Nazi Germany
The Last BooksWednesday, May 1, 2013 by Jonathan Brent | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The invisible structures created by the Jewish people of Eastern Europe over a thousand years were given shape and transmitted through the books and the documents collected by YIVO. These structures still move us. If we do not know what they are, we do not know ourselves.
The Betrayal of Salonika’s JewsThursday, April 18, 2013 by Andrew Apostolou | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When the Germans entered Salonika on April 6, 1941, they found a willing cadre of collaborators and a broad section of Greek Christian opinion hostile to the Jews.
Shani Boianjiu and the Past and Present of Jewish LiteratureWednesday, March 20, 2013 by Melissa Weininger | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Israeli writer Shani Boianjiu's first novel, composed in English, is a rare contemporary addition to the Jewish tradition of transnational literature.
World War II and the Impossibility of Polish HistoryWednesday, February 27, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Must any history of Poland in the Second World War therefore put the Jews and the Holocaust at the center? If it does not, is that originality or revisionism?
Life Goes OnMonday, February 4, 2013 by Jonathan Gondelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Life Goes On, by German-Jewish novelist Hans Keilson, had been forgotten since the Nazis banned it in 1934. Now, a year after Keilson's death, it has been translated into English.
A Voice Saying Something RightTuesday, January 29, 2013 by David Curzon | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Poet Harvey Shapiro, who passed away this month at age 88, captured in plain words the mystery of everyday life, the trauma of war, and the grandeur of Jewish tradition.
From Reparations to AtonementMonday, January 28, 2013 by Ismar Schorsch | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Where recognition of the Holocaust was once restricted to the office of the Chancellor, there is a grassroots commitment in today's Germany to take ownership of the past.
Gun Control, Halakhah, and History: Further ThoughtsTuesday, January 22, 2013 by Shlomo M. Brody | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
While the use of weaponry is at times morally necessary, the glorification of weaponry is foreign to Jewish thought.
Jews, Law, and Human RightsThursday, December 27, 2012 by Michael Pinto-Duschinsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
International human rights institutions were created as a response to the Holocaust. But, in recent years, they have been turned against Jews and Israel. [Part I of II]
The PeacemakerMonday, November 26, 2012 by Seth Lipsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
About Menachem Begin the thing that I remember most was the way he talked. Begin wouldn’t say that he was born on the eve of the First World War; he’d say, as he did when a group of us from the Wall Street Journal interviewed him in 1981, that he was born “into” World War I.
Editors' Picks
"I Was a Nazi, and Here's Why" Helen Epstein, New Yorker. In 1963, Melita Maschmann published a memoir of her Nazi youth. Fifty years later, she is remembered by her best childhood friend—and first victim.
No Master Builder Michael Sorkin, Nation. A new book resurrects the notion that Nazi architect Albert Speer’s work has artistic merit. It doesn’t.
“Hitler's Reign of Terror” Emily Greenhouse, New Yorker. A 1934 documentary of Nazi oppression might have galvanized America against Hitler; but under pressure from Germany, the film was banned.
Ghosts of Scandals Past Rafael Medoff, JNS. Seventy years ago, FDR used the IRS to target a group lobbying for the rescue of Jews from Nazi Germany; but Roosevelt's investigators ended up as sympathizers.
Our Mothers, Our Fathers Thomas Rogers, New Republic. A new German miniseries depicting the cruelty of soldiers during World War II shows that "the crimes of the Wehrmacht are no longer a taboo," but "a well-integrated theme in German history."
The Nazis' Forgotten Victims Götz Aly, Spiegel. 'There was no resistance to the euthanasia murders from the leftist or secular side of society. It was and remains part of the modern age and progressive thought." (Interview by Susanne Beyer)
The Path of Most Resistance Benjamin Ginsburg, GovStud. It is commonly assumed that European Jews made little effort to resist the Nazis. But, if we "look for resistance where it was possible to resist," then "we come to a very different conclusion."
Schindler's List Turns 20 Tom Carson, American Prospect. The reverence for Schindler's List as "the" Holocaust story "amounts to a posthumous marginalization of every innocent Hitler succeeded in killing."
A Marriage Made in Hell Rafael Medoff, JNS. Seventy-five years ago this week, German troops entered Austria to impose the Anschluss—and found the people, in the words of Sigmund Freud, "entirely at one with their brothers in the Reich."
The Brothers Göring Gerhard Spörl, Spiegel. While Hermann Göring was Hitler's right-hand man, Albert Göring took advantage of his older brother’s protection to rescue Jews. But Albert Göring remains unrecognized at Yad Vashem.