Józef Piłsudski, the founder of modern Poland after World War I, is hardly known today — and many Jews have previously regarded him pejoratively as just another one-dimensional strongman figure in an anti-Semitic inter-war Eastern Europe. This excellent biography by the American academic, Joshua Zimmerman, presents a far more nuanced account. Piłsudski grew up in … Read more
Following the reduction of many German cities to rubble and amid the ignominy of defeat and occupation in May 1945, some cogs in the Nazi wheel focused first and foremost on escape from retribution. By the autumn of that year, with the onset of the Cold War, fortune had remarkably smiled upon them. Several became … Read more
Many believe that Bulgaria, like Denmark, saved its Jews from the Nazi death camps. The book The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust (Rowman and Littlefield) by Jacky Comforty, together with Martha Aladjem Bloomfield, tells a different story. It is a narrative that recalls Bulgaria’s alliance with Hitler to regain territory in … Read more
The remarks of Sergei Lavrov to Italian television last Sunday that Hitler was of ‘Jewish blood’ and that ‘the most ardent antisemites were Jews’ shocked Jews around the world. Deliberate or not, they caused a rupture between Moscow and Jerusalem. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid reacted personally — as Jews. The late father of the … Read more
At exactly 11:15 a.m. on Monday, January 30, 1933, representatives of the German political parties gathered in the Chancellery Building in Berlin to renounce the German republic. The Left, the Social Democrats and the Communists, were not invited, nor was the Catholic Centre Party. The Right had decided to “hire” Hitler and thereby put him on … Read more
Review of The Jews of England and the Revolutionary Era 1789-1815 by Jeremy Smilg Published by Vallentine Mitchell 2021, pp. 254 In 1791 Edmund Burke, ‘the father of British conservatism’, commented that: We have in London very respectable persons of the Jewish nation whom we will keep: but we have of the same tribe, others … Read more
The Battle of London 1939-45: Endurance, Heroism and Frailty under Fire by Jerry White Published by the Bodley Head 2021, pp.425 price £30.00 In 1939, a fifth of the population of England and Wales lived in London. It made it a sitting target for Nazi bombers during World War II. And, after the zeppelin raids … 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
Ring of Spies: How MI5 and the FBI brought down the Nazis in America by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones Published by the History Press 2020, pp. 288, price £20.00 Frederick the Great once commented that his French military opponent, Marshal de Soubrise was always followed by a hundred cooks. ‘I, on the other hand, am always followed … Read more
Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Islamist Writings on Resistance and Religion By Erik Skare, published by I. B. Tauris, 2021, pp.266 Forty years ago, a group of students formed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza. It was inspired by the success of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution in Iran and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Cairo by an … Read more