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
Forty years ago, as a member of a delegation to discuss the plight of Soviet Jewry, I met Margaret Thatcher prior to her 1987 visit to meet Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow – someone she said she “could do business with.” She was remarkably informed about the Soviet refuseniks – Ida Nudel, Vladimir Slepak, and Natan … 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
One hundred years ago, the Revisionist Movement was established at the Café du Panthéon in the heart of the Latin Quarter in Paris by acculturated Russian Jews. Its leader was Vladimir Jabotinsky – an intellectual, a man of letters and a spellbinding orator, a figure often quoted by Benjamin Netanyahu. The link is not coincidental. … 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
Sky Warriors: British Airborne Forces in the Second World War Saul David, published by William Collins 2024, pp. 552 The Traitor of Arnhem: WWII’S Greatest Betrayal and the Moment that Changed History Forever Robert Verkaik, published by Headline Welbeck 2024 pp.400 Eighty years ago, thousands of Allied paratroopers jumped out of aircraft and gliders into … Read more
Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World by Martin Goodman, published by Yale University Press 2024, pp.232 There is Jewish history and there is Judaic history — the latter seen through the eyes of the rabbis and sages. Martin Goodman, an Oxford professor of Jewish Studies, has written some remarkable books which have … Read more
When Pinchas Rutenberg, one of the giants of the Zionist movement, died in 1942, his friend, the writer Moshe Smilansky described him as “a great engineer with the soul of a poet.” Nevertheless, Rutenberg is missing from the public consciousness, even among those who treasure Jewish history. He stipulated in his will that no funds should … Read more
During the last decade, British Jewry have lost several of its best-loved historians including David Cesarani, Robert Wistrich — and Martin Gilbert. Routledge has now published the ninth edition of Gilbert’s Atlas of Jewish History which last appeared in 2010. To this have been added maps about Jews in Muslim Lands and Jews in the post-Soviet era. … Read more