Jewish history

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  10/8/2020
  

  Holocaust Survivor's Daughter in Legal Battle With Historian over Claim of Lesbian Liaison with Nazi Guard

  Hájková, who is researching the queer history of the Holocaust, said testimonies by survivors of the camps and legal documents from the guard’s trial led her to conclude that the two women might have had a lesbian relationship, either coercive or consensual. However, she acknowledged that there was no definite proof of this.

• 
• 10/18/2020
  

  Fraught Family Reunification After the Holocaust

  by Rebecca Clifford

  "A tenth of Europe's pre-war population of Jewish children survived the Holocaust. Many sought and achieved reunification with their families, but reunification did not usually end the trauma endured by this "fragment of an entire generation."

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• SOURCE: Society for U.S. Intellectual History
  9/28/2020
  

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Abraham Lincoln, and American Jewish History

  by Rebecca Brenner Graham

  Public mourning for Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a prominent Jewish American evokes Abraham Lincoln's role in supporting Jews in Civil War service, and the Jewish community's mourning after his assassination.

• 
• SOURCE: Patheos
  9/22/2020
  

  RBG, Historian: Why Justice Requires Memory

  by Chris Gehrz

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg's sense of justice was informed by a clear view of the path of American history and the knowledge that change toward equality was neither automatic nor unidirectional.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/19/2020
  

  How Jewish History and the Holocaust Fueled Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Quest for Justice

  by Gillian Brockell

  The passing of the Supreme Court Justice is occasion to review her 2004 address to the U.S. Holocaust Museum. 

• 
• SOURCE: Forward
  8/24/2020
  

  The Passing of Pioneering Historian Moses Rischin Marks the End of an Era

  by Jonathan Sarna

  Moses Rischin, the last survivor among the bold group of scholars who created the field of American Jewish history following World War II, died last week in San Francisco at the age of 94. His passing marks the end of an era.

• 
• SOURCE: Times of Israel
  

  US Holocaust Survivor Who Spent Decades Fighting For Family’s Looted Art Dies

  Family of biochemist and tabletop designer Martha Nierenberg, 96, says they’ll continue legal battle for art collection, stolen by the Nazis and still held by Hungary.

• 
• 7/3/2020
  

  New Novel "The Collaborator" Explores the Moral Ambiguities of a Holocaust Rescuer

  by Diane Armstrong

  Do we have the right to judge the actions of people in life and death situations? Are we honour-bound to keep promises, no matter to whom they were made, and in what situations? Can a man be a hero and a collaborator?

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  6/29/2020
  

  In Search of King David’s Lost Empire

  The evidence of David’s life is sparse. Was he an emperor? A local king? Or, as Biblical archaeologist Israel Finkelstein claims, a Bedouin sheikh?

• 
• 6/14/2020
  

  The SS Officer's Armchair

  by Daniel Lee

  The discovery of a trove of documents in an old armchair led the author on a five-year search for information about a previously anonymous Nazi, whose history intersected with the author's family in surprising ways.

• 
• 5/3/2020
  

  Lessons on Isolation and Humanity in a Family's Letters from Hiding

  by Daphne Geismar

  A virus doesn’t discriminate. But our social structures, systemic biases, and policy choices have made some populations particularly vulnerable. This pandemic has changed us. We must make changes so this tragedy, like the Holocaust, isn’t repeated.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/7/2020
  

  What Were the Origins of the Holocaust?

  A review of German historian Gotz Aly's new book "Europe Against the Jews: 1880-1945."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/11/2020
  

  Ruth B. Mandel, a Voice for Women in Politics, Dies at 81

  Her experience fleeing the Nazis on the doomed “Voyage of the Damned” informed her faith in democracy as head of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish News
  3/22/2020
  

  Czech Museum Director Fired

  Director of the Lidice memorial, Martina Lehmannová, was let go amid accusations that the government is trying to whitewash inconvenient facts to suit its preferred narrative.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  3/19/2020
  

  Civic Republicanism: Good for the Jews

  The ancient roots of communal liberty.

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish News of Northern California
  2/26/2020
  

  This Historian Draws Lessons About Family Separation at U.S.-Mexico Border from Kindertransport Artifacts

  Craig-Norton’s findings offer parallels to the migrant child-parent separation issues of today and provide valuable lessons.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/23/20
  

  A Bittersweet Homecoming for Egypt’s Jews

  A rare ceremony at an ancient synagogue brought 180 Jews back to Egypt, decades after they were pressured to leave. But few Egyptians knew about it, highlighting government ambivalence.

• 
• SOURCE: Haaretz
  2/18/20
  

  George Steiner: The Last Viennese Jew

  by Arie M. Dubnov

  The Holocaust was an impulsive rebellion by 'polytheistic instincts' against the 'noble tyranny' of Jewish monotheism, claimed Jewish American essayist and literary critic George Steiner, who passed away this month, aged 90.

• 
• SOURCE: Retropolis
  1/27/20
  

  The first transport of Jews to Auschwitz was 997 teenage girls. Few survived.

  Though Auschwitz was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945, most of the surviving girls weren’t there to see it.

• 
• 1/26/20
  

  BBC Whitewashes U.S. Refusal to Bomb Auschwitz

  by Rafael Medoff

  The new BBC documentary about the question of bombing Auschwitz deserves an award—for creative fiction. Through omissions, distortions, and “re-enactments” of conversations with imaginary dialogue inserted for effect, the BBC has made a shambles of the historical record concerning this important issue.