Michalya Schonwald Moss, at The Blogs

Apr 14, 2026, 2:03 AM

Pardubice station, June 1942. A young Jewish couple, seconds from arrest, place their baby on a bench and walk away—hoping a stranger will save what they cannot. That baby was my relative. I found her 81 years later. A train...

Apr 25, 2025, 12:06 AM

Justice: The Story I Will Tell My Children on Holocaust Remembrance Day

My children, listen carefully. Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the weight of the past feels both distant and devastatingly near. The years between the Holocaust and the horrors of October 7, 2023, collapse into a single, pivotal moment of...

Jan 15, 2024, 2:08 AM

The Betrayal of the Boerejode

Although not a South African by birth, my Bloemfontein-born husband and our two children proudly claim this heritage. Ironically, they find my accent amusing. Learning of my American-Israeli roots, people often inquire about my decision to settle in South...

Jul 1, 2021, 2:12 AM

Whoever saves one life saves the entire world

CADENA’s Search and Rescue Team: Arielle Shturman Waiss, Guidian Shturman Waiss, David Israel Benaim Getzel, Ely Saad Braun, Yosef Laniado Mareyna, Ariela Wulfovich Kahan and Moises Soffer Luchtan. (Source: CADENA International)

When the news broke about the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside, Florida, I was on the phone with a colleague from CADENA discussing the importance of cultivating a global network of Jewish humanitarians who are trained in emergency rescue,...

Jan 28, 2021, 4:07 PM

Tu BiShvat and Family Trees

A few months into Covid, I reached out to my friend *Che, my go-to person for WWII-related queries, and asked if he had been experiencing any Holocaust-themed dreams or disturbances since the world turned pandemic. I was clearly looking for...

Mar 28, 2019, 11:14 PM

‘There are no natural disasters here’ #CycloneIdai

"There are no natural disasters here." That was before Cyclone Idai wreaked devastation on Mozambique and parts of Zimbabwe and Malawi last week in what is being called the worst weather disaster in the Southern hemisphere. When CADENA, the US-based humanitarian...

Oct 28, 2018, 10:49 AM

Dear Ivanka

You are the daughter of the most powerful man in America. A man who has given us his word to "Make America Great Again." Yet since being elected there has been an insurmountable cost to making America great. On a...

Jan 30, 2018, 7:18 PM

Mission to Kakuma

Boscow, a 20-something Sudanese refugee employed by IsraAID’s field office in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya near the Somalia border, tells me that he arrived at the camp a few years ago. His village was attacked and his...

Nov 20, 2017, 6:50 PM

Imagining a Jewish African Spring

As the world watches the fall of another dictator, South Africans are secretly (and some not so secretly) waiting for bits of the Mugabe coup to rub off like a monsoon after a prolonged pest-infested drought. A few days ago...

Mar 1, 2017, 1:38 AM

Trumping on Jewish Graves: Purim fest 2017

Purim Eve 2017: Queen Esther was never in the palace. Shushan is on fire. Jared Kushner is definitely not Mordechai. Melania Trump might be Vashti. King Ahashverosh has completely lost the plot. And Haman has sparked a nationwide FBI...

About Me

Michalya Schonwald Moss is the Chief Advancement Officer of October 7 Justice Without Borders (O7J), an independent, Israel-based, public-interest law firm leading a multi-jurisdictional global justice front on behalf of the victims of the October 7 atrocities. Her genealogical research, which uncovered 120 murdered relatives and led to the rediscovery of Alice Grusová, was featured by MyHeritage and CNN.

Contact Me