They were the ordinary heroes who turned the tide of World War II against Nazi Germany. Wading ashore in the surf at Normandy on a grey and gloomy day on June 6, 1944, thousands of Allied troops stormed seemingly impregnable Germany defences. Their mission was to pry loose France from Nazi occupation. More than 4,400 […]
The Catskills, a resort area in upper New York State favored by Jewish Americans from the 1920s to the 1980s, was an earthly paradise of mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and streams redolent of fresh air. With more than 500 hotels and and hundreds of bungalow cottages, the Catskills boasted of having the greatest concentration of […]
Adolf Hitler, though a school dropout, was an avid reader. He maintained libraries in Berlin, Munich and the Berghof, his rustic retreat in the German Alps. When he committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin in the spring of 1945, he owned no less than 16,000 books. Many of them vanished after his death, but […]
Savi Gabizon’s Longing is a remake of his Israeli movie of the same title. A Canada-Israel co-production filmed in the province of Ontario and starring the veteran Hollywood actor Richard Gere, it opens in theaters on June 7. Now in his mid-70s, Gere plays Daniel, a wealthy businessman who reconnects with his former girlfriend, Rachel […]
Six months after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir attended a ceremony in Jerusalem for fallen soldiers. Defence Minister Moshe Dayan delivered a eulogy, but Meir, looking worn down and broken, remained silent and refrained from giving a speech. Having accepted responsibility for the shortcomings of Israel’s performance in the 17-day […]
The Inquisition hounded, marginalized, oppressed and slaughtered Jews in Spain and Portugal and in Spanish and Portuguese overseas colonies in Latin America. Its demonic depth and reach was such that even a remote hamlet in the jungles of Brazil could be directly affected by it. Elza Cataldo’s intriguing Brazilian movie, The Queen’s Orphans, explores this […]
Michael Winterbottom’s absorbing movie, Shoshana, turns on the romantic relationship between the daughter of a Zionist luminary and a British policeman in Mandate Palestine. It is also about the armed struggle that pitted Britain against two right-wing Zionist organizations, the Irgun and its radical offshoot, the Stern Gang. This 119-minute movie will be screened on […]
The white slavery trade in the early 20th century robbed thousands of Polish Jewish women of their dignity, freedom and self-worth. Thousands were lured to Brazil and Argentina on the false pretence that they would have a far better life abroad, only to discover to their bitter anguish that they had been tricked and assigned […]
Joe Biden is acutely aware that his phased plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip may well be stillborn, at least for now. “I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely,” he said as he outlined its […]
Franz Kafka died 100 years ago today in a sanatorium in Kierling, Austria, the victim of laryngeal tuberculosis. He was just 40 when he passed on June 3, 1924. One of the greatest German-language writers of the last century, this Prague-born Czech Jew left behind an eclectic collection of novels, short stories, diaries and notebooks. […]