Currently Browsing: History 20 articles
The Nazis’ British Blacklist
In advance of Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the Nazis’ British hitlist and who wasn’t on it. Around 1939, the Gestapo drew up a list. In the case of the Nazi occupation of the United Kingdom, some 2,600 named individuals were to be targeted for removal. They would have […]
How Finland’s Jews Fought Alongside the Nazis
Mark Bernheim reviews a remarkable book about Finland’s Jews during World War II. In the complex history of the Holocaust, Finland was the only European combatant country in which none of its Jewish citizens were sent to concentration or extermination camps. In many other ways, too, the history of its tiny Jewish community is unique. How […]
A Trip to (Jewish) Shanghai
In need of a little armchair travel in lieu of the real thing, Karen Skinazi revisits a trip to Shanghai, where she is amazed by both the cosmopolitan city and the thriving Jewish community she finds there. When we’re not playing Settlers of Catan, or watching movies on Disney+, or going on chilly walks and […]
Naivety not Nativity: 40 Years of Limmud
Alastair Falk looks back at four decades of Limmud. For forty years, every Christmas, Jews have been wandering the wildernesses of deserted university and school campuses. This is because of Limmud, the energetic alternative to the traditional festivities in Britain. This year’s Limmud Festival ( even the name now hints at its seasonal feel) may need to […]
The expulsion of the Jews in 1496
Dora Guennes explores the first brain drain from Portugal. On December 5, 1496, King Manuel I signed the decree that expelled most of the Jews from Portugal. The resulting legal act – The Expulsion of the Jews and Moors from the Kingdom of Portugal – marked the diaspora of the Sephardi Jews, a community of […]
Marie Stopes, Eugenics and the Jews
In the third instalment of our series on Jews & Sex, Nathan Abrams considers the darker side of the work of the feminist pioneer and her relationship to Jews. Dr. Marie Stopes (1880-1958) is best remembered as a feminist and a birth control pioneer. As the most forceful sexual revolutionary of her age, as well as […]
Manchester’s King of Glamour and Strip
In the second part of our series on Jews & Sex, Sue Fox reminisces about her Uncle Arthur and his striptease business. My uncle Arthur Fox died in 1970. Mancunians of a certain age might remember his name. He owned The Revue Bar in George Street. I don’t know where George Street was or even if it still exists. Uncle Arthur was the (very non-PC) black sheep […]
Jews, Money and Globalisation
Nathan Abrams reviews two new books which tell us surprisingly little about the links between Jews and global capital. Jews might be considered the archetypes of globalist capitalists. And with the figure of Sir Philip Green looming large in the press over the weekend, the negative connections between Jews, globalisation, capitalism and finance once again […]
A Jewish army doctor and the gift of a German war widow
Myra Woolfson reminisces about her late father and the interesting set of items he brought home from the war. My late father, Captain Vernon Smith, was a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps from November 1941 until March 1946. He joined up towards the end of his first hospital job following graduation. When he […]
Introducing the best kept secret of Georgian Jewry: The Lailashi Codex
Thea Gomelauri introduces the crowing glory of Georgian Jewry