Alex Halberstadt: Young Heroes of the Soviet Union review - a familial history of the twentieth century
The terrible power of the past
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a collective examination of its past, with Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich at the helm. Young Heroes of the Soviet Union looks back at the USSR through the lens of the personal, much like recent memoirs East West Street and The Hare with Amber Eyes. Like these accounts, Halberstadt’s book focuses, at least in part, on the tragic history of the Jews in Europe.
DVD/Blu-ray: Distant Journey
'You’re Jewish. With a name like Neumann, you have to be'
Introducing 'When Time Stopped', a powerful new investigative memoir about the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia
It was during my first week at Tufts University in America, when I was 17, that I was told by a stranger that I was Jewish. As I left one of the orientation talks, I was approached by a slight young man with short brown hair and intense eyes. He spoke to me in Spanish and introduced himself as Elliot from Mexico.
“I was told we should meet,” he said, beaming. “Because we’re both good-looking, Latin American, and Jewish.”
Confronting Holocaust Denial with David Baddiel, BBC Two review - grappling with the incomprehensible
Writer and comedian tries to fathom how so many can deny such well-documented history
It’s all in the timing. Here was David Baddiel beginning a stand-up turn at a gig in Finchley. A Holocaust survivor gets to heaven, and God asks for a Holocaust joke. God says that his joke isn't funny, and the survivor replies “Well, I guess you had to be there.” Baddiel believes there is nothing that is impervious to a joke.
Leopoldstadt, Wyndham's Theatre review - Stoppard at once personal and accessible
Director Patrick Marber knits Tom Stoppard's putative swan song into a compelling whole
It’s not uncommon for playwrights to begin their careers by writing what they know, to co-opt a frequently quoted precept about authorial inspiration. So it’s among the many fascinations of Leopoldstadt that Tom Stoppard, at the age of 82, should have written his most personal play and also, very possibly (and sadly), his last.
Belsen: Our Story, BBC Two review - inside the unfathomable horror of the Holocaust
Eyewitnesses retrace their journey through the Nazi nightmare
The 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz reminds us once again of the unfathomable horror of the Holocaust. The revival of anti-semitism in our own country and elsewhere is why it’s worth telling these terrible stories again and again.
The Man Who Saw Too Much, BBC One review – death camp in the clouds
Holocaust survivor documents his experiences as a prisoner and salvaged writer
Boris Pahor is the oldest known survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. In this program, the 106-year-old recounts his experiences as a political refugee and prisoner to the Nazis during their rule in his native Slovenia. As a study of one individual, The Man Who Saw Too Much is a graceful attempt to itemise the totality of the Holocaust by viewing it through an especially enlightening lens.
Werewolf review - post-Holocaust horrors
Ambitious Holocaust drama set during the chaotic final weeks of the war
There used to be this myth that we knew nothing about the concentration camps until the victors opened their gates in 1945, and that the survivors were then nursed back to health.
Transit review - existential nightmares for a German refugee
Christian Petzold eschews the conventions of Holocaust drama to create an edgy, unnerving thriller
If you’re looking for escapism from anxieties about Brexit, the worldwide refugee crisis and rising authoritarianism, Christian Petzold’s Transit is not going to provide comfort. Adapted from Anna Segher’s 1944 novel about a Jewish writer fleeing incarceration in Germany and trying to get passage to Mexico, this is a wholly original take on the Holocaust genre.