Holocaust

JTA – In late April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Jerusalem, voicing support for West Bank settlements, touting a law he had just signed giving families thousands of dollars per year in private school tuition vouchers and signing a bill that increased penalties for antisemitic harassment. Two weeks later, his…

Movies Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Steve McQueen’s Occupied City come up with radical approaches to portraying this atrocity. Scenes from The Zone of Interest (left) and Occupied City (right). Photo illustration by Slate. Photos via A24. The most chilling moment in Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour Holocaust documentary Shoah…

The Nazis may have stripped Holocaust survivor Marie Doduck of her childhood, but they could never take her stories. Doduck was five when soldiers invaded her hometown of Brussels, Belgium, in 1940 and she was forced into hiding for years, until the war ended and she was sent to Canada…

“That’s what you deserved, they did too little to you…” This kind of message was left in the visitors’ book of impressions at the Holocaust Memorial Center in North Macedonia. This message is now gone. When they notice these types of messages, the staff of the center change the books…

There are movies that confirm your place in the world, pictures that let you know you’re on the right track, capable of resolving any puzzle put before you. And then there are those that make you feel like the tiniest speck in the cosmos, a sentient but tentative being whose…

Attending a gala screening at the Cannes Film Festival is a strange experience. No matter what movie is playing, men are in tuxes and women are in formalwear. Pop music and oldies blast on the red carpet. Cameras snap celebrities in Chopard jewels and occasionally random attendees who have put…

The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer with producers James Wilson and Ewa Puszczynska, and cast members Sandra Huller and Christian Friedel. (REUTERS/Yara Nardi) Cannes Film Festival unleashed Jonathan Glazer's highly-anticipated The Zone of Interest on Friday. Based on the 2014 novel from author Martin Amis, this one centers on…

On the eve of International Museums Day, the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum reiterated the city’s historical role in providing sanctuary to Jews during World War II.  At a meeting Wednesday, the museum gathered representatives from significant Jewish museums and institutions, as well as scholars and former Jewish refugees and their…

(May 17, 2023 / JNS) U.S. President Joe Biden announced his intent on May 17 to appoint 10 people to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Among the nominees are American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch; Rabbi Michael Beals (whom the president calls “my rabbi”) of Congregation Beth Shalom, a…

I started my rabbinical career 42 years ago, when I served as an assistant rabbi at a large, urban synagogue in Miami, Florida. Those were interesting and challenging times. I arrived in the wake of the Mariel boat lift. I experienced the plight of the Haitian refugees.  Those were the…