,” by director Tomer Shushan, was nominated yesterday for the Academy Award for live action short film. Sacha Baron-Cohen picked up two nominations, for his role in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and for the adapted screenplay for “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” The Academy Awards ceremony is slated for April 25.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told reporters yesterday that he is still undecided on Colin Kahl’s nomination to be the top Pentagon policy official. The lobbying group Christians United for Israel ran full-page advertisements in several West Virginia newspapers on Sunday pressuring the centrist senator to vote against Kahl.
The Senate confirmed Interior Secretary Deb Haaland yesterday by a vote of 51 to 40, making Haaland the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history.
A Quest to Reclaim a Family Home Unearths a Past Buried by the Holocaust
Jewish residents of Sosnowiec, Poland, being deported during World War II. In “Plunder,” Menachem Kaiser returns to the town to try to reclaim an apartment building his grandparents owned there before the war.Credit.Yad Vashem
Buy Book ▾
By Josh Tyrangiel
By Menachem Kaiser
My grandparents were Jews from Poland who survived the camps, moved to Los Angeles and ignored each other for the next 60 years. My grandmother dealt with her experience of evil by becoming harder than a Yiddish consonant. Her one-word verdict upon exiting the only movie she ever took me to was, “Smut!” That movie was “The Muppet Movie.” This was irreconcilable with my grandfather, who went to the opposite extreme. Enslavement in a Nazi munitions factory had left him deaf, but in America he developed a sensitivity to the tiniest vibrations of joy. He’d shuffle through North Hollywood gobsmacked by vintage cars and dandeli
Menachem Kaiser s Plunder digs into Holocaust history – The Forward forward.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forward.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Terry W. Hartle Correspondent
Books about efforts to retrieve family treasure stolen during the Holocaust follow a familiar arc. A descendant embarks on a long and frustrating journey to regain the heirloom and eventually, against long odds, succeeds. âThe Lady in Goldâ by Anne-Marie OâConnor â the story of Maria Altmannâs efforts to recover Gustav Klimtâs portrait of her ancestor, Adele Bloch-Bauer â is a perfect example.Â
But as Menachem Kaiser reminds us in âPlunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure,â these stories do not always have neat or happy conclusions.Â
Growing up in Toronto, Kaiser never met his Polish-born grandfather, the only member of his fatherâs family to survive the Holocaust. He understood that his grandfather had owned an apartment building, which he had been unable to reclaim after the war ended. Because Kaiserâs father shared very little family history, and the faded photo
A grandson of a man who survived the Holocaust takes up his fight to reclaim a family building in Poland. The journey is arduous, vexing, poignant and bizarre.