More than half a century after the Holocaust, is it right — or even possible — to forgive? As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and refugees, I find myself asking this question as I read about the recent trial of Oskar Gröning — aka “the accountant of Auschwitz” — a man who cannot easily be…
The crisis facing American Jews today is the result of the comfort of their surroundings. The barriers to assimilation Jews faced in the past are now gone, if not reversed, rendering the border between liberal Jew and non-Jew a thing of the past. And yet, one author, raised in liberal Judaism’s bosom, has been quietly…
● Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer By Bettina Stangneth, Translated from German by Ruth Martin Alfred A. Knopf, 608 pages, $35 It seems a stretch to think of Adolf Eichmann as having had an “unexamined life.” Since his 1960 trial in Israel, and Hannah Arendt’s controversial 1963 account, “Eichmann in…
The idea that evil could be “banal” still shocks us. It’s much scarier to consider that genocide could be carried out unthinkingly by the most vacuous of bureaucrats and not by intrinsically bad people acting with bad intent. This new moral category was Hannah Arendt’s now infamous reaction to witnessing the 1961 trial of Adolf…
Biopics about philosophers are rare, and they favor activists over ivory-tower thinkers. The life of the mind, unless it directly shapes social action, is not easily captured in film. Hence, Richard Attenborough’s film “Gandhi” exposed the Indian independence leader’s ideas on nonviolent struggle through his political activism, not through his writings. Likewise, Margarethe von Trotta’s…
Two Jewish-themed films fared well at the 2013 German Film Awards, known as the Lolas were handed out April 26 in Berlin. “Hannah Arendt,” famed German director Margarethe von Tratta’s film focusing on four years (1960-1964) in the political theorist’s life, won the Silver Lola for best film. The film deals with the period during…
Crossposted from Batya Reads This year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, starting January 9, is heavy on the Holocaust. Two films, however, stand out in conversation with one another. “Hannah Arendt,” directed by Margarethe von Trotta, is a fictionalization of Arendt’s presence at the Eichmann trial. And a new documentary, “The Trial of Adolf Eichmann,”…
On Wednesday, Deborah Lipstadt wrote about eerie anniversaries. She is the author of the new book “The Eichmann Trial.” Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: I have spent…
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