Jewish history

• 
• SOURCE: Forward
  9/13/2021
  

  A Fringe Group Attacked Anne Frank; A Writer Reflects on How Her Story Became Central to School Lessons

  "Something has gone wrong if the diary is taught widely while our current struggles with racism are verboten in schools. I took a deep dive into how her story has been studied, taught, rewritten — and exploited."

• 
• 8/22/2021
  

  The International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War were the First Jewish Resistance to Fascism

  by Giles Tremlett

  The International Brigades drew 35,000 volunteers to oppose the forces of fascism in 1936, including 5,000 Jews, who deserve recognition as the first armed fighters against the political movement that culminated in the Holocaust.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  8/16/2021
  

  Appeals Court Sides with Polish Holocaust Historians

  The decision is seen as a victory for historians and academic freedom in a Polish political climate where denying Polish complicity in the Holocaust is part of right-wing politics. 

• 
• 8/15/2021
  

  Educating Teen Holocaust Survivors Holds Lessons for Teaching after Trauma

  by Bernice Lerner

  The author's mother survived Bergen-Belsen and was relocated to an experimental school in rural Sweden. Can her experiences and those of other young women students (and their teachers) shed light on the challenges of educating traumatized children?  

• 
• 8/15/2021
  

  Prologue to Annihilation: An Interview with Stephen Norwood

  by Eunice G. Pollack

  Stephen Norwood's new book focuses on the response of British and American Jews to rising antisemitism in the early 1930s, a period less frequently studied by Holocaust historians than the years after Kristalnacht.

• 
• 8/1/2021
  

  "Without Pressure from Germany": Hungary's Revisionist History of the Deportation of 18,000 Jews

  by Karl Pfeifer

  The Hungarian government has sought to deny and obscure its responsibility for the deportation of Jews beginning in 1941. 

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish Currents
  7/28/2021
  

  Selling the Holocaust?

  Writer Menachem Kaiser discusses the genre of Holocaust writing and the engagment of the generation of grandchildren of survivors with Jewish Currents editors Arielle Angel and Maia Ipp. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/24/2021
  

  Spain Pledged Citizenship to Sephardic Jews. Now They Feel Betrayed

  The Spanish government has recently begun rejecting most applications for citizenship from the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain during the Inquisition; most applicants under the initiative launched in 2015 had been accepted. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
  7/9/2021
  

  UIC Prof. Richard S. Levy, One of the Foremost Experts on the History of Antisemitism, Dead at 81

  In addition to many articles, translations and contributions to books, Mr. Levy edited the two-volume 2005 book “Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution.”

• 
• 7/4/2021
  

  My Parents' Survival Story Implies A Broader 'Intersectionality'

  by Ralph Seliger

  The attack on Baghdad's Jews in 1941 underscores the ongoing vulnerability of Jews to mob violence. 

• 
• SOURCE: Forward
  6/28/2021
  

  The Surfside Disaster is Our Generation's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Moment

  by Hannah Lebovits

  The deadly collapse of the Surfside condo building near Miami should be a call for Jewish Americans to protest for reform in the way that Jewish immigrant workers did after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/18/2021
  

  Children of the Holocaust Who Are Anonymous No More

  Researchers using digital enhancement have been able to identify some passengers filmed on a train transporting them to concentration camps; some of those identified are survivors. 

• 
• SOURCE: 60 Minutes
  5/9/2021
  

  The Ritchie Boys

  Stories from members of the Ritchie Boys, a secret U.S. WWII intelligence unit bolstered by German-born Jews.

• 
• 5/9/2021
  

  Reflections on Russia's "Victory Day"

  by Nadya Williams

  Russia's observance of Victory Day prompts reflection on the ways Holocaust survivors and their descendants lived lives shaped by this trauma. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/26/2021
  

  My Grandparents’ Immigration Lies Shaped My Father’s View of Justice

  by Daniela Gerson

  "My father knew all too well what happens when legal pathways do not exist for people to enter this country: They find alternative ways in, just as his own family had."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  4/18/2021
  

  My Grandfather Fled the Nazis. I Moved to His Old Neighborhood

  by Laura Moser

  The writer reflects on the meaning of her journey as an American Jew to first claim German citizenship and then move to the town her grandfather had fled. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  4/15/2021
  

  Scholars Fear Impact of Poland's Law on the Holocaust

  Poland's right-wing government has sought to promote a narrative of national victimhood by the forces of Nazism and Communism. Historians who study the participation or complicity of Poles in the Holocaust face a threat of legal action that historian Audrey Kichelewski says is chilling. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/30/2021
  

  Philip Roth Was His Own Favorite Subject. What’s Left for a Biographer?

  Blake Bailey's new biography of the novelist Philip Roth represented a challenge not least because of Roth's notorious resistance to getting the biographical treatment, but also because of the weakness of the literary biographical tradition in American letters. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  4/6/2021
  

  Philanthropy and the “Jewish Continuity Crisis”

  by Hadas Binyamini

  The particular focus of some large Jewish philanthropic organizations on promoting Zionism and denouncing intermarriage reflects changes in the broader philanthropic universe: private wealth supplanting the welfare state, and rules encouraging charities to invest and amass wealth, and the focus on nuclear families as social units.

• 
• 4/4/2021
  

  Hidden Stories of Jewish Resistance in Poland

  by Judy Batalion

  I was fascinated by the widespread resistance efforts of Polish Jews, but equally by their absence from current understandings of the war. Of all the legions of Holocaust tales, what had happened to this one?