Currently Browsing: Holocaust 33 articles
WandaVision and the Spectre of the Jewish Nazi
Alana Vincent The latest episode of WandaVision has re-ignited a long-running point of discomfort among Jewish comics fans, as it reminds us that in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the young Wanda Maximoff willingly joined Hydra—a shadowy successor organisation to the Third Reich—as a volunteer. Why is this an issue? Well, in the comic books, […]
‘Law Not War’
Nathan Abrams reviews Parting Words by Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor for the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The American Jewish lawyer, Benjamin Ferencz has had a remarkable life. His career, which spanned more than seven decades, is a classic rags to riches story. From miserable poverty, he became the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg […]
Flirting and philosophising – the survivors I remember
On Holocaust Memorial Day, Gloria Tessler remembers the survivors in the North London of her youth.
The Nazis’ British Blacklist
In advance of Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the Nazis’ British hitlist and who wasn’t on it. Around 1939, the Gestapo drew up a list. In the case of the Nazi occupation of the United Kingdom, some 2,600 named individuals were to be targeted for removal. They would have […]
Spartacus: A Jewish Epic
Nathan Abrams explores the Jewishness of a landmark film on its sixtieth anniversary. Conceived by Kirk Douglas and executed by Stanley Kubrick, the Roman epic Spartacus is still considered one of the best examples of its genre. It has left an indelible mark on our popular culture and has been much mimicked as well as parodied. […]
An Uncomfortable Period of British and Zionist History
Nathan Abrams reviews a new book which sheds light on an a forgotten snippet of British Imperial History. In her new book, The People on the Beach: Journeys to Freedom After the Holocaust, Rosie Whitehouse explores that forgotten period in Britain’s history, the years between the end of the Second World War and the birth […]
A Journey through Central Europe
Deborah Friedland’s travelogue reflects on the Jewish history of Central Europe. That we, as Jews, born in the decades after World War II, have a difficult relationship with central Europe is self-evident. Historians provide us with the facts, writers their biographies, filmmakers a record lest we forget a culture that was so swiftly and purposefully […]
Masks, Jews and the Holocaust
Nathan Abrams explores the similarities between rightwing Americans and orthodox Jews over their refusal to wear masks. The wearing of masks has evoked contradictory emotions and reactions. Some see it as an important means to halt the spread of Covid-19, as well as a sign of social consideration and altruism. Others have politicised the issue, […]
Borat 2’s Hilarious Holocaust Chutzpah
Borat is back and the new movie is chock full of Jewish jokes and humour some small, some writ large. As the titular Borat Sagdiyev, the Jew-hating, yet paradoxically Hebrew-speaking, Kazakh reporter, Sacha Baron Cohen again treats us to a gloriously jaw-dropping, hilarious exercise in physical slapstick and verbal humour. Take the chameleonic performances of […]
Metal and the Holocaust: Feeling the ‘Gut-Punch’ of History
Dominic Williams considers whether and how metal music can help us ‘feel’ the Holocaust.