Need to Know for April 17

Bernie Madoff, Milos Forman and Tax Day

Madoff victims to receive $500 million more in relief

The Madoff Victim Fund began distributing $504 million in funds to victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The funds, whose distribution began on April 12, will be sent to more than 21,000 Madoff victims around the world, according to a statement by the Justice Department. The distribution is the second in a series of payments that will eventually return over $4 billion to Madoff victims. “In one of the most notorious and unconscionable financial crimes in history, Bernie Madoff robbed tens of thousands of individuals, pension plans, charitable organizations and others, all the while funding a lavish personal lifestyle,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in the statement. “We cannot undo the damage that Bernie Madoff has done, but today’s distribution will provide significant relief to many of the victims of one of the worst frauds of all time,” Sessions added. Madoff, a Jewish New Yorker, used his position as the chairman of his investment securities company to swindle billions of dollars from tens of thousands of investors from the early 1970s until his arrest in 2008. The uncovering of the Ponzi scheme revealed the tens of billions of dollars in fake profit that victims believed they had earned through Madoff. Many prominent Jewish nonprofits also suffered big losses, with Yeshiva University taking a $140 million hit, Hadassah $90 million and Elie Wiesel’s foundation losing $15 million. In 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and is serving a 150-year sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina. He was also ordered to forfeit nearly $171 billion. –JTA

African asylum seekers who had been detained at Saharonim prison in southern Israel shown being released, April 15, 2018. (Hadas Parush/FLASH90)

Some 200 African migrants released from Israeli prison

More than 200 African migrants in jail in Israel were released by order of the Supreme Court after a deal to deport them to another African country remained unsigned. Some 207 African migrants and asylum seekers were released over several hours on April 15 from the Saharonim Prison in southern Israel, where they have been held after refusing to leave Israel voluntarily. The Supreme Court last week ordered them to be released on April 15 – the day that the government was to present its final plan for sending them to another country, in the absence of such a plan, which would require agreement from a third country to take them in. The court also ordered the government’s deportation plan suspended for an additional two weeks, Haaretz reported. On April 12 Uganda said it was considering a request from Israel to take in 500 African migrants that Israel would deport — the first time an African country confirmed that it was going along with the Israeli government’s controversial deportation plan. Uganda was one of two countries that had surfaced in reports as a possible destination for some 38,000 African asylum seekers in Israel to be deported under a plan announced in January by the Israeli government. Under the plan, migrants who had chosen to leave by March 31 would receive a payment of $3,500 as well as free airfare and other incentives.

Students find 1,400-year-old oil lamp inscribed with menorah

Students working to build the “Sanhedrin Trail” in Israel’s Galilee unearthed a 1,400-year-old oil lamp bearing the symbol of the Jerusalem Temple’s menorah, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. “The discovery of a lamp decorated with a menorah, a symbol of the Jewish people, is without doubt exciting, especially at a site with such a unique heritage in part of the Sanhedrin Trail,” IAA archaeologist Dr. Einat Ambar-Armon, an expert on ancient clay lamps, said in a statement. Thousands of students have worked for several months on what will be a smart trail, on which dozens of large “smart” stones will transmit relevant, useful information and activities directly to the hikers’ mobile telephones. The nearly 45-mile long trail running from Beit She’arim to Tiberias across the lower Galilee is divided into five sections and traces the movements of the sages of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish tribunal that met in the ancient Land of Israel. The trail will be inaugurated on April 22. In addition to the oil lamp, the student volunteers have uncovered pieces of glass believed to date to the glass industry mentioned in rabbinical texts, and ornamental items dating back 1,800 years. One student discovered a gold coin on the trail bearing an inscription of the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, builder of Jerusalem’s city walls. Only two other such coins have been discovered. –JTA

Hermann Goering speaking with a foreign journalist in his private garden in Augsburg , Germany, May 13, 1945. (Getty Images)

Auction house offers antique Jewish Bible stolen by Göering

An antique Bible, or Tanach, that was stolen from the library of a wealthy French Jewish doctor by Nazi leader Hermann Göering, will be sold at public auction. Göering, who stole many valuable items of Judaica, was interested in Jewish treasures. According to its bookplate, the book was stolen from the home library of a Jewish doctor by the name of J.N. Pellieux of Beaugency, France sometime after the Nazi conquest of France in 1945. According to a second bookplate, glued opposite the front page, the book was “taken from Göering’s private collection in Berghof in the Berchtesgaden region.” A stamp of the French Division of the Red Cross, whose soldiers captured the compound on May 4, 1945, appears on the bookplate. The Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem said in a statement that the Bible was printed by Menasseh Ben Israel in Amsterdam in the 17th century, “one of a few bibles printed by a Jew at the time.” After World War II, Göering was captured and convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials. He committed suicide by taking cyanide the night before he was to be hanged. The book was one of hundreds of items that he stole to enhance his own private collections. In 2005, the stolen book was bequeathed as a gift to a Mr. Rosenfeld of London by a chaplain of the French division that stormed Göering’s house at the end of the war, according to Kedem. “This item, which was recently presented to us, is one of supreme historic value. We are hopeful that it will end up in one of the prominent Holocaust museums around the world, l” said Maron Eran, a Kedem owner.–JTA

