Jewish history 
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SOURCE: Forward
12/20/2020
Brandeis U. Press and a Historian Split over how to Talk about Jews and White Supremacy
The racial justice protests of 2020 pushed up sales of Marc Dollinger's book on political relationships between Jewish and African American groups. But Brandeis University Press has balked at publishing a new introductory essay that suggests American Jews need to acknowledge and confront their privileges as white Americans.
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SOURCE: Times of Israel
12/19/2020
Historian: Polish Society Shunned Jewish Survivors Returning From Nazi Camps
Historian Lukasz Krzyzanowski argues that most Poles today are “unwilling to accept the bitter fact that they live in a post-genocidal land.”
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SOURCE: Haaretz
12/6/2020
How Hanukkah Returned to Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall Decades After the Holocaust
The annual Hanukkah concert at the Royal Concert Hall in Amsterdam resumed in 2015 after a hiatus that began with Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Many Dutch Jews hope that the event will support unity in a community that is diverse in terms of observance and smaller in number than it was in 1946.
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SOURCE: Forward
11/19/2020
Effi Eitam Leading Yad Vashem Disgraces the Memory of the 6 Million
by Derek Penslar and Susannah Heschel
"The politicization and radicalization of the institution will rob it of its legitimacy. Yad Vashem cannot fulfill its responsibilities with Effi Eitam at its helm."
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SOURCE: Jerusalem Post
11/15/2020
Dozens Of Academics Oppose New Controversial Yad Vashem Chair
Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt is among the academics criticizing the appointment of a right-wing politician to head the Israeli Holocaust memorial and educational center, arguing that his remarks toward Palestinians and Arab Israelis are disqualifying.
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SOURCE: The Nation
11/16/2020
The Impresarios of Trent: The Long and Frightening History of the Blood Libel (review)
Magda Teter's new book examines the history of the pernicious antisemitic myth, its cultivation by Christian authorities, and its amplification by the growth of print and literacy in renaissance Europe.
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SOURCE: Haaretz
11/8/2020
Revered Polish Jew, Holocaust Survivor Joins Protests Over Top Appointment at Yad Vashem
A prominent Polish Holocaust survivor has objected to the appointment of Effi Eitam, an Israeli politician and former military commander, to chair the directorate of the Holocaust memorial because of inflammatory statements calling for the deportation of Palestinans from the West Bank and calling Arab Israelis a "fifth column."
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SOURCE: The New Republic
11/10/2020
How the World Gave Up on the Stateless (Review)
Over 10 million people are stateless today, and governments seem hell-bent on increasing their numbers. A new book examines how the rise of modern states created the dire circumstance of statelessness.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
11/2/2020
Searching for Refuge After the Second World War
New books by David Nasaw and Paul Betts examine the uncertain fate of Jewish Holocaust survivors in postwar Europe, the problem of massive human displacement, and the tension between interpreting Europe's refugee problem in universal terms or focusing on the specific consequences of anti-Jewish policies and prejudice.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
10/8/2020
Holocaust Survivor's Daughter in Legal Battle With Historian over Claim of Lesbian Liaison with Nazi Guard
Hájková, who is researching the queer history of the Holocaust, said testimonies by survivors of the camps and legal documents from the guard’s trial led her to conclude that the two women might have had a lesbian relationship, either coercive or consensual. However, she acknowledged that there was no definite proof of this.
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10/18/2020
Fraught Family Reunification After the Holocaust
by Rebecca Clifford
"A tenth of Europe's pre-war population of Jewish children survived the Holocaust. Many sought and achieved reunification with their families, but reunification did not usually end the trauma endured by this "fragment of an entire generation."
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SOURCE: Society for U.S. Intellectual History
9/28/2020
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Abraham Lincoln, and American Jewish History
by Rebecca Brenner Graham
Public mourning for Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a prominent Jewish American evokes Abraham Lincoln's role in supporting Jews in Civil War service, and the Jewish community's mourning after his assassination.
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SOURCE: Patheos
9/22/2020
RBG, Historian: Why Justice Requires Memory
by Chris Gehrz
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's sense of justice was informed by a clear view of the path of American history and the knowledge that change toward equality was neither automatic nor unidirectional.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
9/19/2020
How Jewish History and the Holocaust Fueled Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Quest for Justice
by Gillian Brockell
The passing of the Supreme Court Justice is occasion to review her 2004 address to the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
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SOURCE: Forward
8/24/2020
The Passing of Pioneering Historian Moses Rischin Marks the End of an Era
by Jonathan Sarna
Moses Rischin, the last survivor among the bold group of scholars who created the field of American Jewish history following World War II, died last week in San Francisco at the age of 94. His passing marks the end of an era.
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SOURCE: Times of Israel
US Holocaust Survivor Who Spent Decades Fighting For Family’s Looted Art Dies
Family of biochemist and tabletop designer Martha Nierenberg, 96, says they’ll continue legal battle for art collection, stolen by the Nazis and still held by Hungary.
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7/3/2020
New Novel "The Collaborator" Explores the Moral Ambiguities of a Holocaust Rescuer
by Diane Armstrong
Do we have the right to judge the actions of people in life and death situations? Are we honour-bound to keep promises, no matter to whom they were made, and in what situations? Can a man be a hero and a collaborator?
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
6/29/2020
In Search of King David’s Lost Empire
The evidence of David’s life is sparse. Was he an emperor? A local king? Or, as Biblical archaeologist Israel Finkelstein claims, a Bedouin sheikh?
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6/14/2020
The SS Officer's Armchair
by Daniel Lee
The discovery of a trove of documents in an old armchair led the author on a five-year search for information about a previously anonymous Nazi, whose history intersected with the author's family in surprising ways.
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5/3/2020
Lessons on Isolation and Humanity in a Family's Letters from Hiding
by Daphne Geismar
A virus doesn’t discriminate. But our social structures, systemic biases, and policy choices have made some populations particularly vulnerable. This pandemic has changed us. We must make changes so this tragedy, like the Holocaust, isn’t repeated.
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