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Israel to Issue Stamp in Honor of Aznavour’s Parents for Saving Jews

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Aznavour Family (Source: ArmRadio)

Aznavour Family (Source: ArmRadio)

NEW YORK (ArmRadio)—In a recent meeting held in New York with the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF), representatives Mordecai Paldiel and Zvika Kichel, Charles Aznavour confirmed the riveting story of courage in which his late parents, Knar and Mischa, as well as his sister Aida and himself, had played a key role during the dark days of the Nazi occupation in France.

With a great sense of humbleness, Aznavour told how his parents gave shelter at their own home to Jews, Armenians and others who were persecuted by the Nazis. By so doing, the Aznavours had given the gift of life to other, while risking their own.

The IRWF has resolved to set-up a special research team to further investigate the feats of the Aznavour family and at the same time, all the Board Members of the NGO have unanimously decided to pay tribute to the Aznavours.

In a personal letter signed by the Chairman of the IRWF, Eduardo Eurnekian and by its Founder, Baruch Tenembaum, Aznavour was greeted on his 92th birthday and informed about two initiatives. The first one is to commission a special commemorative stamp to be issued by the Israel Postal Authority with the semblance of Mischa and Knar Aznavour, Charles’s late parents. The second one is to award the Raoul Wallenberg Medal to both siblings, Aida and Charles Aznavour, who as young people helped their parents in their life-saving mission.

Eurnekian said “The Aznavour family is an example of humble and decent people who did not stand idly by when faced with evil. His mother, Knar, nee Baghdasarian, was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide and she understood the plight of the Jewish people and all those who were brutally persecuted by Nazism. It is our duty to recognize the heroism of the Aznavour family and instill their spirit of civic courage in the hearts and minds of the young generations.”

Dear Mr. Aznavour,

Let us start this letter by congratulating you on 92th birthday! We wish you good health and many more years of productiveness in your artistic, diplomatic and humanitarian activities!

We would like to thank you once again for having agreed to meet our Dr. Mordecai Paldiel and Mr. Zvika Kichel in New York. We watched the video of this meeting and were deeply moved by your humble approach and the courageous deeds undertaken by your dear late parents, your sister Aida and yourself, during the dark days of Holocaust. We also thank your son, Nicolas, for having arranged this gathering in such an efficient way.

As a result of this preliminary audience, we have instructed our research team to try and secure more information about the feats of your family during WWII and of course, we shall keep you duly posted.

At the same time, in a special meeting held by our Board, it has been unanimously resolved to pay tribute to your late parents, Mischa and Knar, as well as both you and Aida, as a token of recognition to your spirit of solidarity. The fact that you have given shelter and protection at your own home, to people from all faiths who were persecuted by the Nazis, is something that has to be remembered and recognized. We have therefore resolved to ask the Israeli Postal Authorities to make a special and limited stamp issue dedicated to your late parents. Should this be agreeable, our team in Israel will contact Nicolas with some administrative information (we would need some good photos of your parents as well as a written authorization from you to approach the Israel Postal Authorities).

Furthermore, it was decided to bestow upon you and your sister Aida, a special award, the Raoul Wallenberg Medal, in recognition of the role you played during the Shoah and for your staunch and consistent support of humanitarian causes.

As soon as we receive the acceptance from you and your sister, we shall coordinate with you the details and logistics of the award ceremony.

Thanking you in advance, we remain at your disposal should you require any further information on our end.”

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Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr’s Grandparents to be Honored for Saving Armenians

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Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr’s Grandparents will be Honored for Saving Armenians (Source: ArmRadio)

Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr’s Grandparents will be Honored for Saving Armenians (Source: ArmRadio)

NEW YORK (ArmRadio)—The Board of the IRWF has unanimously resolved to award the Raoul Wallenberg Medal to the late Dr. Stanley E. Kerr and his wife, Elsa, for their devoted work in favor of Armenian women and children in the 1920’s who had managed to survive the Armenian Genocide unfolded in 1915.

