After the Pogrom

In cities throughout the Netherlands, you can’t walk far without coming across a Stolperstein, or “stumbling stone”: a small brass plaque in the sidewalk commemorating a Jewish victim of the Nazi regime. The plaques are intended to jolt passersby into pained remembrance. “Hier woonde,” the plaque reads—here lived—a person with this name, born on this […]

Continue Reading

Of Dutch Pogroms and American Politics

The Dutch didn’t have an opportunity to participate in Kristallnacht back on November 9-10, 1938–those two days of antisemitic wilding in Germany and Austria when the low-life Master Race murdered nearly 100 of the Chosen People on city streets like Berlin and Vienna, ransacked and torched 7,000 Jewish homes and businesses, destroyed 1,000 synagogues and […]

Continue Reading

Squeezing the Meaning Out of Hitler

Over the past few weeks I’ve witnessed a fascinating phenomenon: The closer we get to Election Day, the more those on the fringe deploy the word “Nazis” to serve their own agenda. Nazis, fascism, Hitler, genocide—all words hijacked and robbed of their meaning, all disconnected from their reality, un-fashioned and re-fashioned to serve a political […]

Continue Reading