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News Holocaust Study Debunks Myth of ‘Ungrateful Jew’
(Haaretz) — In Poland, they were known as the ungrateful Jews. These were Jews who survived the Holocaust because of the selfless acts of thousands of Polish rescuers who put their lives on the line for them but were never properly thanked. As soon as the war was over, these Jews headed out to greener pastures…
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Fast Forward Krakow’s New Chief Rabbi: All Non-Jews Dislike Jews
Several Polish rabbis and Jewish lay leaders criticized Krakow’s new chief rabbi for saying all non-Jews do not like Jews — a statement he was recorded making in an interview and then denied uttering. On Friday, six rabbis who belong to the Association of Rabbis in Poland said in a statement that they “firmly oppose”…
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The Schmooze 2 Jewish Lawyers and Hitler’s ‘Butcher’ Share Stage
(Reuters) — The improbable tale of three music-loving lawyers linked to Ukraine – two of them Jews and one a Hitler aide known as the “Butcher of Poland” – has made it to the stage in a work premiered at the Hay Festival. “The Great Crimes” tells how the lives of Hersch Lauterpecht, who formulated…
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Culture When Auschwitz Was a Jewish Town
Of all the things and places to give an endearing Jewish name, Auschwitz would seem the most unlikely. Oshpitzin — which comes from the Aramaic word for guest, ushpizin, and is the name of a traditional Sukkot prayer that welcomes guests — was how Jews once referred to Oswiecim, the Polish town that would become…
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Fast Forward Polish MP Calls For End to Jewish World War II Property Restitution
Polish MP Slawomir Kopycinski called for the shuttering of the Regulatory Commission for Jewish Communities, a Polish body that restores property owned by Holocaust victims to its legal heirs. Kopycinski called the commission ”the fourth partition of Poland” in a Thursday press conference, alluding to previous partitions of the country in the 1700s and again…
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Culture Still Waiting for Godot
Killing the Second Dog By Marek Hlasko, translated from the Polish by Tomasz Mirkowicz New Vessel Press, 143 pages, $15.99 In the aftermath of World War II, while Europe was responding to the dissipation of the old empires and feudal orders by reconfiguring itself around capitalist and communist ideologies, its novelists took it upon themselves…
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The Schmooze ‘Ida’: Conversation with Director Pawel Pawlikowski
“Ida,” a fascinating and disquieting Polish language film written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is a post-Soviet Polish rumination, a mystery with religious and political overtones. Pronounced as “Eeda,” Pawlikowski told me during our chat: “I needed a good name and remembered the Jewish Polish actress Ida Kaminska. It was a name I liked, but…
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News Poland’s Dueling Holocaust Monuments to ‘Righteous Gentiles’ Spark Painful Debate
In Poland, where 3 million Polish Jews died at Nazi hands, not one but two new monuments are being planned in Warsaw that will memorialize — and, some fear, distort the role of — the several thousand non-Jewish Poles who tried to save them. As Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches, both projects are generating heated criticism….
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News Who was Horst Wessel, and why are people comparing Charlie Kirk to him?
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Culture Charlie Kirk kept a ‘Jewish Sabbath.’ What did he mean by that?
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Film & TV Robert Redford’s legacy is surprisingly Jewish
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Antisemitism Decoded Israel is being blamed for Charlie Kirk’s death. Here’s what that conspiracy theory says about the far right’s divide
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Culture This Israeli photographer’s work is all about ‘subverting masculinity’
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Opinion The terrifying Nazi precedent for Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension — and the reasons to stay hopeful
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Fast Forward Freed hostage Edan Alexander says he’s returning to the IDF next month
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Yiddish World How a Yiddish acting troupe fooled the Tsarist government
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