This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Two monuments to Nazi collaborators discovered hiding in plain sight near Detroit and Philadelphia
The Forward has over the last three years documented more than 1,600 monuments, memorials and streets honoring Holocaust perpetrators and Third Reich collaborators in 30 countries. That includes 42 in 16 U.S. states. New entries: One of the newly discovered monuments sits in a Catholic cemetery outside Philadelphia, the other on the side of a Ukrainian credit union building in Warren, Michigan, a city of 140,000 people near Detroit. Both appear to date back to the early 1990s. Soldiers of war: Both monuments honor the SS Galichina, a unit created in 1943 out of recruits from the Galicia region in western Ukraine. The soldiers took an oath of loyalty to Hitler and were trained by the Third Reich. Oy Canada: After the war, thousands of SS Galichina fighters who had surrendered to the Allies were freed and allowed to resettle in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. They formed veterans’ associations and erected monuments. In 2020, B’nai Brith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center called for the removal of two in Canada, but they both remain standing. |
James McBride’s latest novel is ‘The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.’ (Riverhead Books) |
The next great American novel is about disability and Jewishness: James McBride burst onto the literary scene with his 1995 memoir, which chronicled his upbringing as the child of a Black reverend and a white Jewish mother whose family shunned and sat shiva for her over her marriage. His new novel, out this month, explores the dynamic of Black-Jewish relations in a small Pennsylvania town. “The current synagogue shares space with a Black church,” McBride said. “So it seemed like a logical place to set the story.” Read the story ➤ Can a Jewish philosopher held prisoner of war help explain the power of Trump’s mug shot? Born to an Orthodox family in Lithuania in 1906, Emmanuel Levinas “believed that every human is fundamentally beyond knowing,” writes historian Rob Zaretsky, and that the face radiates “the naked and living presence of the other. Each and every face, utterly unique, is connected with every other face, Levinas posited in a turn to Jewish mysticism, because every face reveals the trace of God.” Read the essay ➤ Plus… - If you’ve been watching the U.S. Open this week, you’ve likely heard the announcers use the term “bagel.” Here’s why.
- When a Los Angeles wine bar and restaurant announced that it was hosting two “nights of dope music, Israeli food & natural wines,” all hell broke loose.
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Beit Shemesh Mayor Aliza Bloch at the Knesset in Jerusalem in January. (Ohad Zwigenberg) |
? Aliza Bloch was elected in 2018 as the first female mayor of Beit Shemesh, the commuter town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She’s now running for reelection amidst an increasingly Haredi electorate. On Tuesday evening, dozens of rioters hurled objects at a school she was visiting, started a fire and vandalized her car. It’s the second such mob assault against the mayor in two months. (Haaretz, Times of Israel) ? A 42-year-old mother of three from England was unmasked as a contestant in the “Miss Hitler” online beauty pageant. This year’s winner will be announced on Sunday. (Daily Mail, Simon Wiesenthal Center) ? In what some are calling an antisemitic incident, police are investigating after a Jewish fraternity at the University of California, Berkeley, reported finding hundreds of shellfish dumped all over its property. (J. The Jewish News of Northern California) ?? In a sign that Saudi Arabia is making efforts to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, the kingdom offered to resume funding to the Palestinian Authority, which could be used to crack down on militant groups and violence in the West Bank. (WSJ) ✝️ A Lutheran pastor indicted alongside former President Trump for allegedly attempting to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 election results, has returned to his pulpit. (Religion News Service) ? A march in New York to push for stronger efforts to curb climate change is scheduled for the second day of Rosh Hashanah — a move that some Jewish climate activists say excludes them. (JTA) ? Best headline of the day: “Shabbos goy” of 30 years found to be Jewish. (Arutz Sheva) What else we’re reading ➤ Luxury villas are going up in a Palestinian boomtown … Jews were slaughtered in this forest. Now they are back … What Hollywood gets right and wrong about b’nai mitzvah. |
Dr. Oliver Sacks speaking in 2009 at Columbia University. (Getty) |
On this day in history (2015): Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and writer, died of cancer. Sacks gained recognition for his popular case histories of patients with rare afflictions, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, and continued to write about the mind through non-fiction, essays and memoirs. In his final book, On the Move, Sacks, a secular Jew, wrote about his nostalgic craving for gefilte fish. Behind the bylines: Following the Holocaust, New York City absorbed more than 140,000 survivors. In the past year, some 90,000 Latin American migrants have poured into the city. Like the refugees 75 years ago, today’s asylum seekers are lodged in hotels and empty offices, among other places. Andrew Silverstein reported for the Forward on these parallels and will be speaking about his story on Saturday, Sept. 9 at 9 p.m. ET at Congregation Ansche Chesed in Manhattan. More info here ➤ |
A dead male humpback whale washed ashore this week on the beach in Netanya, north of Tel Aviv. Marine biologists are studying the carcass. — Thanks to Rebecca Salzhauer and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Beth Harpaz for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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