Battle of the Somme

 
Christian, Muslim and Jewish graves on the Somme.
I spent the first 17 years of my life in a French department called Somme where war memorials and cemeteries were extremely common. As regards World War I, this region is best known by the British who lost thousands of soldiers there during the Battle of the Somme; [...]

Broken Glass

 
On November 9th, we commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous night during which 267 synagogues were burned down, 7500 Jewish-owned businesses and institutions were destroyed, 92 Jews were murdered and an additional 30,000 were arrested and many were sent to concentration camps.
To commemorate this event, Le Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris organizes [...]

The Litvaks

 
A summer post written by Leora gave me ideas for a lesson on the Jews of Lithuania, or rather this provided me with a concrete example of a vanished community that the Holocaust destroyed.
Since I did not know much about the Jews of Lithuania, I bought and read a book Jew Wishes had recommended, The [...]

Bad News for the Jews

- Anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and fascists slogans and graffiti were sprayed on the walls of a French junior high school last week. It is probably no coincidence that the school is named after René Cassin, the man who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Judging from the slogans, which included references to White Power, the [...]