This is the Forward’s coverage of the Holocaust (also called the Shoah), the genocide of Europe’s Jews committed by the Nazis during World War II.
Holocaust
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The Schmooze Boris Cyrulnik and the Art of Creative Disobedience
Born in 1937, the French neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik has long been a media darling for his insights into such varied subjects as workplace violence, the wonders of nature, and scientific/technological progress in general. Although Cyrulnik’s public advice is sometimes leavened with lighthearted whimsy, his utterly serious understanding of the importance of psychological resilience, or surviving…
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Life Vera Saeedpour: Jewish Champion of Another Persecuted People
One of my neighbors died recently, a Jewish woman known best for her commitment to the cause of another minority, the Kurds. I want to honor the memory of Vera Saeedpour, who died early this month at 80, after turning a grand Prospect Heights townhouse into an institution called The Kurdish Library. The Kurdish Library,…
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The Schmooze ‘We Are Going to Pick Potatoes:’ The Shoah in Norway
Given the current stew of antisemitic hatred in Norway, it is hardly surprising that Holocaust studies from there are hardly a favored export, alongside herring and oil. Over 40 percent of Norway’s Jews were slaughtered during World War II, among the worst losses in Scandinavia at that time. While there is a modest, neglected Jewish…
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The Schmooze The Astounding Samuel Bak
In a recent piece for Newsweek titled “Life Isn’t Beautiful,” Cynthia Ozick took aim at “fraudulent” Holocaust art, which, in her estimation, includes films such as Roberto Benigni’s “Life is Beautiful,” Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” and especially Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds,” which Ozick called “a defamation, a canard.” But not all Holocaust art is a…
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Life PBS’s Anne Frank and the Heroine Canon
There’s been a lot of fantastic Web writing around this week’s PBS premiere of a brand new version of “The Diary of Anne Frank” (see the Forward’s interview with star Ellie Kendrick here). On PBS’s blog, Remotely Connected, author and researcher Alexandra Zapruder, who compiled a collection of Jewish children’s Holocaust journals, wrote about the…
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Life Teaching Four-Year-Olds About Hitler
I’ll never forget the spring day many years ago when my 4-year-old son began coming home from kindergarten chattering about someone named “Eet-er.” This kid, whoever he was, seemed make everyone miserable. I wondered who he was and where he came from. Who in the world was “Eet-er” and why was he getting away with…
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The Schmooze Dance of the Veil: French Jewish Feminist Enters the Académie française
Back in 2008, the Forward celebrated when French Jewish feminist Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor, was elected to the prestigious Académie française. On Thursday March 18, Veil was formally inducted into the Academy, welcomed with a speech by the veteran author Jean d’Ormesson, who is so stuffy and stately that in France, The Jean D’Ormesson…
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Opinion Pre-Oscar Reading: Meaning Between the Lines of ‘A Serious Man’
Like a lot of people I know, I was blown away by the Coen Brothers’ Oscar nominee, “A Serious Man.” Behind the absurdist comedy, it captured a penetrating insight about the Job theme in Jewish tradition and the vapidity so pervasive in contemporary American Jewish life. But I’ve been struggling in the months since I…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
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Sports Memes, mashiach and ‘Torah-cyclopedias’ put a Jewish twist on the Knicks’ title chase
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Opinion It’s time for Jews who love Israel to give up on Zionism
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Trump announces deal with Iran is ‘now complete’
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Fast Forward Jane Yolen, children’s book author whose ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ became a Holocaust classic, dies at 87
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Fast Forward Hebrew Union College claims Ohio’s charity-law suit violates its First Amendment rights
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Fast Forward 6 months after her father was killed at Bondi Beach, Sheina Gutnick has become a leading antisemitism advocate in Australia