Jews in Nazi-occupied countries were forced to make excruciating decisions as they grappled with the extraordinary perils facing them during the Holocaust. Their survival strategies varied, ranging from coping, compliance and cooperation to evasion, resistance and collaboration, as Evgeny Finkel writes in his superb book, Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival During the Holocaust (Princeton University […]
During 16 days in the summer of 1936, all eyes were on Berlin as Nazi Germany hosted the eleventh Olympic Games. Oliver Hilmes’ vivid book, Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August (The Bodley Head), published originally in German, recreates this event through a cast of carefully chosen characters and against the backdrop of ominous developments. […]
Roaming the streets of New York City at night with a Speed Graphic camera equipped with a flash, the self-taught, now-legendary photographer Arthur Fellig exposed the nooks and crannies of a great metropolis for millions of New Yorkers during the 1930s and 1940s. Freelancing for agencies like the Associated Press and the International News Service and […]
Yale University Press has published two books in its Jewish Lives series for film aficionados — Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films by Molly Haskell, and Warner Brothers: The Making of an American Movie Studio by David Thomson. Spielberg, of course, needs no introduction, being one of the most successful directors of his generation. In a […]
An avalanche of books has roared off the presses since the outbreak of the Six Day War on June 5, 1967, yet Guy Laron’s new paperback edition of The Six Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (Yale University Press), a bracing account of its causes, offers fresh insights into a seminal conflict that tripled Israel’s […]
Israel, a small country with precious few natural resources, has developed a remarkable culture of innovation that is the envy of nations. Thanks to its technological breakthroughs, Israel is helping to feed the hungry, making the desert bloom and curing the sick, among other stellar achievements. As a result, Israel has produced more start-up ventures than […]
Jonathan Weisman’s cri de coeur, Semitism: Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump (St. Martin’s Press), is unsettling. Published several months before 11 Jews were slaughtered by a crazed neo-Nazi in the Tree of Life Congregation massacre in Pittsburgh on October 27, it’s a polemic on the alt-right and antisemitism set against the […]
When Polish-Jewish relations are discussed at any length, one of the topics that usually evokes heated debate revolves around the relationship between the Home Army (AK) and Jews. The largest resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe, the AK had an estimated membership of 350,000 and represented a cross-section of Polish society. In general accounts of modern […]
A vast and incredibly beautiful preserve of mountains, forests, meadows, lakes and rivers northwest of New York City, the Catskills were the first great vacationland in the United States. Discovered in its pristine form by the British explorer Henry Hudson in 1609 and by tourists in its holiday mode about two centuries later, it was a […]
Canadian scholar Anna Shternshis focuses on the lives of Jews in the Soviet Union before, during and after World War II in her thoroughly-researched and wide-ranging book, When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life Under Stalin (Oxford University Press). A Soviet immigrant herself and the director of the Anne Tanenbaum Center for […]