• Tens of thousands took to Syria’s streets. In some cases, the army fired upon them. [WP]
• Here is a remarkable story told by a Syrian lesbian blogger about her father. Spare some prayers for the people of Syria this weekend. [A Gay Girl in Damascus]
• An appreciation of Stanley Siegelman, a poet and longtime Forward contributor who died earlier this month at 87. [Forward]
• Don’t forget, never forget: Yom HaShoah is this Sunday, May 1. [ADL]
• A pregnant Israeli woman and her Jewish husband—both of whom lived in China—were among the dead in a terrorist bombing in Morocco. [Haaretz]
• Holocaust survivors traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby congressional staffers to allow them to sue a French railroad. [JTA]
New Yorker film critic Richard Brody’s “DVD of the Week” is 1940’s The Great Dictator, a late Chaplin film (hear him talk!) that presciently confronted the Nazis and anti-Semitism head-on.
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.