The success of Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” in theaters this summer is a welcome sign, amidst the usual summer cinematic fare, that history still interests us. Britain’s mettle in evacuating some 340,000 British and allied troops from French shores amidst the German attempt to destroy them remains one of history’s great inspirations, particularly when one considers…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The extreme poverty that Jews once experienced in the cities and towns of Eastern Europe has been well documented, but what exactly was their diet like? According to the memoirs of Hirsh Abramovich, a Yiddish writer in pre-war Vilna, the Jews in Lithuania were probably the poorest…
For the past 26 years, Susan Goldstein Snyder, a curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has traveled across the U.S. and Europe meeting with survivors (and, increasingly, their children and grandchildren), listening to their stories, and persuading them to donate their artifacts to the museum. Over the course of her career, she has…
A “beloved” history professor at the University of San Francisco was killed in a light aircraft crash near San Francisco. William Sachs Goldman, 38, was piloting a single-engine plane when it crashed ,1000 feet from a regional airport in Sonoma County on Thursday. Goldman’s two grade school-aged children and their au pair were on the…
Researchers from Cambridge have identified the author of an 10th century collection of biblical scriptures: Samuel ben Jacob, the same scribe who penned the Leningrad Codex. The Codex is the main Hebrew copy of the bible on which most modern translations are based. The manuscript contains sections from Prophets, Judges and Kings, and was likely…
Amid the rolling prairie, under the vast Dakota sky, a small fence encloses 20 headstones with surprising Hebrew markings in a field outside the town of Ashley, population 750. Local farmers pass it as they drive for groceries into the town, which has no Jews among its residents. But the graveyard’s most frequent mourners are…
It’s springtime in other parts of the world, but Chicago is still dark and grim. This is a good week for going to a museum and getting all existential and gloomy. As it happens, there’s a unique chronicler of the Holocaust coming to town who fits the bill. On Tuesday, May 16, Father Patrick Desbois,…
What lies ahead for the US relationship with Israel, under President Trump, his son-in-law confidant, Jared Kushner, and his ambassador to the Jewish state, David Friedman? All are surely eager to overturn recent Israeli diplomatic setbacks, such as the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2234 condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Much has…
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
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