An inflection point in American history, the U.S. Civil War erupted less than a century after the formation of the United States. Resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers, or six million by today’s calculation, it was the costliest war ever waged by the United States. Breaking out in 1861 and ending in 1865 with […]
They were burdened with the most gut-wrenching, repulsive job a Jewish inmate in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland could possibly be assigned. Their gruesome task was to escort Jewish deportees into the gas chambers, remove their lifeless bodies, salvage valuables, transport the corpses to the crematoria, and destroy all evidence of their murders. Known […]
The fate of Jewish cemeteries in Poland has been abysmally dismal. Many of the estimated 1,200 Jewish graveyards in Poland, a country once home to 3.3 million Jews, have been bulldozed, built over and vandalized. Still others, having been totally neglected due to the mass murder of the Jewish population during the Holocaust, have been […]
German scholar Matthias Kuntzel provides readers with a ground-breaking theory about Arab/Muslim hostility to Israel and Jews in his penetratingly incisive book, Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism And The Middle East: The 1948 Arab War Against Israel And The Aftershocks Of World War II (Routledge). A political scientist and historian, he argues that antisemitism in the Arab […]
A little more than a year ago, Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old war veteran of Ukrainian extraction, received two standing ovations in the House of Commons after its Speaker, Anthony Rota, singled him out for recognition. The visiting president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, were among those who honored […]
Amid a landscape of despair and death, Bulgaria was seen as a shining example of humanity during the Holocaust. Alone among European countries that were occupied by or aligned with Germany, Bulgaria saved its Jewish citizens from the clutch of the Nazis. Its wily monarch, King Boris III, was supposedly their chief protector and savior. […]
Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the Israeli community closest to the Gaza Strip, was attacked by Hamas terrorists early on the morning of October 7, 2023. It was not the first time it had been targeted, but this was the most devastating attack in its 70 years of existence. Amir Tibon, his wife Miri and their two […]
When I learned that Grace Feuerverger had written her memoir, I was intrigued. What could she possibly say? I wondered. Full disclosure: I have known Grace, my oldest friend’s sister, sporadically since 1958, when she was eight years old. Yet in virtually every respect, Grace — a quiet, soft-spoken and reclusive girl — was practically […]
European Jews trapped in Nazi ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust were dependent on life-saving shipments of food, medicine, clothing and money transfers for sheer survival. These parcels and transfers, donated by relatives, friends and Jewish institutions, were morale boosters that prolonged the lives of the recipients. In some cases, they arrived too late […]
The sons and daughters of Nazi dignitaries were children of privilege in Adolf Hitler’s Germany. But after its defeat in World War II, they were often regarded as lepers tarred by their association with a genocidal regime. Tania Crasnianski, a criminal lawyer of German, French and Russian descent whose grandfather served in the German Air […]