
The Man Who Taught America To Play
Henry Orenstein survived three years in concentration camps before creating Transformers and poker cameras.
Great articles, every Saturday.
Henry Orenstein survived three years in concentration camps before creating Transformers and poker cameras.
Abigail Jones Newsweek Dec 2016 25min Permalink
Heather Morris’s bestselling novels ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ and ‘Cilka’s Journey’, and the problem of truth in historical fiction.
Christine Kenneally The Monthly Feb 2020 25min Permalink
On what is recorded and what is left out.
Zuzana Justman The New Yorker Sep 2019 30min Permalink
Why did we turn an isolated teenage girl into the world’s most famous Holocaust victim?
Dara Horn Smithsonian Nov 2018 15min Permalink
On the history of the Bund, an armed, socialist anti-Zionist group that was once the most popular Jewish party in Poland until they were murdered in the Holocaust.
Molly Crabapple NY Review of Books Oct 2018 20min Permalink
A conversation with 97-year-old Ben Ferencz.
Lesley Stahl 60 Minutes May 2017 10min Permalink
A discovery in a Lithuanian forest brings a tale of survival back to life.
Matthew Shaer Smithsonian Magazine Mar 2017 20min Permalink
Thinking about the right thing to do, now and in the imaginable future.
Masha Gessen New York Review of Books Nov 2016 10min Permalink
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it.”
John S. Friedman, Elie Wiesel The Paris Review Apr 1984 50min Permalink
Oskar Groening, an SS officer whose duties included counting confiscated money, describes his time posted to Auschwitz.
Editor’s note: At age 94, Groening was convicted yesterday of 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and sentenced to four years in prison.
Laurence Rees Politico Jul 2015 25min Permalink
December 1944, Auschwitz.
Primo Levi New York Review of Books Jan 1986 10min Permalink
Arts Crime History World Movies & TV
On Benjamin Murmelstein, the head of the council of elders at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Mark Lilla New York Review of Books Dec 2013 20min Permalink
Rethinking Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
Mark Lilla New York Review of Books Nov 2013 15min Permalink
“And the Holocaust trumps art every time.”
David Samuels, Art Spiegelman Tablet Nov 2013 25min Permalink
The quiet life of Brigette Höss, 80, whose father ran Auschwitz.
Thomas Harding Washington Post Sep 2013 10min Permalink
Horst von Wächter confronts - and rationalizes - a difficult family legacy.
Philippe Sands The Financial Times May 2013 15min Permalink
How the Ovitzs, a family of Jewish dwarves from Transylvania, survived Auschwitz.
Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev The Guardian Mar 2013 10min Permalink
An anonymous essay on time spent in “protective custody” at a Nazi camp.
Dr. X The Atlantic Sep 1939 15min Permalink
All violence is not like all other violence. Every Jewish death is not like every other Jewish death. To believe otherwise is to revive the old typological thinking about Jewish history, according to which every enemy of the Jews is the same enemy, and there is only one war, and it is a war against extinction, and it is a timeless war.
Leon Wieseltier The New Republic May 2002 15min Permalink
The search for the missing Holocaust hero began in 1945. The unending quest tore his family apart.
Joshua Prager The Wall Street Journal Feb 2009 20min Permalink
Arnold Weiss escaped Germany as a kid in 1938, leaving his family behind. He returned seven years later, now a U.S. intelligence officer tasked with tracking down fugitive Nazis. The ultimate revenge story.
Matthew Brzezinski Washington Post Jul 2005 35min Permalink
A Holocaust detective story: could a lampshade pulled from the ruins of Katrina really be Buchenwald artifact made of human remains?
Mark Jacobson New York Sep 2010 30min Permalink
The few who got to view Jerry Lewis’s notorious The Day the Clown the Cried, set at Auschwitz, piece together memories of their surreal personal screenings.
Bruce Handy Spy May 1992 Permalink
The inner workings of a surprisingly amiable Holocaust denial conference.