Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called a meeting of ministerial colleagues and interested parties to discuss the threat from the Kremlin to close down the Jewish Agency for Israel in Russia – a body which facilitates the emigration of Jews from that country. Many were unsure whether the Kremlin’s move was merely intimidatory … Read more
A few weeks ago, the urbane Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, came out with a bizarre statement to Italian television that Hitler was of “Jewish blood” and that “the most ardent antisemites are, as a rule, Jews”. Jews, therefore, only had themselves to blame for millennia of persecution and extermination. They had brought it upon … Read more
Many believe that Bulgaria, like Denmark, saved its Jews from the Nazi death camps. The book The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust (Rowman and Littlefield) by Jacky Comforty, together with Martha Aladjem Bloomfield, tells a different story. It is a narrative that recalls Bulgaria’s alliance with Hitler to regain territory in … Read more
The remarks of Sergei Lavrov to Italian television last Sunday that Hitler was of ‘Jewish blood’ and that ‘the most ardent antisemites were Jews’ shocked Jews around the world. Deliberate or not, they caused a rupture between Moscow and Jerusalem. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid reacted personally — as Jews. The late father of the … Read more
LONDON THEATRE-GOERS have been flocking to see the revival of Cabaret and marvelled at the decadence and hedonism of the famed Kit Kat Klub in Weimar Germany. The production was, of course, characterised by the rise of Nazism and dark visions of an impending doom. Yet in the minds of many a mesmerised audience during recent weeks, … Read more
In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution and the Rise of Nazism by Michael Brenner, translated by Jeremiah Riemer, published by Princeton University Press 2022, pp.392 In the immediate aftermath of the sudden defeat in the First World War in 1918, Munich — before the appearance of Hitler on the political stage — emerged as ‘the … Read more
“PUTIN IS ABSOLUTELY insane! He is the super villain of today!” So spoke Volodomyr Vysotski of the Jewish Social Initiative in the Ukraine in a recent interview with the BBC. This is a blunt assessment with which the vast majority of Jews will agree. The threat to use tactical nuclear weapons and the presence of … Read more
One hundred years ago in 1922, the Nazis were just another fringe nationalist group, wallowing in the humiliation of sudden defeat in World War I. Under the terms of the Versailles agreement, Germany lost territory to Poland, Belgium and France, its colonies, its foreign investments — and owed reparations of 132 billion goldmarks. Defeat spawned … Read more
The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1993: Between Zionism and Antisemitism Ed. Alessandra TarquiniPublished by Palgrave Macmillan 2021, pp.352 While many look to the rise of both Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany to understand the Left’s evolution on the Jewish question, one period of time that is often overlooked is that of fin de … Read more
Seventy years ago this week, Mordechai Oren, an Israeli emissary of the left wing Zionist party, Mapam, mysteriously disappeared in Prague. He was due to go by train to Vienna and then take the next El Al flight to Israel. As the days went by, his friends and family became increasingly worried at the sound … Read more