Nicholas Winton, 104 today, is a hero in the deepest sense of the word. On the eve of World War II, he saved 669 Czech and Slovak Jewish children, who would have been murdered had they remained behind in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Winton, a British stockbroker, facilitated their escape to Britain within the framework of the […]
Rocky Braat is that rarest of individuals: a selfless person who gives of himself completely, day in and day out. Braat, a young American who works in an Asian orphanage filled with HIV-infected children, is the subject of Steve Hoover’s moving documentary, Blood Brother, now playing in Toronto. The film, plodding at first, builds to an […]
Six years before South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela was released from imprisonment on Robben Island, launching his career as South Africa’s future first Black president and starting the historic process of phasing in Black majority rule, I visited South Africa in my capacity as a journalist. It was 1984 and South Africa, a pariah […]
The far-right National Democratic Party, known in German as the NPD, is an ugly, festering sore on Germany’s body politic. The NPD is shamelessly xenophobic, jingoistic, racist and, worst of all, antisemitic. Given Germany’s central role in the Holocaust, it beggars the imagination that there are still German politicians, even on the fringes of society, who […]
Nelson Mandela has died, at the age 95. Although he left office in 1999, after serving five years as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, he remained the conscience of the country and a man beloved throughout the world. He was a unifying symbol of the “rainbow” nation. How will South Africa fare now that […]
Israel today is a paradox: A country faced by unprecedented threats and challenges, yet safer and more full of promise than at any time in its history. On the one hand, the Middle East has entered a period of turmoil and chronic instability which is challenging the fundamental underpinnings of our strategic environment. Add to […]
“These mountains are breathtaking — utterly different than anything we have seen. The peaks and forests and “tone” fulfill almost every ideal I have had of what ‘my’ mountains could be. The cold ice crashes down tremendous cliffs to the very edge of deep, somber forests. No dust here — all is snow, ice, clean […]
Panama, the lower-cost alternative to Costa Rica, is a land of sharp and mesmerizing contrasts. One day, I was perspiring in the sweltering tropical lowlands of Chiriqui province, or exploring a picturesque island in the Bocas del Toro archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. A few days later, and just a relatively short distance away, I […]
The independence of the Republic of Lithuania was restored in 1990 in large part because the people of the country demanded a restoration of their right to live as an independent nation. This meant that the injustices of the past should be recognized and rectified, a determination expressed in the million-strong “Hands across the Baltic” […]
In 2010, Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000 and candidate of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), won a second term with 93 percent of the vote, in an election marred by repression, murder, and lack of credible competition. Some potential opponents were disqualified or failed to enter the race, because they would have […]