In a long overdue development that speaks to Germany’s ongoing efforts to acknowledge its Nazi past and achieve a historic reconciliation with Jews, a major university in Germany plans to establish a permanent academic chair in Holocaust studies in 2017. The scholar who’ll fill the position will also be in charge of Frankfurt’s Fritz Bauer […]
Ten years after four homegrown Muslim radicals attacked London’s transportation system, killing 52 civilians and wounding more than 700, Prime Minister David Cameron has laid out a “counter-extremist strategy” to confront the scourge of Islamic radicalism in Britain. In an important speech in Birmingham on July 20, Cameron correctly described the ongoing battle against Islamic […]
In a historic 12-week trial which ended in Germany on July 15, Oskar Groning — a former SS soldier who was posted to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp from 1942 to 1944 — was convicted of complicity in mass murder and sentenced to four years in prison. Groning, now 94, was not a major figure in […]
Israel, in many respects, is a shining beacon of openness and tolerance. Judging by its multiplicity of political parties, its transparent governing institutions and its splendid arts scene, Israel is far and away the most vibrant democratic society in the Middle East. Yet Israel’s body politic is sullied by an unsightly stain. Since the advent […]
Ukraine has loomed large in Jewish history, a point that comes across clearly enough in A Journey Through The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914, a cross-Canada travelling exhibition which runs in Toronto until July 19. First shown in Vaughan, a suburb north of Toronto, and then in Winnipeg, a major center of the Ukrainian […]
The southern German state of Bavaria is trying to resolve a vexing issue. Should Muslim high school students in all grades be required to visit former concentration camps, or the new Nazi documentation center in Munich, as part of their studies on the Holocaust? It’s a very German problem for a number of compelling reasons. […]
On his obnoxious racist website, American mass murderer Dylann Storm Roof holds the battle flag of the Confederacy as he spits on and burns the American flag. It’s hardly a mystery why he desecrated the Stars and Stripes as he paid respect to the Confederate flag. Roof, who cold bloodedly killed nine African-American parishioners at the historically […]
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who died last week at the age of 93, was a Polish hero in the mould of the late Jan Karski. A witness to the Nazi Holocaust in Poland, he risked his life to help Polish Jews when such assistance carried an automatic death penalty. And during the postwar period, when antisemitism was […]
Holland was liberated by the Canadian army 70 years ago next month after five years of Nazi occupation. The official date of the liberation was May 5, 1945, two days before Germany’s official surrender to Allied forces. The people of Holland paid dearly for German aggression. By one estimate, 150,000 Dutch civilians perished during this […]
When the death of Gunter Grass — Germany’s most illustrious postwar novelist — was announced on April 13, some critics were only too eager to seize upon two glaring missteps which dimmed his otherwise stellar reputation. Describing him as a hypocrite and a fraud, they castigated Grass for having concealed his membership in the Waffen-SS […]