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
Two weeks ago, Israel joined Iran, North Korea and Belarus in opposing a UN resolution which named and condemned Russia as the aggressor in the war in Ukraine. Its central reason in following these pariah dictatorships was because Donald Trump’s America had done so. This was how Netanyahu’s government commemorated the third anniversary of the … Read more
It has been said that the Weimar Republic of post-World War I Germany died twice. It was first murdered, and then committed suicide. This incisive comment refers to the moral, political, and economic decay of German society during the Great Depression – as well as to the politicians of various right-wing parties in Germany who … Read more
Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich By Richard J. Evans, published by Allen Lane 2024, pp.598 Why did so many hitherto responsible citizens become fellow travellers in Hitler’s Germany? Why were ordinary people in their millions sucked into a whirlpool of deception? These are the questions that have been repeatedly asked since 1945. … Read more
In 1939, Nicholas Winton, with his colleagues in the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC), Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick, were responsible for bringing 669 children from Nazi-occupied Prague to the safety of the United Kingdom. Winton’s remarkable story was told in the recent film ‘One Life’, in which the brilliant Anthony Hopkins played … Read more
How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler recalls the black arts of propaganda from World War II. It is also a trumpet blast against the gullibility of today’s audiences brought up in England, told by Peter Pomerantsev, the son of a Kyiv dissident and leading expert on disinformation. In 1941, a shortwave German-language … Read more
Orphans of the Holocaust: Ottó Komoly’s Diary, Budapest 1944 By Thomas Komoly Published by Austin Macauley (London 2024) pp.205 In the northern Negev of Israel, there is a moshav, Yad Natan which reclaims the Hebrew name of one of the unsung heroes of wartime Budapest, Ottó Komoly (Natan Ze’ev Kohn) whose diplomatic initiatives amongst the … Read more