Historians never tire of reflecting on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. Since his assassination 150 years ago, just days after the Civil War had ended, he has been probed and analyzed in an avalanche of some 16,000 books. With all this ink having been spilled in the cause of scrutinizing an […]
Sobibor, in eastern Poland, was a destination from which one did not usually return. This Nazi extermination camp consumed its Jewish victims with rapidity and ferocity. But in 1943, at the height of the Holocaust, a few hundred of its prisoners made a daring, unprecedented break for freedom. This little-known incident is the subject of […]
It’s finally here. Spring, I mean. After another brutal and seemingly endless Canadian winter, the second one in a row to hammer Toronto, the harbingers of fine weather are finally beckoning. The sun is stronger and warmer, its blissful rays intensely yellow. Dormant lawns have turned bright green. Blue bells, as well as a profusion […]
The Palestinians can’t get their act together, no matter how often and how hard they try. A little more than a year after signing a national reconciliation agreement — which Israel vigorously opposed and denounced as inimical to peace — Fatah and Hamas remain at loggerheads over a litany of divisive issues. As a result, […]
At the ripe old age of 93, fashion icon Iris Apfel is still busy, active, engaged and alert. According to her housekeeper, she answers about 50 phone calls a day, far more than most people in their prime. As Apfel admits, she’d be depressed if the telephone stopped ringing. There’s little danger of that. Despite […]
Israeli film director Eran Riklis can thank Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for his unintended publicity on behalf of his latest movie, Dancing Arabs, which opens in Toronto on May 15. During the recent election campaign, Netanyahu resorted to anti-Arab scare-mongering tactics in a desperate bid to whip up votes for his right-wing Likud party, […]
The American Ballet Theatre, one of the world’s most renowned dance companies, is synonymous with excellence in the arts. On the occasion of its 75th anniversary, the PBS network is presenting Ric Burns’ newest documentary, American Ballet Theatre: A History, on Friday, May 15 at 9 p.m. (check local listings) as part of its American […]
Christian Petzold’s German movie, Phoenix, unfolds in postwar Germany as a German Jewish survivor of the Holocaust scours Berlin for her missing husband. By chance or design, the film opens in Canada on May 8, just a day after the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Nelly (Nina Hoss), the survivor, […]
Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies 70 years ago on May 7, ending World War II in Europe. Germany’s abject defeat could be ascribed, in part, to the ferocious Allied bombing campaign of its homeland and industrial heartland. Britain and the United States bombed German cities mercilessly, working on the assumption that the air raids […]
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who died last week at the age of 93, was a Polish hero in the mould of the late Jan Karski. A witness to the Nazi Holocaust in Poland, he risked his life to help Polish Jews when such assistance carried an automatic death penalty. And during the postwar period, when antisemitism was […]