● The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe By Olga Gershenson Rutgers University Press, 290 pages, $32.50 As a teenager growing up in Ufa, Russia, I used to play piano in a Jewish music ensemble. Our group was once invited to play a prescreening concert at a local movie theater called Rodina (Motherland), built…
On both occasions that the KGB arrested the Yiddish writer and poet Naftali Herts Kon, it burned his writings. When Kon escaped from the Soviet Union to Poland in 1959, he thought everything would be different — but it wasn’t. When the Polish Communists arrested Kon in 1960, they simply confiscated his writings and refused…
If you’ve been following Vladimir Putin’s image troubles over the Schneerson Library, the priceless Chabad literary trove that the Bolsheviks seized, Russia held and Crown Heights wants, you may have heard about his weird remarks last Thursday (June 13) when he handed over a batch of the treasure to the new Chabad-run museum in Moscow:…
‘Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War and the Holocaust,” on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust through the first week of April, is a must-see exhibition of beautiful photographs taken by Soviet Jewish photojournalists during World War II. Organized by historian David Shneer and curator Lisa Tamiris…
“Yosef Ashkenazi,” a smile creeps across my new acquaintance’s wizened face as he introduces himself and adds “but not Ashkenadze!” That pronunciation would leave Yosef with a typically Georgian surname. But the –adzes and the –shvilis — another telltale Georgian name ending — have all but left Abkhazia. Seventy-year-old Yosef Ashkenazi is, of course, an…
It has now been 38 years since President Ford signed the historic Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a piece of legislation that will soon expire. At this moment, as the future of the amendment is under debate in Congress, it is important to look back at the role it served as one of the most potent weapons for…
Year to year there isn’t much change when it comes to my Passover Seder. Wine, matzo, and politics are always the dominant features. But this year I want to be conscious of the message the Haggadah provides and what it means to me. Searching for that meaning forces me to look back on the vastly…
On March 8th, mothers, daughters, wives, and girlfriends around the world will be showered with tokens of adoration in celebration of International Women’s Day. Although this holiday has become something of a Valentine’s/Mother’s Day hybrid in many regions, it originated as a Socialist political event in countries of the former Soviet bloc. In honor of…
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