Jews of Costa Rica

The Tico Times extends its wishes for a wonderful Passover.

The Jewish Virtual Library estimates about 2,500 Jewish people live in Costa Rica. 

Happy Passover from The Tico Times!

An Israeli lawyer has helped about 500 people from countries as far apart as Costa Rica, Uruguay, Panama, England and Turkey.

The Israeli Zionist Center in San José plans a special ceremony to celebrate Hanukkah.

It’s so sad we didn’t have a crystal ball during the darkest moments, so we could see that despite what those damn Nazis were doing to us, there would so many survivors and we were going to reunite in the synagogue all together in a celebration.

“We want to transmit respect and tolerance from one ethnical or religious group to another,” Museum Director Vilma Faingezicht, herself the daughter of Holocaust survivors, told The Tico Times at the ceremony, during which survivors and their families were called one by one to receive a special gift.

Listening to the sound of my mother’s sobbing after the loss of her father, brother, family and friends in Lithuania, as well as taunts of “Polaca cochina” (Dirty Jew) from my Costa Rican classmates motivated me to spearhead a campaign to install a Holocaust monument in Lithuania to commemorate the genocide of 96.4 percent of the Nation’s Jews during the Holocaust.