Seventy years ago this month, amid the terror of the Holocaust, the forces of decency prevailed in Nazi-occupied Denmark. At a time when millions of Jews throughout Europe were being systematically murdered in German extermination camps in Poland, the Jews of Denmark were being saved by their fellow citizens, in one of the […]
Matthew Halton, a celebrated Canadian foreign correspondent who worked for the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, visited Nazi Germany about a dozen times between 1933 and 1939. These were pivotal years in Europe. In 1933, Adolf Hitler assumed power, and in 1939, World War II erupted. Based in London, Halton covered the most important […]
The toxic blood libel accusation, rooted in medieval Europe, emerged with a vengeance several times during the interwar period in the Soviet Union. This may come as a surprise to those who assume that such primitive manifestations of antisemitism would have been inconceivable in a supposedly progressive country like the Soviet Union. But a […]
To its credit, the Greek government has arrrested the leader of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, and a number of his senior associates on charges of having formed a criminal organization. Greece took this drastic decision, the first of its kind in decades, after police raided Golden Dawn’s offices in Athens and Greek […]
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has launched a public relations blitz. Two weeks ago, he sent Jews a Rosh Hashanah greeting from his Twitter account. In the past few days, while in the United States, he has tried to convince the international community that he is a moderate and a breath of fresh air compared to his clownish yet […]
In unveiling the Charter of Values recently, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois optimistically predicted that it would unite Quebeckers. Much to her distress, it has become a political football, a source of deep division in the province. Judging by a Leger Marketing poll, the charter is supported by only a plurality of Quebeckers, 43% to 42%. […]
A German official who prosecutes Nazi war crimes has recommended that prosecutors in Germany lay charges against 30 men and women who worked as guards in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where 1.5 million people, mainly Jews, were ruthlessly killed. “This is really an important milestone in the effort to bring Nazis to justice,” observed Efraim […]
Marcel Reich-Ranicki was an anomaly of the first order, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who launched a stellar career as one of the foremost literary critics in Germany. Reich-Ranicki, who died in Frankfurt on Sept. 18 at the age of 93, was a man for all seasons. He wrote for Germany’s most influential newspapers, Die […]
The 1,400-year history of Jews living under the banner of Islam has been extremely checkered, marked as it has been by periods of acceptance and discrimination. Reflecting on the status of Jews in Muslim domains, the historian Bernard Lewis adopted a balanced approach, saying it had never been as “bad as in Christendom at its […]
World War II was not just another destructive conflict between warring nations, but a nationalist crusade on the part of Germany to acquire territory, attain hegemony, disseminate Nazi ideology and murder Jews on a massive industrial scale. When Germany attacked Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, touching off an international conflagration that dragged on for six […]