One of Hollywood’s last anti-Nazi movies, Hotel Berlin, was released by Warner Bros. on March 17, 1945, less than two months before Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender and the end of World War II in Europe. Recently screened on the Turner Classic Movie channel, it was adapted from Vicki Baum’s eponymous novel. Directed by Peter Godfrey […]
Shortly after his appointment as prime minister in 1940, Winston Churchill ordered the detention of thousands of German and Austrian Jewish refugees who had fled to Britain to escape Nazi persecution. Known as enemy aliens, they were rounded up in the prevailing belief that German spies in the country posed a security threat to Britain. […]
In light of the scandalous Birju Dattani affair, one can only hope that the Canadian federal government will not make the same egregious mistake again in its employment practices. Dattani, selected recently as chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, agreed to go on leave last week following a flurry of complaints from the […]
During the last ten months of his tragically abbreviated life, the Czech-Jewish novelist Franz Kafka formed a romantic relationship with Dora Diamant, a Jewish actress originally from Poland. He was 40 and she was 25 when they met at a Baltic Sea beach in Germany in 1923. It was a doomed love affair in light […]
Optics matter, and yesterday, after Israeli aircraft bombed a Hamas command center in Gaza City where displaced Palestinian civilians were sheltering in place, the optics indeed looked bad for Israel. Around 90 or more Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in the air strike, and inevitably, Israel was subjected to a wave of international […]
For decades, Jews lived under the thumb of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and its subservient satellite states in Eastern Europe. They were not always treated equally, notwithstanding the communist dogma that every citizen enjoyed equal rights. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, turned against Russian Jews in the late 1940s, marginalizing them and crushing […]
Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York was the first one in the club to fall in a primary election. Representative Cori Bush of Missouri followed him down the path to defeat. In relatively quick succession, two African American members of The Squad, an informal group of left-wing Democratic members of the House of Representatives who […]
At the end of it all, Josh Shapiro was unable overcome a distinct disadvantage in his bid to become Kamala Harris’ running mate in the forthcoming U.S. presidential election. Shapiro thereby fell short of becoming the second Jewish American to be selected for that job. In 2000, Vice President Al Gore chose Joseph Lieberman, a […]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it best. “Challenging days” lie ahead for Israel as it braces for an armed response from Iran and its regional proxies following its recent assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the chief political figure in Hamas, and Fuad Shukr, the highest-ranking military commander of Hezbollah. This is indeed is one of Israel’s […]
The Norwegian street artist Toddel has created a mural of Anne Frank in the southwestern city of Bergen that is nothing short of revolting. “Death of an Innocent,” as it is blandly called, provocatively portrays the late Dutch Jewish diarist clad in a Palestinian keffiyeh. Toddel has said that his mural is a critique of […]