The release of Kjell Grede’s feature film, Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg, was unfortunately timed, having come out in the same year as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Which meant, in hindsight, that it was drowned out by the sheer power and popularity of Spielberg’s epic movie, the recipient of seven Academy Awards, including best picture. Both films […]
Sunday, July 23, 1944 was the blackest of days for the Jews of Rhodes, a mountainous island in the Aegean Sea eighteen kilometres off the coast of Turkey. On that catastrophic day, during the final ten months of World War II, the German occupiers set off air raid sirens to keep its residents indoors so […]
From the moment German troops violated Austria’s territorial integrity on March 12, 1938, the prelude to Germany’s annexation of Austria, Austrian Jews were doomed. Three days later, as German Chancellor Adolf Hitler addressed 250,00o delirious Austrians from the balcony of the Hofburg palace in Vienna, a wave of antisemitic violence washed over the city and […]
Reluctantly complying with a Supreme Court ruling last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no alternative but to bite the bullet on January 22 and dismiss Aryeh Deri as a minister in his cabinet. His dismissal took effect on January 24. If he had not fired Deri, who was recently convicted of tax fraud and […]
Jake Sullivan, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, spent several days in Israel late last week sizing up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, which, after less than a month in office, has already managed to alienate legions of Israelis and Diaspora Jews. Sullivan was the first Biden administration senior official to confer with […]
Hadas Ben Aroya, a young Israeli filmmaker, delves into the lives of Israel’s Generation Z in her unconventional, somewhat sexually explicit movie, All Eyes Off Me, which is now available on VOD and digital platforms. The Israelis in her film are secular, hedonistic and aficionados of bars and discos. They are the polar opposites of […]
It is an editorial partnership that has lasted for half a century, during which the inestimable editor Robert Gottlieb has edited the books written by the prize-winning historian Robert Caro. By any measure, they are stellar figures in their respective fields. Now 91, Gottlieb was the editor-in-chief of two major American publishing houses. During his storied […]
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is at it again in a feeble attempt to justify Russia’s unwarranted and unacceptable invasion of Ukraine. Several days ago, he compared Western support of Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia to Nazi Germany’s plan to exterminate Jews in Europe. Lavrov’s appalling comparison reminded observers of an outrageous remark […]
Since the collapse of communism in Poland more than three decades ago, Poles have been engaged in a passionate debate over what kind of a country it is and should be. Traditionalists believe that Polish identity is inextricably bound up with the Catholic Church and conservative values emphasizing Polish martyrdom. Liberals promote secularism, civic nationalism […]
At a moment when African Americans are enjoying the fruits of equality to a far greater degree than at any time in their often tragic history, a new survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League paradoxically shows that antisemitic stereotypes in the United States have reached their highest level in decades. The data is “stunning and sobering,” […]