Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in 1944 to rescue European Jews imperilled by the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany and like-minded allies like Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Although it was established long after millions of Jews already had been murdered in mass shootings and in […]
The 19th century German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote, “Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned too.” What an insightful prophecy! As the Holocaust — a Nazi genocidal project — unfolded throughout Europe during World War II, Germany engaged in the greatest book theft in history, ransacking private and public collections. “The […]
Israel has never been as safe, prosperous and internationally accepted as it is today. Yet its future is uncertain, Gregg Carlstrom argues in How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat From Within (Oxford University Press). According to Carlstrom, the Israel correspondent of The Economist and The Times of London, the Jewish state has never been so […]
Derek Black, the great white hope of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, disavowed his beliefs in 2013, transformed himself and disappeared from view. Eli Saslow, a Washington Post reporter who wondered what had happened, tracked him down and interviewed Black and his family and friends. Saslow’s compelling book, Rising Out of Hatred: The […]
Founded in 1866, just a year after the U.S. Civil War ended, the Ku Klux Klan was established as a secret fraternal organization whose aim was to promote white supremacy and reimpose servitude on African Americans by various means of terrorism, including lynchings. Concentrated in southern states that had formed the Confederacy, the Klan faded […]
Golda Meir, Israel’s fourth prime minister, was an indomitable, single-minded person of unwavering principles singularly devoted to the Zionist cause. Occasionally presenting herself as an amiable grandmotherly figure, she was a tough cookie, possessing a will of steel who brooked no dissent. Born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1898, she immigrated to the United States in […]
It’s the end of the year and the holiday season is upon us. Curl up in a comfortable chair or couch and enjoy these books for your reading pleasure. James Lacey’s Great Strategic Rivalries From The Classical World to the Cold War (Oxford University Press) delves into the geopolitical conflicts that have engaged major powers […]
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 […]