Several days ago, Nazi war criminal Friedrich Karl Berger was deported to Germany from the United States, where he had lived quietly for the past 62 years. Now 95, he served as an armed guard at a sub-camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Meppen, Germany. Removed from his home in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, under the […]
It’s hard to believe that this has happened, but incredibly enough, an employee of Poland’s embassy in London has launched an online campaign to burnish the legacy of a Polish nationalist who promoted an alliance between Poland and Nazi Germany and worked to cleanse Poland of Jews. As shocking as it sounds, Agata Supinska is […]
Among Israel’s most ardent supporters in the United States are evangelical Christians, who, by one estimate, comprise something like a quarter of the American electorate. Socially and politically conservative, and profoundly steeped in biblical lore, they are staunch allies of Israel’s right-wing government. Highly supportive of the settlement project in the West Bank and dismissive […]
Tomer Shushan’s 19-minute film, White Eye, has been short listed for this year’s Academy Award in the short live action category. Screened at movie festivals in Israel and abroad, it has won a succession of awards. Unfolding in real time at night in Tel Aviv’s dingy meat packing district, it ostensibly deals with a bicycle […]
The right-wing Polish government is trying to curtail free and independent scholarship with respect to the Holocaust, says Jan Grabowski, a Canadian scholar of Polish descent who was recently ordered to issue a public apology concerning a two-volume book he and Polish colleague Barbara Engelking co-edited. Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties […]
Shabtai Shavit worked for the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted external intelligence agency, for 32 years. From 1973 to 1976, he was head of operations. And in the homestretch of his career, from 1989 to 1996, he was its director. Appointed to his post by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, he was the first director of the Mossad […]
Itay Tal’s gripping Hebrew-language movie, God of the Piano, which is now available on DVD and digital outlets like iTunes and Amazon, fleshes out themes such as ambition, disappointment, deception and obsession. His central character, a pregnant pianist named Anat (Naama Preis), embodies these qualities. Sitting at home in front of her piano, she pours out […]
David Osit’s absorbing 89-minute documentary, Mayor, is a nuanced portrait of Musa Hadid, the Christian Palestinian mayor of Ramallah — the seat of the Palestinian Authority and the epicenter of commerce and culture in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War. Osit, whose film is currently available […]
No one seriously expected the hopelessly divided Senate to impeach disgraced former U.S. president Donald Trump. The calculus favored Trump from the very outset. Impeachment would have required two-thirds of the 100 senators to charge him with “incitement of insurrection” for his undeniable role in encouraging a mob to storm Capitol Hill on January 6 to […]
Tradition bumps up against modernity in Isaac Cherem’s empathetic drama, Leona, which is playing virtually in movie theatres across the United States. Cherem’s film unfolds in contemporary Mexico City against the backdrop of a love affair between two young people, Ariela (Naian Gonzalez Norvind) and Ivan (Christian Vasquez), who seem made for each other. They’re […]