All posts tagged: holocaust

How Marcel Marceau Used Mime to Save Children During the Holocaust

How Marcel Marceau Used Mime to Save Children During the Holocaust

Published by José

In 1972, Jer­ry Lewis made the ill-con­sid­ered deci­sion to write, direct, and star in a film about a Ger­man clown in Auschwitz. The result was so awful that he nev­er allowed its release, and it quick­ly acquired the reputation—along with dis­as­ters like George Lucas’ Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial—as one of the biggest mis­takes in movie his­to­ry. Some­how, this cau­tion­ary tale did not dis­suade the bold Ital­ian come­di­an Rober­to Benig­ni from mak­ing a film with a some­what sim­i­lar premise, 1997’s Life Is Beau­ti­ful, in which he plays a father in a con­cen­tra­tion camp who enter­tains chil­dren with com­ic stunts and antics to dis­tract them from the hor­rors all around them. That film, by con­trast, was a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess and went on to win the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1998 and three Acad­e­my Awards the fol­low­ing year, a tes­ta­ment to Benigni’s sen­si­tiv­i­ty to his sub­ject, in a screen­play part­ly based on the mem­oirs of Rubi­no Romeo Salmoni. It’s a won­der that anoth­er real-life sto­ry of a com­ic genius who used his tal­ents not only …

‘A Real Pain’ gets achingly close to the real quandaries of Holocaust remembrance

‘A Real Pain’ gets achingly close to the real quandaries of Holocaust remembrance

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — After arriving in Poland for a weeklong Holocaust “roots” tour, Benji, one of two Jewish American cousins whose trip is depicted in the new movie “A Real Pain,” has a meltdown in the first-class section of the Warsaw-Lublin train. Benji (Kieran Culkan) wrestles with an eerie sense that as he walks in the footsteps of Jews put on cattle cars on the way to concentration camps, his privilege obscures the real horror of the Shoah. It’s a feeling many American Jews experience when they encounter Holocaust sites: the sense that their existence is an unintended consequence of this catastrophe and to return means to explore the violent rupture that destroyed the world that could have been. Benji’s cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) watches this outburst and is horrified. But Benji is insistent: If a Holocaust tour isn’t the time to grieve, then when is? “A Real Pain,” about the cousins’ trip to Poland to honor their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, after her death, builds on a host of earlier movies about the Holocaust, adding …

‘A Real Pain’ is a real triumph

‘A Real Pain’ is a real triumph

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — You will go to see “A Real Pain” because of the all-star cast of Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed it), Kieran Culkin (whom many of us loved in “Succession”) and Jennifer Grey (welcoming her back to the big screen). You will go to see this movie because it is the story of the relationship between David Kaplan and Benji Kaplan, two Jewish cousins, each with their own quirks. If you had watched the series “Succession,” you will nod knowingly, as Kieran does a great job of reprising the personality traits of Roman Roy, his character from that show. You will go to see this movie (or, at least, I did) because it takes place in Poland and is the story of those two cousins and a tour group seeing various Jewish sites in Poland. During the tour, Benji and David take a side trip to a small town in Poland to find their late grandmother’s old house. (This is based on a trip that Jesse and his now-wife took to his …

‘A Real Pain’: A Holocaust Movie With No Lessons

‘A Real Pain’: A Holocaust Movie With No Lessons

Published by Sam

The very last shot of Jesse Eisenberg’s new film, A Real Pain, is identical to its first: a close-up of the tortured, weary face of Benji Kaplan, played by Kieran Culkin with a frenetic intensity familiar from his work on Succession. That his sad eyes remain static despite all he has seen is significant, because this is, ostensibly, a Holocaust film, and everyone is supposed to be changed by the end of a Holocaust film. Popular art about the Holocaust has long been a series of lesson plans, a conduit for catharsis. Most directors, by peering into a gas chamber or the maw of an oven, mean to remind us, as the actor-director Roberto Benigni once obscenely put it, that Life Is Beautiful. This pattern was set only a few years after the Holocaust itself, from the moment “Anne Frank” stood on a Broadway stage in 1955 and redeemed her audience by telling them, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.” Even Schindler’s List, that paradigm of Holocaust …

Czech Jews mark first Yom Kippur in historic Prague synagogue since the Holocaust 

Czech Jews mark first Yom Kippur in historic Prague synagogue since the Holocaust 

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — The sounds of Jewish prayer rang out in Prague’s Klausen Synagogue on Saturday (Oct. 12) for the first time in more than 80 years as the city’s progressive Jewish community, Ec Chajim, hosted Yom Kippur services in its 330-year-old building. Though not the oldest, Klausen is the city’s largest synagogue and the last standing example of baroque synagogue architecture in Prague, itself once a major center of European Jewish history. Its Jewish community yielded several notable figures, including novelist Franz Kafka and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.  In the 17th century, Klausen Synagogue was home to a school founded by Rabbi Judah Loew, more commonly known as “the Maharal,” a major rabbinic figure who today is mostly remembered for his association with the mythical golem of Prague, a superhuman he allegedly created to fight back against antisemitic persecution.  The synagogue has largely been a museum since the Nazis decimated Czechoslovakia’s Jewish community in the Holocaust. Before this year the last services in Klausen are believed to have been held in 1941. …

