Our parents shunned Volkswagen and Mercedes — is it time for Jews to give up their Teslas?
The car should be a model of innovation; with Elon Musk, it's a symbol of conspiracy theories and antisemitism
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Culture Remembering Julian Koenig, the Jewish Ad Man Who Created Beetle-Mania
Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published in the Forward on June 14, 2014.. The renowned advertising copywriter Julian Koenig, who died at age 93 on June 12, 2014, baffled the 1960s hucksters on the hit TV series “Mad Men.” In the show’s first season, the fictional admen are puzzled by Koenig’s…
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Fast Forward Volkswagen Funds ADL Office In Germany For Combating Anti-Semitism
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Volkswagen, the car manufacturing giant, is joining with the Anti-Defamation League to fund a Berlin-based office that will research and combat anti-Semitism in Europe. “The initiative will focus on assessing the root causes of anti-Semitism, extremism, and bigotry in society and develop programs to counter it through advocacy and education,” ADL said…
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Culture Volkswagen Can Change Its Language — But Not Its History
The German foundation Deutsche Sprache (“German Language”) announced Thursday that it had sold all its shares in Volkswagen, after the carmaker announced plans to switch its official language from German to English. “The words ‘Volkswagen’ and ‘German language’ will no longer fit together,” the foundation’s executive spokesman Walter Krämer said in a statement objecting to…
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Culture Of Tattoos, Fords, Volkswagens and Arthur Godfrey
We Jews may be the elephants of religion — if not of politics. We have long, long memories (to wit, we are still fighting over Israel after thousands of years), though those memories may be attenuating through assimilation. I thought of that recently during the Volkswagen emissions scandal. I had never known a Jew who…
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The Schmooze Volkswagen Taps Jewish Star Trek Stars
(JTA) — Last year Volkswagen donated more than a million dollars to an international youth center at Auschwitz. In 2011 it donated $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League. And in 2009 it was reported that the Beetle — that iconic VW creation — was actually designed by a Jew. But the German automaker — which,…
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News BDS Goes Mainstream; Jew Behind the Bug
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis talks with Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff about a recent conference of activists advocating the boycott of, divestment from and sanction of Israel and their efforts to reach a broader audience. Then, managing editor Lillian Swanson stops by to discuss the story of a Jewish engineer who designed an…
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News The Jew and Hitler’s Bug
I should say from the start that I’ve never owned a Volkswagen Beetle. I did learn to drive a stick shift in one of them, somewhere south of Madrid, when it was my turn to drive. Three college pals who were packed into the “Bug” with me erupted in oaths with every mistake I made….
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