The Catskills, a resort area in upper New York State favored by Jewish Americans from the 1920s to the 1980s, was an earthly paradise of mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and streams redolent of fresh air. With more than 500 hotels and and hundreds of bungalow cottages, the Catskills boasted of having the greatest concentration of […]
Adolf Hitler, though a school dropout, was an avid reader. He maintained libraries in Berlin, Munich and the Berghof, his rustic retreat in the German Alps. When he committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin in the spring of 1945, he owned no less than 16,000 books. Many of them vanished after his death, but […]
Savi Gabizon’s Longing is a remake of his Israeli movie of the same title. A Canada-Israel co-production filmed in the province of Ontario and starring the veteran Hollywood actor Richard Gere, it opens in theaters on June 7. Now in his mid-70s, Gere plays Daniel, a wealthy businessman who reconnects with his former girlfriend, Rachel […]
Six months after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir attended a ceremony in Jerusalem for fallen soldiers. Defence Minister Moshe Dayan delivered a eulogy, but Meir, looking worn down and broken, remained silent and refrained from giving a speech. Having accepted responsibility for the shortcomings of Israel’s performance in the 17-day […]
The Inquisition hounded, marginalized, oppressed and slaughtered Jews in Spain and Portugal and in Spanish and Portuguese overseas colonies in Latin America. Its demonic depth and reach was such that even a remote hamlet in the jungles of Brazil could be directly affected by it. Elza Cataldo’s intriguing Brazilian movie, The Queen’s Orphans, explores this […]
Michael Winterbottom’s absorbing movie, Shoshana, turns on the romantic relationship between the daughter of a Zionist luminary and a British policeman in Mandate Palestine. It is also about the armed struggle that pitted Britain against two right-wing Zionist organizations, the Irgun and its radical offshoot, the Stern Gang. This 119-minute movie will be screened on […]
The white slavery trade in the early 20th century robbed thousands of Polish Jewish women of their dignity, freedom and self-worth. Thousands were lured to Brazil and Argentina on the false pretence that they would have a far better life abroad, only to discover to their bitter anguish that they had been tricked and assigned […]
At the age of 16, citizens of the now-defunct Soviet Union received their official identification card. This was usually seen as a festive and significant event, a giant step forward into adulthood. One’s “nationality” was inscribed on the fifth line of this document. In a multicultural country with 100 nationalities, you could be Russian, Ukrainian, […]
Nazi-looted paintings turn up in the most surprising of places. In Pascal Bonitzer’s French-language movie, Auction, which will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival on June 2, a canvas by the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele is found in the home of a young factory worker who has no idea of its intrinsic […]
He discovered them in 1961 in The Cavern, a dingy nightclub in the British port of Liverpool. The four scruffy young men he heard singing that night impressed him, and under his tutelage, they achieved astonishing success. The Beatles, arguably the most successful band in musical history, rose to stardom thanks in no small part […]