Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the Holocaust (also called the Shoah), the genocide of Europe’s Jews committed by the Nazis during World War II.
Holocaust
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News My father’s last words
“When my father was nearly on his deathbed, a last effort at surgery was attempted, and a dutiful surgeon, asking him routine questions, inquired of the cause of his parents’ death. “Gas,” my father replied. The puzzled surgeon asked him to explain himself. “Gas chamber,” my father said. ”They died of gas chamber.” My brother…
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News Herbert Karliner, outspoken survivor of the SS St. Louis, dies at 94
Herbert Karliner, one of the last survivors of the ill-fated SS St. Louis, which was forced to return to Europe in 1939 after being turned away from the United States, Cuba and Canada with more than 900 Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi Germany, died Tuesday in Aventura, Florida. He was 94. “We were so…
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Culture Why do we keep turning Holocaust survivor stories into self-help books?
On a recent segment of “The Today Show,” a cadre of well-coiffed hosts discussed the life of Eddie Jaku, a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor and the author of “The Happiest Man on Earth,” a memoir about his imprisonment in Auschwitz. Grainy photos of concentration camp prisoners alternated with clips from an interview with Jaku and videos…
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Culture Here’s a bad idea: What if Disney’s ‘Homeward Bound’ was about the Holocaust?
Animal characters have been used powerfully in Holocaust stories — think Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning graphic novel “Maus.” So even though the newest addition to the Holocaust canon, Lynn Roth’s movie “Shepherd: The Story of a Jewish Dog,” might initially raise your hackles, it seems promising. It’s based on an award-winning book, “The Jewish Dog,” by…
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Culture What if we could resolve generational trauma through…a Holocaust video game?
When I first heard about a new documentary, “Tacheles,” which follows a group of Germans designing a video game about the Holocaust, in which “Jews can defend themselves and Nazis can act humanely,” I thought it sounded like a recipe for disaster. At best, it seemed like a poorly thought-through attempt at catharsis; at worst,…
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Film & TV An Oscar winner gives new life to a classic story of exile
When Caroline Link reread “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit,” decades after she first read it for school, she underlined a passage where Swiss boys throw gravel at the young Jewish protagonist. She couldn’t wait to direct that scene. It’s a curious, if not quite startling moment in the chapter book, a 1971 semi-autobiographical novel of…
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News What makes you feel Jewish? For most Jews, Holocaust remembrance is at the top of the list.
The vast majority of American Jews view remembering the Holocaust as essential to their Jewish identities — more than religious activities like observing Jewish law or cultural ones like eating Jewish food, according to “American Jews in 2020,” released today by the Pew Research Center. More than 75% of survey respondents said that remembering the…
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Culture Prairie Sonata: A new novel of Canadian Jewish life
Read this article in Yiddish. Prairie Sonata Sandy Shefrin Rabin FriesenPress, 2020, 288 pp. Yiddish culture always had better luck in Canada than in the United States. Partly this was because Jewish immigrants to Canada were more cohesive and better organized, and Canadian society in general displayed greater respect for cultural diversity. As a result,…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Fast Forward Was the viral Ta-Nehisi Coates interview a hit piece or fair play? A journalism ethics expert weighs in.
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Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish ווירטועלע ייִדיש־קורסן וועגן טעאַטער, גנבֿים און, להבֿדיל, די פּרשיותOnline Yiddish courses about the theater, thieves and the weekly Torah portion
די ייִדיש־פּראָגראַם פֿונעם אַרבעטער־רינג נעמט אויך אַרײַן באַשעװיס־זינגערס „מײַן טאַטנס בית־דין־שטוב“
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Culture New conspiracy theory just dropped — Jews are causing the hurricanes
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Opinion Allies at odds, Netanyahu and Emmanuel Macron have more in common than they’d like to admit
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Art What if there was a flag that both Israelis and Palestinians could take pride in flying?
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