STALIN’S APOSTLES: THE CAMBRIDGE FIVE AND THE MAKING OF THE SOVIET EMPIREBy Antonia SeniorPublished by PublicAffairs, 480 pages; $29 From the 1930s up until Stalin’s death in 1953, six million people were sent to the Soviet Gulag. A quarter did not survive. Another 16-17 million were transported to strict regime labor camps, where the death rate … Read more
A couple of weeks ago, there was an early morning fire near a major kosher supermarket in London’s Golders Green. Many feared that this was yet another assault on the Jewish community. It coincided with the breaking news that the pro-Iranian Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq had been behind 18 attacks in Europe. The group was … Read more
GORDON BROWN: POWER WITH PURPOSEBy James MacintyreBloomsbury Publishing336 pages Gordon Brown was prime minister of the United Kingdom between 2007 and 2010. For a decade before that, he managed the country’s finances as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His public persona projected a dour countenance, a son of the Manse (a house for Protestant clergy in Scotland), and … Read more
According to recent polls of American Jews, organised by GBAO Strategies and by the Jewish Electorate Institute, between 55 and 60 per cent oppose United States’ military action against Iran. In one poll, 77 per cent expressed their belief that President Donald Trump does not have a plan for the conduct of the war. It marks a … Read more
Ian Buruma has written many fine works of nonfiction, which include books about Spinoza and Churchill. But his book Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-1945 is personal. It is a story of anti-Nazi Germans, mischlings (people of non-Aryan origin), and the odyssey and observations of Buruma’s own father, Leo, who was sent from Holland to work in Germany … Read more
■Review of WORLD ENEMY NO. 1NAZI GERMANY, SOVIET RUSSIA, AND THE FATE OF THE JEWSBy Jochen Hellbeck, Penguin Press, 560 pages; $22 Nazis called the Soviet Union “the most powerful Jewish organization in the world.” Hitler viewed the Jews as the guiding force behind Bolshevism, and the preponderance of Jews in its upper echelons – Trotsky, Zinoviev, … Read more
During the last couple of weeks, President Trump’s helter-skelter ride – from Minneapolis to Venezuela, from Iran to Greenland – has transfixed onlookers around the world. White House acolytes have genuflected amidst a standing ovation on his every word. Europeans have wrung their hands in silence and hoped for a parallel universe. Many concerned Diaspora … Read more
Last month, the Argentinian government declassified an official file relating to the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. He was known as “the Angel of Death” for his sadistic experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. The release of documentation came about after pressure from Republicans in the US Senate and indicates that the Argentinian authorities knew exactly … Read more
Thirty years ago, Yitzhak Rabin, the then prime minister of Israel, was assassinated as he left a peace rally in Tel Aviv. He had been cut down essentially because he had signed a Declaration of Principles – the Oslo Accord – with Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in September 1993. The killing … Read more
38 LONDRES STREET: ON IMPUNITY, PINOCHET IN ENGLAND AND A NAZI IN PATAGONIA By Philippe Sands Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 480 pages; In the autumn of 1998, the former president of Chile Augusto Pinochet was awakened from his slumber by several British policemen as he lay in bed recovering from a back operation at … Read more