The central Polish city of Lodz was a thriving hub of Poland’s Jewish community before the Holocaust. Its story is told, in part at least, through one of its former residents, Lilka Elbaum, who lived in postwar Lodz until 1968. What most reminds her of her birthplace is an unremarkable still life painting that adorned […]
It’s one of the most unusual stories to emerge from the Holocaust. So much so that its plot might have been written by a Hollywood scriptwriter. It proves that truth can be stranger than fiction. These thoughts came to mind after one one of Germany’s wealthiest families, the Reimanns, recently donated more than $5 million […]
Most Canadians have never heard of Gwethalyn Graham’s novel, Earth And High Heaven, which was published 75 years ago this year. Although it was a phenomenal commercial success and a literary sensation in its day, it has almost been forgotten today. Published in 1944, when Canada had been at war for five years and Nazi […]
Shortly after the end of World War II, Uj Elet, a Jewish weekly in Budapest, published an article by a Hungarian Jewish lawyer named Erno Munkacsi about the Holocaust in Hungary. Munkacsi had been the secretary of the Nazi-appointed Jewish Council during that dark period. His piece, an agonizing first-hand account of the process that […]
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the viciously anti-Israel supreme leader of Iran, has once again aligned himself with Holocaust denial, which is widely recognized as a form of antisemitism. Yesterday, he sang the praises of Roger Garaudy, the late French anti-Zionist zealot and Holocaust denier. On the 21st anniversary of Garaudy’s conviction of Holocaust denial, a crime […]
The life and times of a renowned philosopher. A Jewish woman recalls her Russian shtetl. A historically significant battle in Acre during the Third Crusade. The legacy of an Egyptian president. Martin Luther’s hateful message. These are among the themes of a new batch of books that have crossed my desk. Martin Buber, one of […]
Much to the relief of the vast majority of Jews in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn’s days as leader of the Labour Party are numbered following his party’s crushing defeat in Britain’s December 12 general election. With Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives having won a landslide victory, picking up 365 seats in Parliament compared to Labour’s 203, […]
Israel is in limbo. Bereft of an elected government after two inconclusive elections within the past five months, Israel is awash in uncertainty as it heads into a third election next year. As this unprecedented crisis unfolds, Benjamin Netanyahu, the first sitting Israeli prime minister to be indicted on criminal charges, continues to remain in office […]
Megan Koreman’s book has an inspirational tale to tell. The Escape Line: How the Ordinary Heroes of Dutch-Paris Resisted the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe (Oxford University Press) is about an intrepid network that saved lives during World War II. It’s the first work of its kind on the Dutch-Paris Escape Line, which smuggled Dutch […]
Abdallah Chatila is a most unusual, and noble, man. A Swiss Lebanese Christian businessman based in Geneva, and one of Switzerland’s wealthiest people, Chatila extended a hand of friendship to Jews recently when he donated an assortment of Nazi memorabilia, some of which belonged to Adolf Hitler, to a Jewish organization. “I wanted to make sure […]