Thanks to the popularity of the 1993 movie Schindler’s List, as well as the success of the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, many people assume that the Kazimierz neighborhood, where most of the city’s Jews lived prior to the Holocaust, served as the Jewish ghetto during the war. Elsewhere in Poland, a Jewish district typically […]
The left-wing American journalist Lincoln Steffens, after a three-week visit to the new Soviet state in March 1919, famously proclaimed, “I have seen the future and it works.” However, during my visit to the model Polish Communist city of Nowa Huta, created after World War II, I can confidently declare that I have seen the […]
The last few months have seen major debates across Canada regarding the cultural appropriation of indigenous art and literature by non-natives. The same issue has also emerged in Poland, especially in the southern city of Krakow, which I’m currently visiting. As most readers know, Krakow is an incredibly beautiful and well-preserved medieval city, and the […]
I’m writing this from Czestochowa, Poland, where I was born 72 years ago. The city is best known for the Jasna Gora monastery. Visited by around four million pilgrims per year, it is a shrine to the Virgin Mary. The cloister houses the Black Madonna, one of the holiest icons of the Catholic Church. My […]
Warsaw, Poland’s capital city, is truly a phoenix. It was almost totally destroyed during World War II while under Nazi German occupation, which was followed by almost five decades of dreary Soviet-imposed Communist rule. Since the fall of Communism, Warsaw has risen from the ashes to become a vibrant, modern, efficient, clean, and beautiful city. […]
The tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, with just over 300,000 citizens, has been described as punching above its weight, and has sought to parlay the financial muscle it derives from its enormous oil and natural gas reserves into a diplomatic status otherwise undeserved by its size. To carry that metaphor a little further, is […]
U.S. President Donald Trump visited Poland on July 5-6, stressing the country’s importance as a loyal NATO ally. “Poland will always prevail,” he said, praising the courage and spirit of the Polish people in a major speech at Warsaw’s Krasinski Square. The backdrop to his address was the memorial to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 against […]
A major schism is looming between the two largest Jewish communities in the world, those in Israel and the United States. Together they constitute some 85 percent of the world’s Jews. For a number of political, religious and sociological reasons, they are drifting apart. It isn’t the first time this has happened in the long […]
Victor Orban hates Western liberal values and makes no secret of it. Of late, this has led to a major row with American financier George Soros and Michael Ignatieff, Canada’s former Liberal Party leader. The fate of the Central European University (CEU), located in Budapest, hangs in the balance and its future will depend on […]
The sudden decision on June 21 by the aging King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia to name his 31-year-old son Mohammed bin Salman as the new crown prince, as well as deputy prime minister, came as a surprise to many. Maybe it shouldn’t. He has replaced 57-year-old Mohammed bin Nayef, the king’s […]