A.J. Goldmann is a writer based between Munich and Berlin. His articles about European and Jewish culture have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The Guardian.
A.J. Goldmann
By A.J. Goldmann
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Culture A Nacht at the Opera in Berlin
On a freezing January evening, a large crowd gathered to watch as three stolpersteine were hammered into the sidewalk outside the Komische Oper Berlin. These brass stones commemorate victims — mostly, but not all, Jewish — of Nazi persecution. The plaques laid in front of the opera commemorated Jews who were involved there before the…
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Culture Stunning New Louvre of Jewish Museums Opens in Warsaw
In August 1942, as Jews were being deported from the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish artist Gela Seksztajn wrote her last will and testament. “I donate my work to the Jewish Museum to be founded in the future to restore pre-war Jewish cultural life and to study the terrible tragedy of the Jewish community in Poland…
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The Schmooze Brothers in Minimalism Came Together at BAM
Photo: Alex Rivas/Twitter “Hiney ma tov u’ma-na’im shevet achim gam yachad.” “How good and how pleasant it is when brothers sit together.” That campfire classic came to mind as I sat in the Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this month for the second of three concerts featuring Steve Reich and…
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Culture ‘The Search’ Relives Auschwitz — in Chechnya
In 1948, Hollywood director Fred Zinnemann travelled to postwar Germany to film “The Search,” a melodrama about a Czech mother and son who survive Auschwitz and look for each other amid the ruins of the Third Reich. The film is best remembered today for Montgomery Clift’s nuanced portrayal of a GI who looks after the…
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Culture Kafkaesque ‘Wild Tales’ Is Jewish Film from Argentina Inspired by Steven Spielberg
‘Why did you ruin a perfectly good Jewish wedding?” The question is addressed to Damián Szifrón, the 38-year-old director of “Relatos Salvajes” (“Wild Tales”), the Argentinian film that competed at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. He seems caught off guard. Indeed, it’s unlikely that many of the audience members recognized the amped-up version of “Havenu…
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The Schmooze Cannes Diary #5: Prizes and Farewells
Getty Images After 10 cinema-soaked days, the International Jury, headed by Jane Campion, dished out the prizes of the 67th Cannes Film Festival. There were no multiple winners in a year when there were clearly not enough awards to go around. In fact, some have taken issue with the jury’s decision to award the Jury…
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The Schmooze Cannes Diary #4: Strong Women On Screen
Of the themes to emerge during this year’s Cannes Film Festival — incest, dogs, neglected children — uncommonly strong women have been the most pervasive. This seems appropriate in a year where the jury is presided over by Jane Campion, the only woman to win a Palme d’Or in the history of the festival. As the…
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The Schmooze Cannes Diary #3: Cronenberg, Carell and the Infamous Strauss-Kahn
There was a lot of buzz — and not necessarily the good kind of buzz — surrounding bad-boy director Abel Ferrera’s “Welcome to New York,” his fictionalized account of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, which was screened on Saturday for press and market ahead of its VOD-only release in France (a theatrical rollout is planned for…
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