Poland’s Jewish community, the biggest in Europe before World War II, was virtually obliterated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. As if to rub salt into the wound, the Communist government, in 1967, launched an antisemitic campaign under the thinly-veiled guise of anti-Zionism, prompting many of the remaining Jews to emigrate. Since the advent of […]
Category: Jewish Affairs
During the Nazi era in Germany, Jews were robbed of their valuable art collections or forced to sell them at ridiculously deflated prices. Paintings by such masters as Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall were shamelessly expropriated by Nazi officials like Hermann Goering, a self-styled art connoisseur, and by fellow travellers. In one of the most notorious […]
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Antisemitism in Quebec
The historical relationship between Jews and French Canadians is fundamentally important in understanding the history of Jews in Canada, but as a topic it remains controversial due to the occurrence of antisemitism in the province of Quebec, Canadian historian Ira Robinson told a symposium in Toronto on Nov. 17. Robinson, a professor of Judaic Studies […]
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Yiddish Scholarship in Canada
Pierre Anctil may well be an anomaly: a French Canadian scholar who has learned Yiddish and writes extensively on the history of the Jewish community in Montreal. But on second thought, as he suggested in a lecture on Yiddish scholarship in Canada today, he may not be an oddity at all. Speaking at a symposium […]
After meeting Manfred Rommel, the son of legendary World War II German field marshal Erwin Rommel, I realized that yesterday’s enemies can be today’s friends. Or to put it another way, Germans are not intrinsically hostile to Jews. Far from it. Manfred Rommel, who died a few days ago at the age of 84, was […]
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The Sins of Joseph Patrick Kennedy
Joseph Patrick Kennedy (1888-1969) was the patriarch of one of America’s greatest political dynasties. Kennedy’s son, John, the first Roman Catholic president, was assassinated 50 years ago on Nov. 22. Robert, John’s attorney general and a U.S. senator, was gunned down in 1968. Edward, who died four years ago, enjoyed a stellar career in the […]
The Roman Catholic church in Nazi Germany supported the regime’s antisemitic policies, says an American scholar specializing in modern German history. Speaking in Toronto during Holocaust Education Week, Beth Griech-Polelle, a Bowling Green State University historian, said the German church accommodated itself to Adolf Hitler’s new order to protect its interests and parishioners. Fearing it […]
People in Nazi-occupied Holland generally greeted the maltreatment of Jews with indignation, but local authorities cooperated with the Germans in the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands, says a Dutch historian. Wichert ten Have, chair of the Academic Working Group at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in Amsterdam, made these comments in a lecture in Toronto on Nov. […]
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Escape from Sobibor
Philip (Fiszel) Bialowitz was one of the lucky few. He survived the hell of Sobibor — a Nazi extermination camp in Poland where about 250,000 Jews were murdered in less than two years– and better still, he managed to escape from this purgatory, in the largest prisoner revolt of the Holocaust. Now an American citizen, […]
As part of Holocaust Education Week in Toronto, Beth Tzedec Congregation’s Reuben and Helene Dennis Museum is hosting an exhibit by Canadian photographer David Kaufman called The Posthumous Landscape: Jewish Sites of Memory in Poland Today. Officially opened on Oct. 29, it runs until Feb. 2, 2014. Kaufman’s visually remarkable photographs, all in luminous color, […]