The black-and-white photos on display couldn’t be more different. There’s Izio Rosenman, a young boy, held by his mother at a family picnic. Next to this 1937 photo we see Izio in a hammock with his two sisters. He seems content. In the other photo, Janek Szlajtsztajn and David Perlmutter sit behind the barbed wire…
The grandfather of the man suspected in the mass killing in Santa Barbara, California, was a famed British photojournalist who took iconic photos of Jewish survivors and mass graves at liberated concentration camps in the final weeks of World War II. Police identified Elliot Rodger, 22, a college student as the gunman who drove through…
According to the Israeli government, the 93-year-old Buchenwald survivor is a liar. Decried by French embassy spokesperson Yaron Gamburg for spreading falsehoods about the Jewish state, Stéphane Hessel’s criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians apparently does not correspond with reality. “It is a literary fad which will have no affect on the real world,…
Many years ago, while researching German supporters of Holocaust reparations, I went in search of information on the social-democratic politician Kurt Schumacher. I found what I was looking for, but right next to Schumacher’s listing in an encyclopedia was a surprise: “Scholem, Werner, * 29.12.1895 Berlin, † 17.7.1940 KZ Buchenwald; konfessionslos.” It was Gershom Scholem’s…
Earlier this week, Ruth Franklin wrote about sharing a stage with Yann Martel and discussed whether anything new can be said about the Holocaust. She is the author of “A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction.” Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book…
When Tine Kindermann was a little girl, she thought all Americans liked to dress up as trees. Patrolling her city in West Germany after the Holocaust, camouflaged soldiers would wear leaves as part of their uniforms. Now, after 20 years living in the United States, Kindermann has let us peep into secret worlds, juxtapositions of…
The CBS Home Entertainment/Paramount Release of a 28 DVD-set, “Hogan’s Heroes: The Komplete Series, Kommandant’s Kollection” reminds us of this early effort to find belated humor in Hitler’s war machine. Writer/director Billy Wilder’s much-admired 1953 film “Stalag 17,” was adapted from a play of the same name by two former POWs, and subtitled: “a comedy…
For visitors to the New York Jewish Film Festival, a must-see on January 18-20 is a new hour-length documentary, “Leon Blum: For All Mankind” about the French socialist politician. Written by Blum’s grandson Antoine Malamoud and directed by University of Alabama Professor Jean Bodon, the film offers a mere sketch of an eventful life, and…
