The greatest film about France in World War II is also a blistering critique of filmmaking
Marcel Ophüls’ ‘The Sorrow and the Pity’ lays bear the horrors (and delights) of its own medium
vichy france
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Opinion American Jews ignore a far-right Jewish presidential candidate at their peril
With the world’s attention focused on the carnage in Ukraine, American Jews can be forgiven for not paying much attention to the upcoming French presidential elections; the first round of voting begins on Apr. 10. But they do so at their own peril. American Jews should know about Éric Zemmour, a right-wing author, media figure,…
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Fast Forward Jewish Antifa Group Vandalizes Nazi Collaborator Plaque
Members of a Jewish antifa group defaced a plaque on Monday in New York honoring a French leader who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. The plaque in the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan honored Philippe Petain, a French general in World War I who later led the Vichy regime, which oversaw…
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Culture In An Era Of Faux News, Let’s Set The Record Straight On Vichy France
The State Versus The Jews By Laurent Joly Grasset, 368 pages, 20,90 € In 1994, the French historians Henry Rousso and Éric Conan published “Vichy, un Passé Qui ne Passe pas.” While titled “Vichy: The Ever-Present Past” in the excellent American translation, the phrase nevertheless has a slightly different resonance in the original French. The…
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Life They Met In A Concentration Camp. Now, They’re Celebrating 72 Years Of Marriage.
They met in the Vichy-run Gurs concentration camp, in southwestern France. It was the winter of 1940. She was 16, he was 19. “There were many artists imprisoned in Gurs,” Hanne Liebmann reflects today, in her Queens home. “We had a cultural life there, despite the circumstances. They would organize concerts.” Hanne Hirsch had been…
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Life Was Louis Vuitton A Nazi Sympathizer?
Visiting the new Louis Vuitton exhibit “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez”, I was struck by the way the exhibit valorizes Mr. Louis Vuitton, positioning his progress as parallel to many great technological innovations like the car and airplane. Louis Vuitton’s personal history is mythologized at the exhibit in service of the brand, with the story of the…
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The Schmooze That Time James Joyce Was Mistaken for His Jewish Character
It is widely known that James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” was not autobiographical. For one thing, the book’s protagonist Leopold Bloom was Jewish, and Joyce was raised as an Irish Catholic. However, in 1940, when Joyce attempted to flee Vichy France to Switzerland during World War II, the Swiss government thought that he was Jewish. More…
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Culture Who Was Afraid of Viviane Forrester?
After a long battle with cancer, the French Jewish novelist and essayist Viviane Forrester died in April at the age of 87. Not everyone mourned her death: Neither the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, more commonly known under the acronym CRIF, or the Tribune Juive marked her passing. But most everyone, including her…
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Music How Jewish is Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah?’
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