Pupils to ‘talk’ to 3D Holocaust survivors with artificial intelligence technology | UK News

Pupils to ‘talk’ to 3D Holocaust survivors with artificial intelligence technology | UK News

Published by Sam

School students are to get the chance to understand the horrors of the Holocaust by “talking” to survivors, thanks to Artificial Intelligence and virtual reality. Amid rising antisemitism in the UK and as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, it is hoped the technology will allow for pupils to have a memorable experience of learning about what happened under Nazi Germany for generations to come. As part of a programme developed by the Holocaust Educational Trust, survivors are being filmed answering 1,000 questions a child could potentially ask when conversing with a 3D version of them. AI understands the question and then plays the survivor’s recorded answer to give pupils the feeling of a natural conversation with the Holocaust survivor. Read more: Holocaust survivor Henry Wuga dies aged 100Holocaust survivor fears horrific event can happen again Image: Students at Sacred Heart Catholic School taking part in the programme Pic: Holocaust Educational Trust/PA Using virtual reality (VR) headsets, students will also be able to explore key sites linked to the survivor testimonies, including their pre-war home …

A Guardian Blind Date happy ending, the boy who fled the nazis, and Philippa Perry’s advice on an alcoholic father – podcast | Life and style

A Guardian Blind Date happy ending, the boy who fled the nazis, and Philippa Perry’s advice on an alcoholic father – podcast | Life and style

Published by skeptic

The Guardian lockdown love story that ended in ‘I do’; the incredible story of Maxwell Smart, who lost his family in the Holocaust at 10 and avoided detection from the Nazis for two years; and Philippa Perry advises a reader not to invite his alcoholic father to his wedding. How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know Source link

Ownership of Schiele Work Lost During Holocaust to Be Decided in Court

Ownership of Schiele Work Lost During Holocaust to Be Decided in Court

Published by skeptic

A 1917 drawing by Egon Schiele is at the center of a restitution case that will soon head to court in New York. The work in question, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1917), depicts Edith Schiele with her hands folded in her lap. The drawing was made a year before both Edith and the artist, both at 28 years old, during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Portrait of the Artist’s Wife is estimated to be worth several million dollars. The heirs of two Jewish collectors, Karl Mayländer and Heinrich Rieger, have both claimed ownership of the work. Mayländer was a textile merchant; Schiele made at least two portraits of him. Rieger was Schiele’s dentist. Both were killed by the Nazis during World War II, and their respective heirs both claim their relatives lost the work during the Holocaust. Related Articles Philanthropist and art collector Robert Owen Lehman Sr., known for heading the Lehman Brothers investment firm through the Great Depression, bought Portrait of the Artist’s Wife from the London gallery Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd. for £2,000 …

Descendants of Holocaust survivors celebrate hidden ‘queer love story’ | Holocaust

Descendants of Holocaust survivors celebrate hidden ‘queer love story’ | Holocaust

Published by skeptic

Ursula Finke weighed less than 5st (31kg) and by her own description was only a “skeleton”, when Lola Alexander tracked her down in bombed-out Berlin in the last days of April 1945. Both had repeatedly, narrowly escaped deportation to Auschwitz, unlike many of their closest Jewish relatives. Lola and Ursula had become “friends”, as their survivors’ testimony from the 1950s put it, while in hiding from the Gestapo at the home of a resistance member. After Lola rescued Ursula, badly injured and chained to a bed in the dank cellar of a Jewish hospital, they would remain together for the rest of Lola’s life. This week, as Europe marks the 79th anniversary of the end of the second world war, descendants of the two women gathered in Berlin from Australia, the UK and the US to lay Stolpersteine memorial stones for Alexander and four other relatives who were persecuted by the Nazis. The vast grassroots project has already placed more than 100,000 of the brass plaques across Europe at the former homes of Holocaust victims …

Biden Compares Hamas Attack to Holocaust in Antisemitism Warning

Biden Compares Hamas Attack to Holocaust in Antisemitism Warning

Published by skeptic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that the threat of antisemitism is growing in the United States, including on college campuses, as his support for Israel’s assault on Gaza divides Democrats and alienates some young voters. In a speech honoring the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, Biden joined a heated American debate about Jewish security, Zionism, free speech and support for Israel, in the country with the largest Jewish population after Israel. Addressing a bipartisan audience at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual commemoration, he warned of the risk that the truth about the systematic killing of Jews during World War Two would be lost. War in Israel and Gaza “‘Never again’ simply translated for me means: Never forget. Never forgetting means we must keep telling the story, we must keep teaching the truth,” Biden said at the U.S. Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. “The truth is we’re at risk of people not knowing the truth.” Biden spoke seven months to the day after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on …