Buttenheim, population 3,000, is a speck of a town in southern Germany. Normally, you would drive through without paying it the slightest heed. Set amid the green pastoral countryside of the Regnitz Valley in Upper Franconia, between the historic cities of Bamberg and Nuremberg, it’s quiet, rustic and almost quaint. Despite its obscurity, Buttenheim has carved […]
This year’s edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival runs from May 1-11 and has a roster of eclectic movies from different countries. A sampler: Yoav Halevy, in Bureau 06, profiles the Israeli organization that gathered the evidence and the witnesses in preparation for the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who supervized the […]
On August 22, 1939, when planning the invasion of Poland and contemplating the destruction of European Jewry, Adolf Hitler was reported as having said to his Wehrmacht commanders, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Well, people certainly remember it now, despite continued denials or rationalizations by Turkish authorities. The slaughter of […]
Russia, and perhaps Ukraine, have cynically manipulated antisemitism for opportunistic political ends. It’s a disgusting practice, enough to make one’s stomach turn, and it should cease immediately. Antisemitism, an age-old phenomenon deeply ingrained in Russia and Ukraine, reared its ugly head as an issue after Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was driven out of office […]
Syria has crumbled into the maelstrom of civil war, but its descent into violence, anarchy and despair doesn’t deter two young Syrian activists from striving to create a secular democratic republic out of the smouldering rubble. Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, and Razan Shalab al-Sham, his assistant, are consumed […]
Canada’s first Jewish federal cabinet minister, Herb Gray, has died at the age of 82. In a way, his career is the story of the coming of age of the Canadian Jewish community in the political life of the country. Many Jewish politicians have been more exciting and flamboyant – David Lewis, the long time […]
On April 22, The New York Times reported that Mark Fields, the 53-year-old chief operating officer of Ford Motor, the second-largest car manufacturer in the United States after General Motors, known for working with smaller dealerships such as Wichita Ford, had been chosen to be its next chief executive, succeeding Alan Mulally. If you want […]
This year’s edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival runs from May 1-11 and features a wide assortment of feature-length movies, shorts and documentaries from around the world. A sampler: Lucia Puenzo’s Argentinian feature film, The German Doctor, focuses on Josef Mengele, the Nazi war criminal who found a haven in South America after the […]
Long after his nine-hour documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah, was released in 1985, the French filmmaker, Claude Lanzmann, reviewed footage he had been forced to cut. He was probably flabbergasted by what he had left out, particularly an intriguing interview with Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein, the last living “elder” of a Nazi ghetto. Murmelstein, who died […]
Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was the national poet of the Palestinians, a man whose lyrical poetry distilled the essence of loss and exemplified the dream of statehood. Ibtisam Mara’ana Menuhin’s empathetic biopic, Write Down, I Am An Arab, will be screened at the Canadian International Documentary Festival (Hot Docs) in Toronto on April 27, April 29 […]