Filmmaker Milos Forman dies

Filmmaker Milos Forman, famous for the Academy Award-winning films “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus,” has died. Forman, who was born in Czechoslovakia and came to the United States at the end of the 1960s, died on April 14 at a hospital near his home in Connecticut at the age of 86. Forman’s parents, who were Protestant and members of the anti-Nazi underground, were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust; his mother died in Auschwitz and his father died while being interrogated by the Gestapo in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Forman later learned that his biological father was a Jewish man with whom his mother had an affair, who survived the Holocaust and that the filmmaker later found living in Peru. Forman was raised by foster parents in Czechoslovakia and attended film school in Prague. He moved to the United States after the invasion of communist troops in Czechoslovakia known as the Prague Spring, which squelched artistic freedom. He became a U.S. citizen in 1977. Other Forman films include “Hair,” “Ragtime,” and “Man on the Moon.”–JTA

Israel at 70

Don’t forget that Yom Ha’atzmaut, or Israel’s independence day, starts on the evening of April 18 and ends the following night. Read coverage and find out about Baltimore-area commemorations here.

It’s Tax Day!

Since the usual Tax Day (April 15) fell on a Sunday, and it couldn’t be moved to Monday because of Emancipation Day (observed in D.C.), filers had until April 17 this year.

So, file your returns and enjoy some area Tax Day deals. Here are a few of them courtesy Forbes:

Boston Market. On April 17, any guest who dines in-restaurant at Boston Market can get a $10.40 Tax Day Meal Special, which includes a Half Chicken Individual Meal with 2 sides, cornbread, a regular fountain beverage and a cookie.

Chuck E Cheese. This tax season, families can enjoy a guaranteed return at Chuck E. Cheese. The Tax Day (Tue, 4/17 – Thurs, 4/19) offer: Buy any large pizza, get one large cheese pizza free.

Firehouse Subs. Firehouse Subs Firehouse Subs is inviting guests to stop by to receive a free medium sub when they purchase a full price medium or large sub, chips and a drink (April 17-April 19). Click here for a link to the offer.

Great American Cookie Company. Thanks to Great American Cookie Company, Tax Day will once again be pretty sweet. The national gourmet cookie shop will continue its annual Tax Day tradition by offering a free Cookies & Cream cookie to customers who stop by participating stores on April 17. Limit one per customer, while supplies last. According to the company’s Executive Vice President, David Kaiser, “Tax Day can be a bit of a bummer so our annual cookie freebie is our way of ‘sharing the fun of cookies’ and helping everyone take a delicious bite out of Tax Day stress.”

Hardee’s. To ease the pain of Tax Day in the U.S., Hardee’s is offering customers a free Sausage Biscuit on April 17, 7-10 a.m., local time, courtesy of its new “Tastes Like America” campaign. Each Sausage Biscuit contains a sausage patty on a freshly baked Made from Scratch Biscuit. Hardee’s famous Made from Scratch Biscuits are handmade with real buttermilk and baked fresh each morning starting at 4 a.m. Be sure to say the password, “Made from scratch,” to redeem.

Potbelly Sandwich Shop. Tax Day is here and Potbelly Sandwich Shop is offering deals that will put some ease on your wallet. Customers who sign up for Potbelly Perks by downloading the Potbelly app (iPhone/Android) or online will receive a free sandwich (the free sandwich offer ends when 75,000 sandwiches have been given away). Those already enrolled in Potbelly Perks can enjoy a BOGO Sandwich that will automatically load into the app for redemption on Tax Day (April 17).

Quiznos. To celebrate Tax Day, Quiznos is offering a 10.40 percent deduction off any purchase including catering, on April 17 to new or existing Toasty Points loyalty app members at all participating U.S. locations. Also, Quiznos fans who download the Toasty Points loyalty app will receive a free 4-inch sub upon download.

See more: 2018 Tax Day Specials, Freebies & Deals

J-Word of the Day:
Gelt (Yiddish)
Meaning: Money
Usage: File your tax returns on time if you want to get all that gelt back.

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