The German feature film, Naked Among Wolves, plumbs the depths of Nazi cruelty and depravity. Now available on the Netflix streaming network, Phillip Kadelbach’s movie unfolds in the Buchenwald concentration camp mainly in the last months of World War II as some inmates take desperate measures to save a Polish Jewish boy from certain death. Naked Among […]
The Chateau de Versailles, one of the crown jewels of France’s tourist industry, dazzles the senses with its inspired architecture, ornate furnishings and formal gardens. A short distance by car from Paris, it transports a traveller to a bygone world. Until the 1789 French Revolution, Versailles was the opulent seat of kings. When mobs stormed […]
Synagogues were an integral part of cityscapes in Germany before the Nazi era, nearly as common as churches. With about 500,000 Jews, Germany had one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. But during the two-day Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, the worst since medieval times, Nazi mobs destroyed more than 1,500 synagogues, or practically […]
Mired in an existential crisis, the newspaper industry in Canada and the United States is desperately trying to adapt to changing times. Circulation has tumbled, ad revenue has fallen, newspapers have grown thinner and massive staff reductions have exacted a fearsome toll, as I know from first-hand experience. The ink-stained wretches — the old-school journalists […]
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is the man of the hour in international relations today. Under his stewardship, Russia has begun to reassert itself after a period of decline following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Last year, Russia occupied and annexed the Crimea and sent “volunteers” and military equipment to Russian separatists in eastern […]
Shortly after Islamic State terrorists finished their deadly rampage in Paris on November 13, a black Friday in the annals of the City of Light, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a message to France. “The terrorists who attack us have the same murderous intent as those in Paris,” he said, adding that Israel stands […]
The obnoxious French “comedian” Dieudonne M’bala M’bala has been given a resounding kick in the rear he so richly deserves. On November 10, three days before Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people in a ruthless rampage in Paris, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, delivered a verdict that may, hopefully, give antisemites and […]
Joseph Mallard William Turner (1775-1851), the illustrious painter, is the subject of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario which runs until January 31, 2016. J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free, an illuminating tribute to a British master, is comprised of more than 50 paintings on loan from Tate Britain. Nearly all of them were produced […]
Friday, November 13 was a black day for France as nine Arab terrorists ruthlessly killed 129 people in Paris in the deadliest attacks in the French capital since World War II. But is there a silver lining in this tragedy? The bloodshed may well spell the beginning of the end of Islamic State. Perhaps a […]
Michael Stroh, a retired Reform rabbi, was speaking about an Israeli trend that unsettles and upsets progressive Zionists like himself. “There’s a right-wing secular and religious militancy in Israel that’s very scary, and we have to confront it,” he said without mincing his words. Stroh unburdened himself of this concern on November 15 at a […]