I discovered a long-lost relative who survived the Holocaust in Soviet gulags
Jews who survived under Stalin rather than Hitler are largely absent from mainstream film and literature
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Art Jewish Rebels Once Dreamed Of Peace On Earth. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Despite its origins in the work of the Jewish Karl Marx, and its early Soviet Jewish advocates, communism never served the Jewish people particularly well. Less than two decades after the Russian Revolution, Josef Stalin’s Great Purge made a particular — if unofficial — target of Jews. One decade after the 1938 end of the…
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Yiddish World WATCH: Poet And Refusenik Yosef Kerler Remembers Terrifying Run-In With KGB
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In this moving video, we learn about the dramatic life of the great Yiddish poet from the former Soviet Union, Yosef Kerler, in both his own words and through the eyes of his son, the poet Boris Karloff. In one scene, Kerler describes the terrifying moment when…
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Yiddish World Finally, Der Nister Gets a Gravestone
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Abez. A small station on the Northern railway line more than 2,200 kilometers from Moscow – and only 7 kilometers before the Arctic Circle, where the taiga forest turns into the endless tundra. You won’t find the name Abez on any train station because there is no…
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Opinion How My Grandfather Marked Passover as a Slave
The author and his grandfather / Courtesy of Hody Nemes The Exodus happened 3,000 years ago. But today, in the year 5774, we are still supposed to see ourselves as if we had experienced slavery and left Egypt, according to the Haggadah. For me, that’s always been a tall order. In order to feel like…
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Culture My Mother and Joseph Stalin
For decades, readers of the Forverts have been delighted by Miriam Hoffman’s wry, literary vignettes. Fresh and personal, historic yet contemporary, Hoffman tells stories of family lives as they intersect with history. Beginning with this story, first published in 1987, her vignettes with be translated into English and published on the forward.com web site. Translated…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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