Matt Lebovic

Anne Frank leaning over the balcony of the family's Amsterdam flat, 1941 (public domain)

January 20, 2022, 2:26 pm

Historians bash ‘rubbish’ findings of investigation into Anne Frank betrayal

A six-year probe by dozens of experts is detailed in a new book that accuses fellow Jews of revealing her hideout to the Nazis. The only problem, scholars say: Lack of evidence

By Matt Lebovic

'The Hidden Nazi,' by Dean Reuter. (courtesy)

January 15, 2022, 3:11 am

How Nazi Germany’s ‘most diabolical’ SS officer evaded postwar justice

In ‘The Hidden Nazi,’ author Dean Reuter asks whether SS general Hans Kammler, who oversaw the construction of death camps, exchanged V-2 rocket secrets for freedom

By Matt Lebovic

Romanian gendarmes and local collaborators deport Jews from Bricevas in 1941, with rabbi Dov Beri Yechiel at the head (public domain)

January 1, 2022, 12:35 pm

Romania’s ‘homegrown’ Holocaust: 80 years since forgotten Bogdanovka massacre

In the final days of 1941, Romanian authorities massacred 40,000 Jews in a chapter of the genocide in which 420,000 Jews were killed in ‘broad daylight’ with collaborators’ help

By Matt Lebovic

Jewish children deported from Lodz ghetto to Chelmno death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland (public domain)

December 13, 2021, 4:14 am

80 years ago this month, Nazis invented ‘industrial murder’ at quiet Chelmno

In a small Polish village outside Lodz, German SS leaders discovered how to bring the Jewish genocide ‘to scale’ and hide evidence of their crimes by cremating the human remains

By Matt Lebovic

December 1, 2021, 4:19 am

Ignored by the UN, Mizrahi Jews survived pogroms and expulsions, too

Persecution of Middle Eastern Jewry ‘has been denied for a lengthy period,’ according to historians advocating for ‘more inclusive’ Jewish memory

By Matt Lebovic

'Lucky Jew Doll' figurines purchased in the Polish cities of Krakow, Warsaw, and Zamosc. (Matt Lebovic/The Times of Israel)

November 24, 2021, 1:23 am

Why ‘Lucky Jew’ dolls are more popular than actual Jews in Poland

Going against long-held Polish tradition, Krakow’s municipality will slowly phase out the souvenir caricatures after acknowledging the trinkets are antisemitic

By Matt Lebovic

Herschel Grynszpan after being arrested on Nov. 7, 1938, in Paris (public domain)

November 11, 2021, 4:31 am

Kristallnacht assassin Herschel Grynszpan: Heroic ‘boy avenger’ or psychopath?

83 years after the teenager murdered a German diplomat in Paris, ostensibly giving the Nazis a pretext to spark the pogroms, his reputation has started to improve

By Matt Lebovic

After the Kristallnacht pogrom in Linz, Austria, Jewish women are made to wear signs saying, 'I am not part of the national community,' while being humiliated on stage in public (public domain)

November 9, 2021, 11:42 pm

Once lost to history, Kristallnacht testimonies describe pogrom’s aftermath

Compiled by a Harvard sociologist but not published until 2012, essays in the collection ‘Night of Broken Glass’ take readers beyond ravaged storefronts and burning synagogues

By Matt Lebovic

From 'Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience' in Lower Manhattan, New York City, June 2021 (Matt Lebovic/The Times of Israel)

October 24, 2021, 6:27 am

How Vincent van Gogh helped Jews break into the world of art — and vice versa

High-tech ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ exhibitions are touring the globe 120 years after a Jewish art collector helped launch the Dutch painter to stardom

By Matt Lebovic

Jewish communal documents removed from book bindings, beginning of the 16th century (Bidspirit)

August 30, 2021, 4:50 am

Are online sales of pre-Holocaust communal records their doom or salvation?

After decades of silence about eastern European Jewish community documents ‘abandoned’ during World War II, the issue has started to ruffle feathers, from Brooklyn to Budapest

By Matt Lebovic

A man holds a placard during a protest organized by Jewish associations, who say justice has not been done for the killing of French Jewish woman Sarah Halimi, at Trocadero Plaza near Eiffel Tower in Paris, April 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

July 6, 2021, 10:26 pm

Amid rising US antisemitism, Jewish groups plan July 11 solidarity rally in DC

‘NO FEAR: A Rally in Solidarity with the Jewish People’ set to take place in Washington with a ‘big tent’ of Jewish groups; co-organized by Elisha Wiesel

By Matt Lebovic

Clockwise from left: A still shot From the play 'Anne and Emmett' (courtesy); Emmett Till, and Anne Frank. (Public domain)

June 13, 2021, 2:35 am

‘Child martyrs to national evils,’ Frank and Till’s legacies increasingly tied

Their deaths separated by 10 years, Anne Frank and Emmett Till are connected by historians, filmmakers and playwrights. On Saturday, Frank would have been 92

By Matt Lebovic

Hungarian Jews on vacation in Marienbad, the Czech spa town near the border with Germany (public domain)

June 7, 2021, 4:37 am

In pre-WWII Marienbad bubble, rabbis and royalty alike came to take water ‘cure’

Family memoir portrays spa town Marienbad’s heyday, when Jews from all over Europe flocked there for medical treatments, reunions, and healthy doses of politics

By Matt Lebovic

Illustrative: Tova Friedman, an 82-year-old Polish-born Holocaust survivor, holds a photograph of herself as a child with her mother, who also survived the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, in New York, December 13, 2019. (World Jewish Congress via AP)

May 28, 2021, 3:17 am

New Shoah Foundation podcast connects Holocaust testimony with today’s headlines

Drawing from USC Shoah Foundation’s audiovisual archive, ‘The Memory Generation’ seeks to ‘expand the pyramid of memory’ by giving survivors’ voices contemporary relevance

By Matt Lebovic

Some of the 250 Armenians who took up arms against Turkish forced on Musa Dagh in 1915 (public domain)

April 26, 2021, 3:22 am

How Armenia’s 1915 ‘Musa Dagh’ fighters inspired Jews to resist Nazi genocide

Passed around Jewish ghettos across eastern Europe, author Franz Werfel’s fact-based ‘The Forty Days of Musa Dagh’ novel foreshadowed the Holocaust and galvanized resistance

By Matt Lebovic