Having read Thomas Keneally’s novel, Schindler’s List, Hollywood film director Steven Spielberg sought to turn it into one of his signature movies. But where would it be shot? Instead of some back lot studio in Los Angeles, he chose the southern Polish city of Krakow, where German manufacturer Oskar Schindler had saved hundreds of Jews by […]
As predicted by Egypt’s newly-elected president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, the United States has begun mending its bilateral relationship with Egypt, one of its most important allies in the Arab world. Less than a year after Washington imposed punitive measures on Egypt after the military-backed Egyptian government ousted the duly elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, and killed […]
The various Sunni jihadist groups, in particular the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who are battling the Shia regimes in Iraq and Syria, are attempting to carve out a Sunni state in parts of both countries (and possibly also in Jordan). But this should come as little surprise. These countries are all artificial […]
Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), one of the masters of the Indian cinema, is coming t0 Toronto through the medium of a retrospective of his prolific body of work. The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray runs from July 3 to Aug. 17 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. A sampler: Aparajito (Friday, July […]
Poland marked an historic anniversary on June 23. At a “Polish Freedom Gala” banquet, held at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto under the patronage of President Bronislaw Komorowski, Poland hailed its return to the western democratic fold. Twenty five years ago this month, the Solidarity trade union movement staged a peaceful revolution that […]
The current crisis in Iraq is yet another replay of the historic power struggle and thinly-veiled animosities between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the Middle East. When the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — an extremist Sunni group known as ISIS — invaded western and northern Iraq earlier this month, it enunciated its intentions […]
This past week we saw something unprecedented in Turkey: In a landmark decision meant to curb the power of the country’s massive military establishment, a court sentenced two top former generals, army chief Kenan Evren and air force head Tahsin Sahinkaya, to life imprisonment for leading a 1980 coup that resulted in widespread torture, arrests […]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal administration coincided with the emergence of state-sponsored antisemitism in Germany and the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. How did Roosevelt respond to these shattering events? Ambivalently, conclude American University historians Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman in their important and cogent book, FDR and the Jews, published by Harvard […]
Andrzej Wajda’s The Promised Land, screened on June 17 by the Toronto International Film Festival and part of its ongoing retrospective on contemporary Polish cinema, transports us back to early 20th century Lodz, a multi-ethnic city in central Poland that brings the uglier aspects of the industrial revolution up close and personal. Based on a novel by […]
Iraq is imploding. The Sunni jihadis of the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have moved to within sight of Baghdad, while the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki becomes more dependent than ever on Iran. More and more, even Americans — who suffered tens of thousands of soldiers killed […]