AS THE WAR in Ukraine enters its second month, it is clear that Russian forces have been unable to secure a quick victory. The Ukrainian population, including its 30% Russian speakers, have fiercely opposed the invaders and united most of the international community behind it. Five Russian major-generals have been killed, together with thousands of … Read more
In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution and the Rise of Nazism by Michael Brenner, translated by Jeremiah Riemer, published by Princeton University Press 2022, pp.392 In the immediate aftermath of the sudden defeat in the First World War in 1918, Munich — before the appearance of Hitler on the political stage — emerged as ‘the … Read more
“PUTIN IS ABSOLUTELY insane! He is the super villain of today!” So spoke Volodomyr Vysotski of the Jewish Social Initiative in the Ukraine in a recent interview with the BBC. This is a blunt assessment with which the vast majority of Jews will agree. The threat to use tactical nuclear weapons and the presence of … Read more
One hundred years ago in 1922, the Nazis were just another fringe nationalist group, wallowing in the humiliation of sudden defeat in World War I. Under the terms of the Versailles agreement, Germany lost territory to Poland, Belgium and France, its colonies, its foreign investments — and owed reparations of 132 billion goldmarks. Defeat spawned … Read more
The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1993: Between Zionism and Antisemitism Ed. Alessandra TarquiniPublished by Palgrave Macmillan 2021, pp.352 While many look to the rise of both Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany to understand the Left’s evolution on the Jewish question, one period of time that is often overlooked is that of fin de … Read more
“YOU HAVE SAT there too long for all the good you have done. In the name of God, go.” So spoke Leo Amery MP to Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons in the wake of British military failures before the Nazi advance in 1940. These words, originally attributed to Oliver Cromwell during the English … Read more
The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1992: Between Zionism and Antisemitism ed. Alessandra Tarquini Published by Palgrave Macmillan 2021 pp.348 This book of accessible essays by specialists examines the Jewish question, not internally from the perspective of Jews themselves, but externally by European socialist thinkers. Since Zionism was a singular ideology and did not fit … Read more
New Year, 1953. British Jews looked forward to a year far better than the one that had just passed. In the summer of 1952, they had watched in horror the trial in Moscow, and subsequent execution, of Jewish writers and poets. This was followed by the false conviction and killing of Jewish communists in Prague … Read more
LAST WEEK, THE killer of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll was sentenced by a French court to 22 years without parole. The courtroom was told that the assault in March 2018 on this aged Jewish woman started out as a petty robbery but was transformed into a frenzied attack — and that this was fuelled by “a … Read more
THIRTY YEARS AGO, the Soviet Union passed into history. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, a new Russia was born and a plethora of new republics came into existence. The abrupt end of 74 years of Lenin’s experiment gave birth to chaos and collapse. Oligarchs emerged from the subterranean depths. Diehard commissars became diehard capitalists overnight. While many … Read more