On the eve of his execution in 1962, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann brazenly requested a pardon from the state of Israel. In line with the defence strategy his lawyer had mounted at his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann claimed he had been a minor functionary merely following orders. “There is a need to draw a line […]
David Kirshner, my loud, lively, gregarious, boisterous and unforgettable father, departed from this vale of tears in the early hours of January 20 as I slept soundly. The shattering news was conveyed to me, in the dead of winter, by my younger sister, Shirley, whose frantic message awoke me with a start. I was thus […]
David Stoliar, the sole survivor of a shipwreck which graphically symbolized the world’s indifference to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, has died. Stoliar, The New York Times reported on January 23, passed away in Bend, Oregon, on May 1, 2014. He was 91. I interviewed Stoliar in connection with the release of The Struma, a […]
A recent antisemitic incident in the French city of Marseille has spiralled into a cause celebre that amplifies the crisis afflicting Jews and Islam in France today. On January 11, a machete-wielding 15-year-old Muslim Turkish boy slashed Benjamin Amsellem, a Jewish teacher, as he was taking a walk. The assailant told police he had acted […]
The publication of a new, annotated edition of Adolf Hitler’s incendiary manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), has set off a passionate debate in Germany that forces it to face its ugly past yet again. The nearly 2,000-page book, replete with some 3,500 annotations, is supposed to immunize readers from misusing or exploiting its horrific contents […]
With the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in Germany approaching, German eyes will be fixed on its leading light, the theologian Martin Luther, who was born in 1483 and died in 1546. Luther was a Christian rebel who, in 1517, questioned papal authority and thereby touched off a revolution in Christianity. As revered as […]
Germany is girding for an influx of nearly one million Muslim refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan by year’s end. The greatest proportion of the migrants will be Syrians, whose country has been torn apart and virtually destroyed by four years of civil war. Four million Syrians have already emigrated, and more will flee as […]
Synagogues were an integral part of cityscapes in Germany before the Nazi era, nearly as common as churches. With about 500,000 Jews, Germany had one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. But during the two-day Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, the worst since medieval times, Nazi mobs destroyed more than 1,500 synagogues, or practically […]
The obnoxious French “comedian” Dieudonne M’bala M’bala has been given a resounding kick in the rear he so richly deserves. On November 10, three days before Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people in a ruthless rampage in Paris, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, delivered a verdict that may, hopefully, give antisemites and […]
Michael Stroh, a retired Reform rabbi, was speaking about an Israeli trend that unsettles and upsets progressive Zionists like himself. “There’s a right-wing secular and religious militancy in Israel that’s very scary, and we have to confront it,” he said without mincing his words. Stroh unburdened himself of this concern on November 15 at a […]