Tag: Hitler

"John Roy Carlson" was one of several pen names used by the Armenian-American journalist Avedis Boghos Derounian, whose 1943 book Under Cover was a tremendously popular expose of Nazi sympathizers in America in the years leading up to World War II.

Joseph Sobran died last week. Regular readers may recall the Monitor devoting a handful of columns over the years to Sobran's malicious commentary on Jews and Israel. He was a supremely talented writer with a prose style smooth as silk, but sometime in the mid-1980's he descended deep into the fever swamps of anti-Semitism and never resurfaced.

It was evident, in the years preceding World War II, that humanity had no desire to throw a saving rope to the drowning Jewish people.

At a parent-teacher conference, one of my high school bible instructors told my mother I was well behaved and sat quietly in the back of the room. "If he is sitting quietly in class," my mother assured the rabbi, "he is either reading a book or drawing." She was right. My primary high school achievements were my ravenous readings of philosophy and literature and the few hundred copies I made of David Levine's brilliant pen-and-ink caricatures, which filled several sketchbooks. I was too young to get most of his political references, but when they were explained to me, I laughed genuinely and hysterically.

At a parent-teacher conference, one of my high school bible instructors told my mother I was well behaved and sat quietly in the back of the room. "If he is sitting quietly in class," my mother assured the rabbi, "he is either reading a book or drawing." She was right. My primary high school achievements were my ravenous readings of philosophy and literature and the few hundred copies I made of David Levine's brilliant pen-and-ink caricatures, which filled several sketchbooks. I was too young to get most of his political references, but when they were explained to me, I laughed genuinely and hysterically.

Between 1920 and 1944 there were nearly fifty attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler. Many of the would-be assassins sacrificed their own lives as a result of their determination to free the world of one of history's worst monsters.

Campus radicalism, support for totalitarianism, and general political extremism are not new on Western campuses. Indeed some of the worst political extremism in academic history took the form of enthusiastic support on American campuses for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Are you one of those people who were outraged at the bias, the libel and the naked hatred evidenced in the Goldstone Report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland? Were you stunned by the blatant lies? Were you left shocked and speechless at the sad realization that the author of this venomous report was Goldstone - yes, a Jew!

It would be fair to say that the recent demonstrations in cities around the world during which Israel was likened to Nazi Germany, and Israeli soldiers to Nazi storm troopers, created a fair amount of angst among an appreciable number of Jews. But as this is hardly a new phenomenon, the surprise really lies in why so many Jews continue to be surprised.

In September I attended a special screening of the movie "Defiance" at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan. The film attempts to depict the formation of the Bielski partisans and some of their early exploits in the dense forests of Belorussia during the Holocaust.

About a year ago I saw a Russian television broadcast in which Vladimir Putin, riding a noble steed, reaches the edge of a lake, deftly removes his shirt and in an impressive display of muscle, leans over and washes his face in the crystal- clear water.

Within hours of the announcement by Republican presidential candidate John McCain that he had chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate, the Internet was ablaze with reports that Palin was a supporter of Patrick Buchanan. The arsonists were a left-wing blogger and an attack-dog Democratic politician.

At first glance, Moritz Rabinowitz and Baruch Spinoza have very little in common.

Holocaust art has dominated the news lately for all the wrong reasons.

Celler called FDR's immigration policy "cold and cruel," and accused the State Department of having "a glacier-like attitude" and "a heartbeat muffled in protocol."

A fascinating question of history is what might have happened had Neville Chamberlain not resigned in May 1940 but continued on as British prime minister, with Winston Churchill never taking command.

Like a pig returning to his vomit, Mike Wallace came out of retirement last month to genuflect in the presence of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadine-jad and then to spread the word that the man who’s denied the Holocaust and called for wiping Israel off the map is not really such a bad guy after all.

George Grosz's 1944 painting, "Cain, or Hitler in Hell" shows the Nazi leader with his iconic moustache and uniform sitting sadly, mopping his brow.

Located just north of Warsaw on the Narew River, Pultusk is a small rural town described as being located on an island in the middle of a river.

He’s the columnist who complained that “Hitler died in 1945, but anti-Hitler hysteria is still going strong”; cautioned against “the excessive moral prestige Jews have in the media and the public square”; whined about “Jews deciding the standards, setting the criteria of humanity”; and observed, in chilling if artful prose, that because Jews “set themselves up as the arbiter, there is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a certain ‘kill the umpire’ impulse.”

My first-born son's recent marriage was a huge simcha for the family, but the wedding was actually the culmination of a simcha that began years ago - at his bris.

Growing up, I always found one of the most bizarre things in history to be the dramaticturnabout of the communist movement the day Germany invaded Stalinist Russia.

In every generation there rises a Haman, son of Amalek. During the 20th century there were at least two in the United States: Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.

The Monitor will pay tribute next week to Michael Kelly, the exemplary journalist and true friend of Israel who died so tragically in Iraq. This week, however, we take a look at some choice remarks made over the course of the past 20 years by South African Arch-bishop Desmond Tutu, Kelly's opposite in just about every way imaginable.

Special Note: In last week's column I shared with you the first part of a letter from an American gentile who lives in Munich, Germany, describing the covert and overt anti-Semitism that continues to plague that country, and for that matter, the world. The letter once again reinforces the old truth, we remain "one lamb among 70 wolves" and those wolves stand ready to pounce upon us and devour us. We dare not forget that we have only One Friend, and that is Avinu She'Bashamayim, our Heavenly Father.