Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
To be honest, as a young Jewish woman from Los Angeles who lives in Washington D.C., I never imagined I would ever come into contact with Nazis. Despite my fears, I knew this was something I had to do. I don’t regret the decision at all.
Haredi Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi is a renowned worldwide Torah lecturer, claiming to be devoted to bringing Jews closer to Judaism. But it’s clear in light of recent remarks that his devotion to kiruv — Orthodox outreach — is anything but unificatory. It’s time that the Jewish community, regardless of affiliation, takes a stand against the…
At some point in our school careers, we learn about the horrors of the Holocaust. But what information is presented to us in that academic setting? Perhaps the teacher delves into a brief history ranging from January 1933, when Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 1945, when the Nazis surrendered. Maybe we read Anne…
Imagine that you’re 14 years old. It’s December 1936. Today, and for a while now, you’re focusing on the fact that you are leaving home. Possibly forever. Your parents bring you to the local train station with your medium-sized black suitcase, and the three of you await the arrival of the next locomotive. All you…
I, your faithful correspondent from the Colonial Motherland, just spent six days in the other motherland – Lithuania, the place from which most of my ancestors came. Other than a return in the 1990’s by my Holocaust-survivor maternal grandmother, and a similarly timed visit by my paternal grandparents, none of my “nearby” extended family…
In Matthew Vaughn’s 2011 movie X-Men: First Class, Professor Charles Xavier tries to stop his friend Magneto—controller of all things metal—from killing American and Soviet navy servicemen during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis by telling him the sailors were just “following orders.” Magneto then delivers arguably the best line of the film: “I’ve…
Seventy years ago, on April 15, 1945, the British Army liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and its 60,000 mostly Jewish, starved, and diseased prisoners. Among these prisoners was my maternal grandmother – who had survived several deportations, from Kovno (Kaunas) to Vaivara to Bergen-Belsen – and had lost her first child, first husband, and most…
My first experience with anti-Semitism was at 6 years old. Someone painted a swastika on the front gate of my school and I remember asking my dad why it upset him so much. I had a limited understanding of Nazism at that age, but I knew enough to understand when he told me simply that…
A section of this article was featured in the Daily Northwestern on September 1st, 2013. She fell into the ditch thinking she was dead. All around her she breathed and touched dying human flesh. The bullet had apparently missed her. She desperately raised her arms to push through the masses of bodies that were…
April, 1944. Just weeks after the Nazis invaded Hungary, 15-year-old Ben Lesser and his family were forced to Munkachevo, Hungary. After months of avoiding the Germans in Hungary, the town was liquidated. Lesser and his family were marched to a brick factory shadowed by freight trains. In early May, they were loaded into cattle cars….
write this piece having just returned from a fascinating lecture by Bernard Wasserstein, a prominent history professor emeritus here at the University of Chicago. The lecture roughly corresponded to a recent book of Wasserstein’s, “The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews.” Unsurprisingly, Wasserstein discussed the story of Gertrude…
For the past few weeks I’ve seen from various sources on Facebook, and most recently on Tablet, a growing concern about a potentially frightening new trend: Featured on several Amazon.com best-seller lists are e-book editions of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The first responses I’ve seen have been understandably negative, coming from some reasonably…
My high school taught about the Holocaust in English class. It was part of the unit on Elie Weisel’s Night, which is required reading for students entering tenth grade. I remember the Holocaust was nothing more than a picture of Jews in a concentration camp with an explanatory caption in my AP European history textbook….
Hitler, the Holocaust, gas chambers, Nazis, concentration camps — these all loom large in our contemporary cultural consciousness. They call forth strong feelings and evoke vivid imagery. At the same time, it is no longer surprising to encounter cheap comparisons to them. It happens all the time: You’re walking down the street, on your way to…
Some things never change… According to the New York Times archive, frats have been hosting loud and obnoxious parties since before World War I. [EV Grieve] Are you scared of gentile baby-sitters? Fear not! Your troubles are over. [Heeb] Here’s an entertaining list of American Jewish communities–with comments and reflections–where one man has spent Shabbat. Find…