The relief effort was organized and provided by the Near East Relief (NER) and among the American volunteers was the 21 year old Stanley Kerr, at that time, a junior officer with the US Medical Corps. After having served in Aleppo he was transferred to Marash, in Anatolia, where he headed the American assistance operations at a great risk, for the Turks regarded the Americans as collaborators of the Armenians. In 1922, he moved to Beirut where he and his wife Elsa established the Near East Relief Orphanage for Armenian children at Nahr Ibrahim, Lebanon. In this position, the couple was instrumental in aiding a significant number of Armenian mothers and children.

In 1925, Stanley Kerr earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, a field where he distinguished himself, and returned to Beirut to chair the Department of Biochemistry of the American University of Beirut. In 1965, he retired with the rank of Distinguished Professor and was awarded the Order of Merit from the Republic of Lebanon.

Besides their actual help to Armenian orphans, Stanley wrote a remarkable memoir documenting his experiences in Marash – The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922), providing a first-hand account of the plight suffered by the Armenian people.

One of the couple’s sons, Dr. Malcolm Kerr, an acclaimed scholar specialized in Middle Eastern Studies, became the President of the American University of Beirut and was tragically assassinated in Beirut by extremists in 1984.

Malcolm’s son, Steve Kerr, was a prominent Basketball player and currently head coach of the Golden State Warriors. In a recent interview, Steve told about how proud he feels about his grandparents.

The Raoul Wallenberg Medal will be posthumously bestowed to Stanley and Elsa Kerr, in the hands of their grandchildren and it will be coordinated with them, together with other commemorative initiatives such as a special stamp dedicated to the heroic couple.

Mr. Eduardo Eurnekian, Chairman of the IRWF, said that “Dr. Stanley Kerr and his wife Elsa are an example of pure humanitarianism and as such, they should be recognized and remembered. They should serve as role models for the young generations.”

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Most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, 1 in 5 have none – survey

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empty-poket

62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings

Two out of three Americans have $1,000 or less in their savings account, if they have one at all, a new survey shows. While young people tend to be broke, older Americans and those in higher income brackets are more likely to have substantial savings.

The sobering numbers come from the Google Consumer Survey commissioned by GoBankingRates, conducted in September from a representative sample of 5,006 respondents.

“It’s worrisome that such a large percentage of Americans have so little set aside in a savings account,” says Cameron Huddleston, a personal finance columnist for GoBankingRates. “They likely don’t have cash reserves to cover an emergency and will have to rely on credit, friends and family, or even their retirement accounts to cover unexpected expenses.”


Generation X – those aged between 35 and 54 – was most likely to have no savings, at 31 percent, while 29 percent of Millennials (18-34) and 28 percent of Baby Boomers (55-64) said they had no savings account, or that it had run dry.

On the other hand, 16 percent of Generation X, 17 percent of Boomers and 20 percent of seniors 65 and up reported having more than $10,000 squirreled away. There is also a correlation between earnings and savings, as wealthier Americans keep more money in savings accounts. The survey found people earning $75,000 and above more likely to have over $1,000 in their savings, while those in the $100,000-plus bracket reported savings of at least $10,000 more often than other brackets.

The number of Americans with meager or nonexistent savings – 62 percent – appears to have stayed the same since the February survey by Bankrate.com. According to that poll, a quarter of Americans were “teetering on the edge of financial disaster,” with their credit card debt equal or greater than their emergency savings.

A SunTrust Bank survey in March found that nearly one-third of the households earning $75,000 a year or more live paycheck-to-paycheck, as the cost of living rose while wages remained stagnant.

The low savings rate can be partly explained by the fact that 57 percent of those who had savings prior to 2008 had to use some or all of it to weather the Great Recession, according to a 2014 Federal Reserve survey. Another reason, however, is that putting money in a savings account right now is a net loss.

With an interest rate of 1 percent or so on savings, money market accounts and certificates of deposit (CD), yields on savings have been “basically non-existent” since 2010, financial blogger Ben Carlson wrote in July. While the nominal return on 90-day Treasury bills has been around 0.3 percent, Carlson pointed out that the savers actually lost 1.6 percent after adjusting for inflation.

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