significantly over 2020 — those startups raised $6.4 billion in 2021, an increase of 83% from the previous year — but the percentage has hovered around 2% since PitchBook began releasing the figures in 2019.

Community evolution: Her frustration in the pitching process led Feinzaig to launch a Facebook group in 2017 called the Female Founders Alliance, which initially connected 24 CEOs. The community has since ballooned to 25,000 members. A couple years into the project, Feinzaig began to question why she was sending promising startups to other VCs instead of making investments herself. She had no experience raising a fund — the vast majority of general partners at VC funds are men, although the percentage of female GPs in the U.S. recently increased to 15.4% — and it took her two years to raise $10 million, which was raised mainly (but not entirely) from women. She launched Graham & Walker, a VC firm, in October.

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Malverne, N.Y., Mayor Keith Corbett announced the prediction for an early spring by Malverne Mel on Groundhog Day, February, 2, 2021.

Malverne, N.Y., Mayor Keith Corbett is hoping his history of local government service and his long-held position as a Democratic Party lawyer will give him the edge he needs to beat out a field of other local officials running to replace retiring Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY), Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

In the race: Corbett, who has been mayor of the Nassau County village since 2019, previously spent nearly a decade on the village board and also served as deputy mayor. His connections to the state’s institutional Democratic circles run deep — he is also the law chair for the Nassau Democratic Party and a lawyer for the state party. Corbett told JI in a recent interview that he’s running for Congress “to get back to basics, reach across the aisle and start working and get this country back to what it used to deliver.”

Welcome to the party: Corbett claimed he has the broadest coalition — owing to his deep local connections — which would make him the most competitive in the general election. He described himself as “right in the center” ideologically and “willing to work with anyone… as long as we can get significant resources back to the 4th Congressional District,” which includes the heavily Jewish Five Towns area. Crossover appeal could be critical to victory in November, given that Republicans snatched victory in a recent special election in a usually Democratic area of the district. But Corbett also slammed the left flank of his party. “I don’t believe the people on the far left are members of this party,” he said. “If you want to be a socialist, be a socialist. Create your own socialist party and God bless. Don’t infiltrate another party.”

Foreign policy: He described himself as “pro-Israel in every way” and “a strong supporter of making sure that Israel has what it needs, making sure that Israel is an independent state and ensuring that it stays that way.”

Maverick: Breaking with broad bipartisan consensus, Corbett expressed skepticism about the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states, saying he was concerned that they are a “short-term” solution — although he acknowledged they have worked so far. “What I hear… is that it’s kind of short-term for the peace that it has had, but there were certain issues that were not addressed in the Accords that are going to bubble up again,” Corbett said, declining to elaborate further.

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