Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of World War II, the global conflict during which Nazi Germany perpetrated the Holocaust.
World War II
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Fast Forward Vienna Inaugurates Monument to World War II Deserters
Austria inaugurated a monument on Friday to thousands of its nationals who deserted Hitler’s army during World War Two, marking a new step in efforts to acknowledge the nation’s wartime past. Germany annexed Austria in 1938, making it part of Hitler’s Third Reich that wrought destruction across the continent and slaughtered millions of Jews in…
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Fast Forward 70 Years After Death in Battle, Jewish Soldier Buried at Arlington
Private First Class Daniel Gavrin, declared missing in 1944, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in a Jewish ceremony. Gavrin was given full military honors on Friday, and a flag was handed to his nephew, David Rogers. Gavrin was part of an invasion force in Saipan, then occupied by Japan, in June 1944….
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Culture How Military Photos Testify to Our Place — in World War II and Gaza
I’ve been thinking a lot about photographs lately. No, not selfies, but the black-and-white images of people, usually of family members, that stand stiffly at attention on a mantelpiece or on a side table in the living room. Neatly contained in a frame fashioned out of wood or metal, these pictures infuse domestic space with…
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The Schmooze World War II Through a German Prism
“Generation War” (a hit in Germany as “Our Mothers Our Fathers”) is a must see for those who view World War II /Holocaust films as a kind of cinematic rosary of remembrance. With a Tolstoyan “War & Peace” sweep, its brutal battles as bloody and grim as those in Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” it is…
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News Fan of Romania’s World War Two Pro-Nazi Leader Drops Bid for Office
An admirer of Romania’s pro-Nazi leader during World War II withdrew his candidacy for a slot on the country’s constitutional court amid protests by Jewish groups. Lucian Bolcas, a former leader within the nationalist Greater Romania Party, announced his withdrawal on Monday shortly after meeting with Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta. “I do not wish…
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The Schmooze Slideshow: Departures, Experiments and ‘Degenerate’ Art
Among the Nazis’ persecuted minorities were Jewish and non-Jewish artists, musicians and writers branded “degenerate” by the regime. “Radical Departures: The Modernist Experiment,” an exhibition currently showing at the Leo Baeck Institute/Center for Jewish History in New York, gathers together work by these “degenerate” artists, including Georg Stahl, Samson Schames, David Ludwig Bloch and others….
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Books Soviet Literature in Dark Times
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translated by Ezra Glinter. When I bought Natalia Gromova’s book, “The Downfall: The Fate of a Soviet Critic in the 1940 and ‘50s,” it didn’t occur to me that it would have a Jewish dimension. I’m generally interested in this period and in this subject, and…
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The Schmooze A German Sniper’s Silent Love
“Den Zverya,” a new film by Russian director Mikhail Konovalchuk, must be one of the few foreign films screened this year at a North American film festival without subtitles. That’s because the movie, which runs 84 minutes and is titled either “The Sniper” or “The Day of the Beast” in English, is completely without dialogue….
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