Author: Tsvi Bisk, 354 pages, Paperback, First published October 12, 2015, Contento Now, ISBN 9789655504866 As far back as 2003 with the publication of Futurizing the Jews futurist co-author Tsvi Bisk used the tools of forecasting to suggest where the Jewish people in general, and Israel in particular, should be going. He warned against defensiveness, a fetish … [Read more…]
Linenthal, Edward Tabor. 1995. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-86067-0. HB $27.95. Contrary to popular impression, a museum can be understood as both a dynamic process as well as a relatively stable place. Indeed, a case can be made that much of its “soul,” so to speak, is endlessly in flux, albeit a museum’s bricks-and-mortar substance … [Read more…]
Henry, Patrick. 2104. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America. Name and Subject Index. Even before the end of the Second World War the pernicious notion that Jewish victims had gone like “sheep to the slaughter” was widespread. To the shame of us all, it persists today as a shadowy aspect of the public’s misunderstanding of the response … [Read more…]
Friling, Tuvia. 2014. A Jewish Kapo in Auschwitz: History, Memory, and the Politics of Survival. Walham, MASS: Brandeis University Press. Bibliography. Index. 325 PP. On May 22, 1948, two years or so after arriving in Israel and just short of turning 40 Eliezer Gruenbaum was killed in the battle of Ramat Rachel. Another far longer “battle” cast a … [Read more…]
Gisella Perl. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2019 edition of a 1948 book. Introduction by Phyllis Lassner and Danny M. Cohen; Afterword by Eva Hoffman. 125pp. Index. ISBN 9781498583947 pbk. Thanks to academics Phyllis Lassner and Danny M. Cohen a 2019 edition of an out-of-print 1948 memoir by Dr. Gisella Perl, a Rumanian Holocaust survivor, offers much … [Read more…]
Avril Alba. 2015. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-45135-4. 272 pages. Among its many incarnations the Holocaust has been “Americanized,” “indigenized,” “nationalized,” and “politicized.” (p.193) In her bold, often elegant, and highly significant 2015 book Dr. Avril Alba, a Lecturer in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical, and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney, adds eternalized to the … [Read more…]
by Ronald J. Diller. 2020. Brookline, Mass: Cherry Orchard Books. ISBN 9781644695067. 113 pp. Index. To learn about the Holocaust experience of European Jews we must supplement academic material and keenly listen to survivors, as authenticity, insights, and surprises are uniquely valuable. From Darkness to Light is a 2020 collection of six short testimonies from four elderly Jewish … [Read more…]
BOOK REVIEW: The Holocaust Memorial Museum: Sacred Secular Space, by Avril Alba. 2015. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-45135-4. 272 pages. Among its many incarnations the Holocaust has been “Americanized,” “indigenized,” “nationalized,” and “politicized.” (p.193) In her bold, often elegant, and highly significant 2015 book Dr. Avril Alba, a Lecturer in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical, … [Read more…]
From Darkness to Light: Testimonies of Six Holocaust Survivors, edited by Ronald J. Diller. 2020. Brookline, Mass: Cherry Orchard Books. ISBN 9781644695067. 113 pp. Index. To learn about the Holocaust experience of European Jews we must supplement academic material and keenly listen to survivors, as authenticity, insights, and surprises are uniquely valuable. From Darkness to Light is a 2020 … [Read more…]
A Moral CompassArthur Shostak[*] Roses in a Forbidden Garden: A Holocaust Love Story, by Elise Garibaldi, Mount Vernon, NY, Decalogue Books, 2016, 236 pp., $19.95 (paper) Along with its intriguing subtitle, so rare among Holocaust-related publications, this book has five distinctive merits. First, it sheds light on a significant type of Jewish prisoner, specifically, a Jewish … [Read more…]