The Club, a six-part Turkish Netflix drama set in Istanbul during the 1940s and 1950s, portrays Turkey’s Jewish minority soberly and frankly. It highlights the positive and exposes the negative, providing viewers with a reasonably nuanced picture of Jews in a Muslim society. Matilda Aseo (Gokce Bahadir), the main character, is a Sephardi Jew whose […]
Switzerland is renowned for its delectable chocolate bars and candies, precision-made watches, exquisite ski resorts and magnificent alpine scenery. Having visited the country several times, I can attest to its superlative qualities. Switzerland’s dark side is far less evident, but it emerges compellingly in Mike Shaerer’s six-part television series, Labyrinth of Peace, which will be screened […]
It was the least conceivable assignment these American Jewish soldiers expected to receive as World War II raged. Having enlisted in the U.S. armed forces to fight Nazi Germany on the battlefield, they found themselves instead in a secluded camp in Virginia interrogating captured German prisoners of war and scientists and engineers. Most of the […]
Shots rang out in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood on a winter night in 1986, prompting a resident to call the police. Arriving to investigate, Avi Samuel entered a two-storey building and stumbled upon a nightmarish scene. Nissim Cohen, 44, and his wife, Leah, 40, had been brutally murdered in their bed. Judging by their gruesome […]
Netflix is currently presenting an eclectic selection of Palestinian feature films and shorts under the rubric of Palestinian Stories. It’s a definite sign of the times, underscoring the strides the Palestinian cause has made in recent years. I watched one feature-length movie, Salt Of This Sea, and two shorts, The Crossing and Ave Maria, all of […]
He was one of Adolf Hitler’s most favorite people. Otto Skorzeny, a Waffen-SS lieutenant colonel sporting a noticeable duelling scar on the left side of his face, compiled a very unusual record. He rescued the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity in 1943. He worked as a spy for the Mossad in the early 1960s […]
Asylum City, a gritty Israeli series bound to unsettle the average viewer, takes place in Tel Aviv’s African refugee community. Now available on Chaiflicks, a streaming network specializing in Jewish and Israeli content, Etan Zur’s drama unfolds in the dark underbelly of an impoverished neighborhood. Michal (Mali Levi), an Israeli activist who works with Eritrean […]
Meyer Lansky (1902-1983) was one of the dominant figures in the American underworld from the 1930s until his death. He was a key figure in the National Crime Syndicate, a confederation of Italian, Irish and Jewish gangsters, and one of the founders of Murder Inc., the enforcement arm of the mafia. Lansky, whose friends and […]
Jaguar, a six-part Netflix series set in Madrid in 1962, unfolds against the backdrop of World War II, Nazi concentration camps, and German war criminals enjoying the fruits of immunity in postwar Spain. A small band of Spaniards whose lives were upended by Nazi oppression plot to kidnap and bring to justice Aribert Heim, a […]
Vilified and idolized, William Randolph Hearst was the first media mogul in the United States, a larger-than-life figure brimming with arrogance and hubris whose appetite for power was limitless. A man who prized innovation and was always in search of the next big thing, he accumulated an empire of daily newspapers, magazines, radio stations and news serials. […]