Books
The Scholems: Quintessential German Jews
The roller coaster process during which Jews in Germany were emancipated in the 19th century, only to be deprived of all their rights during the Nazi era and then murdered in the Holocaust, is the subject of Jay Howard Geller’s superb book, The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoise From Emancipation To Destruction, published […]
Roosevelt, Nazi Germany And The Holocaust
American historian Rafael Medoff has written an impressive and important book about the United States, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The Jews Should Keep Quiet: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust (The Jewish Publication Society) is an unsparing condemnation of a president who was slow to help Jewish refugees and […]
The Jerusalem Of The Balkans
Known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans, Salonica — an Aegean port situated at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East — was once home to the world’s largest Sephardic Jewish community. One of the jewels of the sprawling Ottoman Empire, the city was annexed by Greece in 1913 and renamed Thessaloniki, an upheaval that […]
Memoirs Of An Israeli Ambassador
Zalman Shoval was Israel’s two-time ambassador to the United States during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Shoval, posted to Washington from 1990 to 1993 and again from 1998 to 2000, served four Israeli prime ministers. His term of office coincided with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the outbreak of the first Gulf […]
An Irrational And Absurd Conspiracy Theory
It’s essentially an irrational, delusional and absurd phenomenon, but it’s been around for ages and has gotten stronger of late. This corrosive and destructive conspiracy theory, otherwise known as antisemitism, is the world’s oldest form of hatred. Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University, casts a practiced […]
The Irish And The Jews
The Irish and the Jews, given their vastly different religious and historical backgrounds, are not exactly two peas in a pod. But according to Aidan Beatty and Dan O’Brien, the editors of Irish Questions and Jewish Questions: Crossovers in Culture (Syracuse University Press), they are “two of the classic outliers of modern Europe.” As they state […]
Marketing The Third Reich
Germans during the Nazi era were “the targets of the most vigorous, lucid and sophisticated public relations campaign ever conjured up in all of history,” writes Nicholas O’Shaughnessy in his substantive work, Marketing the Third Reich: Persuasion, Packaging and Propaganda (Routledge), which follows on the heels of his first volume, Selling Hitler: Propaganda and the Nazi Brand. […]
Earth And High Heaven
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 […]
How It Happened
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 […]
A Cornucopia Of Books …
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 […]
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