The first anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on American Jews in U.S. history is approaching. On October 27, a heavily-armed, middle-aged antisemite named Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and, in a frenzy of untrammelled hatred, fatally shot 11 of its congregants. Exactly six months later, John Earnest, 19, […]
During a tumultuous six-week period in the summer of 1941, following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union and the retreat of Soviet forces from Poland’s eastern borderlands, a wave of pogroms swept over hundreds of cities, towns and villages in a vast region stretching from the Baltic states in the north to Romania in the […]
Jacek Borcuch’s drama, Dolce Fine Giornata, which opens in Toronto on October 11, oscillates between the sylvan splendor of Tuscany and the hard world beyond its soft, rolling green hills. Maria Linde (Krystyna Janda), a Nobel Prize laureate of Polish Jewish descent, lives in a rustic farmhouse with her Italian husband (Antonio Catania), her single […]
Nikolaus Leytner’s The Tobacconist, a German-language feature film set in late-193os Vienna, fleshes out an imaginary friendship between a young Austrian man and the celebrated psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Unfolding against the Nazi takeover of Austria, it is a jolting reminder of how easily a tolerant society can accommodate itself to totalitarianism and racism. The main character in The […]
A top-level Iranian official conveyed a stark New Year’s greeting to Israel as Rosh Hashanah got underway. General Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, declared that Iran now possesses the capability to eradicate Israel. “We have managed to obtain the capacity to destroy the impostor Zionist regime,” he boasted. “This sinister regime […]
Fearing a German invasion of Palestine during the early years of World War II, Britain, in conjunction with the Jewish community, formed a special spy unit to gather intelligence on the looming threat. This unit would become the embryo of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. Subsequently, it would focus its attention on the Arab […]
Michele Ohayon’s heart-felt documentary, Steal A Pencil For Me, now available on Netflix, is a highly unusual love story. Jack (Jaap) Polak and Ina Soep, both Holocaust survivors from Holland, met in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam in 1943 and nurtured their relationship in two concentration camps, Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, before getting married. Due to class differences, they […]
The late Roy Cohn is ruthlessly and relentlessly skewered in Matt Trynauer’s bracing biopic, Where’s My Roy Cohn? A man of many parts, Cohn was a brilliant lawyer with questionable scruples, a fierce anti-Communist who prosecuted the Rosenbergs, a political operative who mingled with Republic Party movers and shakers, a social butterfly who consorted with […]
Two major Middle East leaders addressed the United Nations General Assembly this week and spouted a litany of lies. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey suggested that Israel has been deliberately grabbing land from the Palestinians and likened Israel’s policy on the Gaza Strip to the Nazi mistreatment of Jews during the Holocaust. President Hassan […]
Jerold S. Auerbach began reading The New York Times, one of America’s preeminent daily newspapers, way back in 1945. He has since started his day with the broadsheet, but claims it has a “Jewish problem.” A professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College, he sets out his argument in Print to Fit — The New York Times, […]