Observation ·
What to Do When a U.S. President Lays a Wreath at a Cemetery for Nazi War Dead
By Avi WeissThe Bitburg controversy, 40 years on.
Holocaust
Latest Mosaic Content for Holocaust
Observation ·
Why, Despite Good Intentions, Ken Burns’s “The U.S. and the Holocaust” Fails
By Dr. Ruth WisseFocusing on America’s failures to save more Jews in the Holocaust unintentionally strengthens the forces that would threaten Jews today. Here's how.
Observation ·
Watch Yossi Klein Halevi Discuss His Movie “Kaddish”
By Yossi Klein Halevi, Jonathan SilverThe Israeli writer joined us last week to talk about growing up in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the movie made about him and his father.
Observation ·
The Drama over London’s Proposed Holocaust Memorial
By Tamara BerensA planned memorial next to Parliament appears to have been treated as an easy way to show that the British are, indeed, on the right side of history.
Observation ·
“There Are Too Many Jews on This Train”
By Diane ColeA newly rediscovered 1938 novel offers one man's examination of how and why the single word “Jew” has come to define him.
Observation ·
What’s Waiting at the Holocaust Museum of Nazareth
By William F.S. Miles“When Arabs hear the word ‘Shoah,’” Khalid tells me, “they black out. It’s almost like a paralysis. They don’t want to hear another word about it. But they—we—need to.”
Monthly Essay ·
My Quarrel with “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner”
How I came to translate one of the greatest stories in all of Yiddish literature, a work that I believe uniquely illuminates the debate at the very center of Jewish modernity.
Response ·
The Vital Task of Holocaust Memory
By Walter ReichCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Response ·
Where Arendt Was Right on Eichmann
By Yaacov LozowickCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Monthly Essay ·
The Truth of the Capture of Adolf Eichmann
By Martin KramerSixty years ago, the infamous Nazi official was abducted in Argentina and brought to Israel. What really happened, what did Hollywood make up, and why?
Observation ·
What Jewish Children’s Books Look Like in 2020
By Michal LeibowitzOver the last 30 years, books for young Jews have dropped religious and national identity and become obsessed with the Holocaust. Can they be put on a better track?
Observation ·
Did FDR Really Abandon the Jews of Europe?
By Jared SorhaindoHe did. A recent book is a damning polemic against him and also against America’s most politically connected Jewish leader. Yet it's hard to imagine things ending differently.
Observation ·
The Forgotten Jew Who Belongs in the Pantheon of Great 20th-Century Composers
By Mark GlanvilleMieczysław Weinberg wrote music equal in its genius to Mahler and Shostakovich, including one of the most powerful tributes to the victims of 20th-century tyranny.
Observation ·
The Non-Jewish Pole Who Snuck Into Auschwitz to Document Its Horrors
By Jared SorhaindoIntentionally incarcerated there from 1940 to 1943, Witold Pilecki saw its transformation from a particularly brutal prison into the death factory it is now notorious for being.
Observation ·
How a “Dream Team” of Rescuers Salvaged Masses of Jewish Cultural Treasures Looted by the Nazis
By Diane ColePrewar, no countries had wanted to take in Europe’s Jews. Postwar, many were poised to claim the spoils of the murdered—until an unprecedented group of experts stepped in.
Observation ·
The Hollywood Legend Who Mobilized the English Language on Behalf of the Jews of Europe and Israel
By Rick RichmanBen Hecht invented the gangster movie. He also prodded Roosevelt into saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis, and marshaled reluctant American Jews into becoming Zionists.
Observation ·
How to Live off the Land in Poland 1943
By Mark SomersteinIf you did not leave Poland with the Soviets in June 1941, it is most inadvisable to do so now.
Observation ·
One Who Fought Back: Herschel Grynszpan and the Holocaust
By Rick RichmanA new book gives reason to reflect on the little-known story of the Jewish teenager who assassinated a German diplomat in 1938, an act that served as the pretext for Kristallnacht.
Observation ·
Could Jewish and Zionist Leaders Have Done More to Rescue the Jews of Poland?
By Rick RichmanThat is the question a new history of Polish Jewry in the 1930s asks and—with one large exception—answers well.
Observation ·
What If You Trivialize Hitler?
By Menachem WeckerThe question has plagued artists ever since the Holocaust. At least one contemporary artist manages to pass the test.
Observation ·
The Return of Romain Gary, Novelist, Diplomat, War Hero, Prankster
By Diane ColeWith the long-overdue translation into English of his final book, neglect of the Vilna-born Jewish author is starting to lift.
Observation ·
The Dread-Inducing Work of Weimar’s Jewish Artists
By Diane ColeAn exhibit at the Neue Galerie offered a taste of Jewish art from “before the fall,” but the subject cries out for a more ambitious undertaking.
Observation ·
Survival; or, How My Family Beat the Odds in 1940
By Dr. Ruth WisseIt wasn't easy for an entire Jewish family to escape Eastern Europe in the mid-20th century. Ruth Wisse's did.
Observation ·
The Buried, Raging Sermons of the Warsaw Ghetto Rabbi
By James A. DiamondSermons from the Years of Rage, 1939-1942 , hidden during the war and now released in a new edition, is a rabbinic work unlike any since the destruction of the First Temple.
Response ·
The UN Partition Vote in November 1947 Was Important, but Not Crucial
By Benny MorrisCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
Remembering the Great Czech Jewish Harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková
By Mark GlanvilleRůžičková, who died in September, survived both Hitler and Stalin to become a brilliant interpreter of J.S. Bach—and the only person to commit his entire keyboard oeuvre to disc.
Observation ·
Szymon Laks’s Music of Another World
By Simon WynbergA Polish-Jewish composer who survived Auschwitz as the camp's musical conductor wrote in an elegant style out of step with his times. Now the times are coming around.
Observation ·
What Is the Source of the Phrase “Never Again”?
By PhilologosSome say its author was Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League. Is that right?
Observation ·
The Obligations of Auschwitz
By Jonathan SilverMy grandfather, who survived five Nazi camps, built in their shadow a life that consisted above all of children and grandchildren. The same is demanded of us all.
Observation ·
Survival and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
By Walter LaqueurLast month I received two letters that brought back memories of a love story with the Holocaust as background but, for once, not with a tragic ending.
