The 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia was a moment of emancipation and liberation for oppressed Russian Jews, a deliverance from the injustices of the previous czarist regime. But within months of seizing power, the Bolshevik leadership was faced by the specter of pogroms in the former Pale of Settlement, a region of western Russia where […]
Lewis Milestone was a major figure in the Hollywood film industry during its golden era from the 1920s to the 1950s. One of its most imaginative and prolific directors, he churned out 38 films over a 37-year period from 1925 to 1962, amassing 28 Academy Award nominations and winning three Oscars. Several of his movies […]
The architect of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was President George W. Bush’s deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz. This is the considered opinion of Robert Draper, the author of To Start A War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq, published by Penguin Press. The decision to invade Iraq and depose its […]
To the author Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, the armed forces of Israel stand at the core of Israeli society. The creation of the Israel Defence Forces, or IDF, was the most important priority facing Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, after he declared statehood on May 14, 1948. Since its formation on May 26 of that fateful […]
Germany’s invasion of western Poland on September 1, 1939 was matched by the Soviet Union’s conquest of eastern Poland 16 days later, as per their non-aggression pact to partition the country, signed on the eve of World War II. Germany violated the agreement in June 1941, conquering the rest of Poland en route to invading […]
He was a bootlegger, racketeer, gambler, murderer and casino operator. Active through the 1920s, 1930s and much of the 1940s, Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel was a notorious Jewish gangster. A close associate of the hoodlums Meyer Lansky and Charles (Lucky) Luciano, he was a principal in the Syndicate, an amalgam of Italian, Irish and Jewish mobsters […]
As colonial secretary in British Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s government from 1919 to 1922, Winston Churchill exerted considerable influence in moulding the Middle East. He was instrumental in laying the foundations of Iraq and Transjordan, the future Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. And in line with the seminal 1917 Balfour Declaration, he supported the establishment […]
Michael Igor Peschkowsky, a young Jewish immigrant from Nazi Germany, transformed himself into Mike Nichols in the United States. He became a struggling actor, an acclaimed standup comedian and a celebrated movie, theater and television director. Mark Harris, in his thorough biography, Mike Nichols: A life (Penguin Press), traces the trajectory of his luminous career. Born […]
Of all the books I’ve read about the ongoing civil war in Syria, Syrian Requiem: The Civil War And Its Aftermath is the best of the lot. Written by the Israeli scholars Itamar Rabinovich and Carmit Valensi and published by Princeton University Press, it is concise yet comprehensive, scholarly yet accessible. The authors are distinguished […]
As Germany conquered one Western European country after another in 1940, Britain and Italy fought ferocious battles in Libya and Egypt, while the Italian Air Force bombed Tel Aviv and Haifa. Germany intervened in the desert war in 1941, dispatching General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps to assist its Italian ally, which had begin […]