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LITERARY LIGHT ERIKA DREIFUS
I’m proud and excited to be offering this interview with literary light Erika Dreifus. Reviewing Dreifus’s short story collection QUIET AMERICANS for The Quivering Pen, David Abrams said: “She’s a classic storyteller and there’s a clear, direct line from Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud to her 21st-century keyboard.” I highly recommend following Erika Dreifus…
Read MoreLeonard Barkan’s BERLIN FOR JEWS
Princeton Professor Leonard Barkan is a polymath whose past books include MUTE POETRY, SPEAKING PICTURES and UNEARTHING THE PAST; ARCHEOLOGY AND AESTHETICS IN THE MAKING OF RENAISSANCE CULTURE. Barkan’s latest book, BERLIN FOR JEWS, is a tour de force of writing about Germany’s capital city. Recently, I caught up with Leonard Barkan for this interview. 1) Since you finished…
Read MoreAuthor’s Corner: David Clay Large
David Clay Large is a professor at The Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of European Studies, U.C. Berkeley. His book BERLIN has been very well-received, with Dr. Dorothee Brantz saying “this book is a captivating read; just like a good novel, it is hard to put down.”…
Read MoreJewish Museum’s Christoph Kreutzmüller
(Christoph Kreutzmüller) Dr. Christoph Kreutzmüller, a German scholar, has done seminal work, creating a database of businesses that were Jewish-owned in Nazi-era Berlin. As I’ve said previously, Christoph’s sleuthing for his book FINAL SALE IN BERLIN, The Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity, 1930-1945 fills a gap in the record that so frustrated me while I was seeking restitution for…
Read MoreA Compelling Jewish Film
David Paul works as a judge in New York City. GERMAN SHEPHERD is a powerful short documentary of his attempts at coming to terms with the Holocaust, Germans and Germany. Directed by Nils Bergendal, the short premiered in 2014 and has enjoyed, deservedly, huge success on the film festival circuit. I find GERMAN SHEPHERD compelling, and believe you…
Read MorePreserving German-Jewish Culture
(Dr. William H. Weitzer, Executive Director of the Leo Baeck Institute) Leo Baeck was a leading German-Jewish rabbi who, during World War II, turned down offers to be rescued into the United States, as he did not want to leave his fellow European Jews behind. Deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, he survived, though all…
Read MoreBerlin Storyteller Dennis Behnke
Dennis Behnke — known as ‘The Berlin Storyteller’ — offers a variety of guided tours of Germany’s capital city. You can learn about Dennis’s tours here. In this interview, I catch up with Dennis. 1) How did you come to call yourself ‘The Berlin Storyteller’? When I was 15 years old, my school class went on…
Read MoreNYC’s Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue
(The Central Park West facade of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue) Janet R. Kirchheimer is a writer whose Holocaust-related poetry was praised by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. She serves as a docent for tours of The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue — Congregation Shearith Israel — on Central Park West at West 70th Street. In this interview, I catch up…
Read MoreDIRECTOR’S CORNER; ARNON GOLDFINGER
The Israeli filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger is a true cinéaste, whose films have won many prestigious awards. His revelatory documentary THE FLAT narrates his discovery of his German-born grandparents’ — the Tuchlers’ — unusual history with a Nazi, Leopold von Mildenstein. For The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, I wrote a commentary on THE FLAT. In this…
Read MoreAuthor’s Corner: Sebastian Moll
(Photo by Harry Zernike) Sebastian Moll is a German-born writer resident in New York City. He reports on New York and the U.S. for a wide range of prestigious German publications including Spiegel online and the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Recently, I caught up with Sebastian for this interview. 1) How did you first become interested in…
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