Holocaust — Bunk History

A drawing of a television screen between the fingers of someone framing an image of barbed wire.

The Problem With TV's New Holocaust Obsession

From 'The Tattooist of Auschwitz' to 'We Were the Lucky Ones,' a new wave of Holocaust dramas feel surprisingly shallow.

by Judy Berman via TIME on May 8, 2024

Vice President Joe Biden visits Israel on January 13, 2014.

The Shoah After Gaza

Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis are the foundation on which most descriptions of extreme ideology and atrocity have been built.

by Pankaj Mishra via London Review of Books on March 21, 2024

Jewish civilians who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are marched out of the city by Nazi troops

What Holocaust Remembrance Forgets

Popular accounts of the Holocaust overlook its irrationality and often disordered violence.

by Samuel Clowes Huneke via The New Republic on January 18, 2024

Scene from "Schindler's List."

How 'Schindler's List' Transformed Americans' Understanding of the Holocaust

The 1993 film also inspired its director, Steven Spielberg, to establish a foundation that preserves survivors' stories.

by Emily Tamkin via Smithsonian on December 14, 2023

Gelringer family, who were later deported to Auschwitz.

The Millions We Failed to Save

The recent documentary "The US and the Holocaust" is a scathing, even bombastic indictment of US immigration policy over the past 160 years.

by Ruth Franklin via New York Review of Books on June 1, 2023

Jalyn Hall (left) as Emmett Till and Danielle Deadwyler (right) as Mamie Till Bradley in the movie Till.

Two Recent Movies Help Us Connect the Dots Between Jim Crow and Fascism

With Kanye and Kyrie Irving dominating the news, the connections between victims of white supremacy are more relevant than ever.

by Soraya Nadia McDonald via Andscape on November 22, 2022

Crowds of people filling Ellis Island Immigration Station

Ken Burns Turns His Lens on the American Response to the Holocaust

Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.

by James McAuley via The New Yorker on September 18, 2022

The first two panels of "Nazi Death Parade," a six-panel comic depicting the mass murder of Jews at a Nazi concentration camp August Maria Froehlich / Arco Publishing Company.

The Holocaust-Era Comic That Brought Americans Into the Nazi Gas Chambers

In early 1945, a six-panel comic in a U.S. pamphlet offered a visceral depiction of the Third Reich's killing machine.

by Esther Bergdahl via Smithsonian on May 24, 2022

It Can Happen Here

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s decision to speak out against Holocaust analogies is a moral threat.

by Timothy Snyder via Slate on July 12, 2019

Why the U.S. Bombed Auschwitz, But Didn't Save the Jews

What did the Roosevelt administration know, and when?

by Rafael Medoff via HNN on March 17, 2019

Donald Trump giving a State of the Union address.

American Uses and Misuses of the Holocaust

Wielding Holocaust memory to make America look good is an American tradition.

by Mari Cohen via Jewish Currents on February 8, 2019

The History Before Us

How can we be sure the atrocities of the past will stay in the past?

by Jessica Jacobs via Guernica on January 21, 2019

The NYT Says We’re Forgetting About the Holocaust

History suggests otherwise.

by Rebecca Onion via Slate on April 13, 2018

America’s Dangerously Shallow Understanding of the Holocaust

It’s treated as an all-purpose symbol of evil, not a series of historical events to be reckoned with.

by Andrea Pitzer via Vox on May 4, 2017

What Americans Thought of Jewish Refugees on the Eve of World War II

On the eve of World War 2, most Americans opposed granting asylum to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler.

by Ishaan Tharoor via Washington Post on November 17, 2015

History’s True Warning

How our misunderstanding of the Holocaust offers moral cover for the geopolitical disasters of our time.

by Timothy Snyder via Slate on September 23, 2015

Some attendees of the Republican National Convention hold "Mass Deportation Now" signs on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History

Trump’s language about immigrants “poisoning” the U.S. repeats past rhetoric that led to civilian detention camps, with horrific, tragic results.

by Andrea Pitzer via Scientific American on July 23, 2024

A drawing of Magneto wearing a kippah over his helmet.

The Judgment Of Magneto

From villain to antihero, nationalist to freedom fighter, the comic book character has always been a reflection of the Jewish cultural identity.

by Asher Elbein via Defector on April 24, 2024

Kris Kringle with children from the film 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.'

A Classic Christmas Movie Offers a Lesson About Antisemitism

Nazis play a key role as villain in American collective consciousness—but without broad understanding of antisemitism.

by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Made By History on December 21, 2023

U.S. President Truman smiles next to the President of Israel, Chaim Weizmann

A Brief History of the US-Israel 'Special Relationship'

A historian of the Middle East examines how connections have shifted since long before the 1948 founding of the Jewish state.

by Fayez Hammad via The Conversation on November 29, 2023

Burkhard Bilger’s uncle (as a baby) and grandfather, Gernot and Karl Gönner, Aulfingen, Germany, early 1930s.

The Trouble with Ancestry

Two family histories by Americans connected to Europe’s twentieth century through their fascist grandfathers seek to occupy the void between history and memory.

by Fintan O’Toole via New York Review of Books on August 31, 2023

Ken Burns speaking into a microphone.

Shaming Americans

Ken Burns’s "The U.S. and the Holocaust" distorts the historical record in service of a political message.

by Amity Shlaes via City Journal on January 9, 2023

Mushroom cloud of nuclear bomb.

Forgetting the Apocalypse

Why our nuclear fears faded – and why that’s dangerous.

by Daniel Immerwahr via The Guardian on May 12, 2022

Photograph of a desk constructed in Poland in the mid 1920s. The desk is an ornate wooden desk; at left, there are three photographs, at right, a lamp and some miscellaneous items.

An Ornate Desk, Family History and the Jewish Past

My mother’s desk connected me with our shared heritage.

by David M. Perry via Washington Post on April 29, 2022

Deborah Lipstadt at her Senate nomination hearing.

Deborah Lipstadt vs. “The Oldest Hatred”

In her new role as antisemitism envoy, Deborah Lipstadt will attempt to fight a scourge of antisemitism that she seems to regard as incurable.

by Mari Cohen via Jewish Currents on April 28, 2022

Whoopi Goldberg overlaid with black and white stripes on red background

Whoopi Goldberg’s American Idea of Race

The “racial” distinctions between master and slave may be more familiar to Americans, but they were and are no more real than those between Gentile and Jew.

by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on February 3, 2022

Riesman giving fundraising speech

My Grandfather the Zionist

He helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?

by Abraham Josephine Riesman via Intelligencer on June 23, 2021

A slave in chains behind an American flag

Germany Faced its Horrible Past. Can We Do the Same?

For too long, we've ignored our real history. We must face where truth can take us.

by Michele Norris via Washington Post on June 3, 2021

The Pantomime Drama of Victims and Villains Conceals the Real Horrors of War

Innocent, passive, apolitical: after the Holocaust, the standard for ‘true’ victimhood has worked to justify total war.

by Dirk Moses via Aeon on May 10, 2021

Paul Peter Porges with self-portrait, during his time in the US army, 1951-52.

‘They Were Survivors’: the Jewish Cartoonists who Fled the Nazis

A new exhibition celebrates the work of three Austrian artists who escaped their country as Nazis took over and created daring work in the years after.

by Nadja Sayej via The Guardian on April 8, 2021

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