Matt Lebovic

Almanya Narula, Nyani Totty and Sheer Aviram in the West Coast production of playwright Wendy Kout's 'Survivors,' May 2023 (Photo: Katherine Kohl)

June 3, 2023, 6:03 am

Inspired by ‘Hamilton,’ diverse docudrama based on survivor testimony is touring US

In under an hour, ‘Survivors’ touches on Nazi racial laws, Kristallnacht, and the Kindertransport rescue. ‘The survivors in the play are warning us,’ says playwright Wendy Kout

By Matt Lebovic

Germany created the Warsaw ghetto to imprison and starve more than 400,000 Jews during World War II. (Public domain)

May 31, 2023, 4:56 am

Jewish doctors’ secret study of Warsaw ghetto starvation rediscovered 80 years later

Tufts professor sheds light on smuggled medical research conducted by imprisoned Jewish physicians on what they label ‘hunger disease’; 100 patients enrolled in the study

By Matt Lebovic

Filmmaker Gary Hochman at the Sobibor excavations in Poland (courtesy)

May 16, 2023, 3:44 am

At Sobibor, a filmmaker unearths Nazi Germany’s attempts to cover up its crimes

Producer Gary Hochman’s ‘Deadly Deception at Sobibor’ depicts how gas chamber ruins and 70,000 artifacts were found at the death camp where approximately 250,000 Jews were murdered

By Matt Lebovic

Actress Bel Powley as Miep Gies in Gestapo headquarters, 'A Small Light' miniseries, 2023. (Courtesy)

April 30, 2023, 4:33 pm

Anne Frank’s best ‘helper’ Miep Gies is center of new National Geographic miniseries

Set to premiere on May 1, 8-part series centers on anti-Nazi resistance activities of Miep and Jan Gies, whose sacrifices – and heroism – extended beyond the ‘Secret Annex’

By Matt Lebovic

'70 Years of Exile' by Karen Frostig (courtesy)

April 20, 2023, 5:16 am

Obscure Nazi concentration camp in Latvia put back on map by art professor

Karen Frostig’s ‘Locker of Memory’ project unites Jungfernhof survivors and descendants, officials in Latvia, around Holocaust ‘memory work’ including plan for on-site memorial

By Matt Lebovic

Warsaw Ghetto set ablaze by the SS following the prisoner uprising in April 1943 (Z. L. Grzywaczewski / from the family archive of Maciej Grzywaczewski, POLIN Museum)

April 17, 2023, 4:06 am

Yad Vashem marks 80 years since Warsaw Ghetto Uprising for Yom HaShoah remembrance

The legendary Warsaw revolt and other acts of Jewish resistance — both physical and spiritual — are focus of this year’s Yom HaShoah commemoration at Yad Vashem

By Matt Lebovic

Nazi book burning in Opernplatz, May 1933 (Bundesarchiv)

March 25, 2023, 9:21 am

How Nazi-sympathizing scholars prepared the ideological groundwork for genocide

‘Betrayal of the Humanities’ anthology examines ‘self-coordination’ of German academicians in advancing Third Reich’s ‘racial’ policies — before, during and even after the war

By Matt Lebovic

Alice Schuman and Brock Cvijanovich. (Courtesy)

March 17, 2023, 10:55 am

After kicking down a Holocaust survivor’s door, a NY landlord becomes her guardian

Real estate investor Brock Cvijanovich wanted to be the good guy in someone’s story, so he and his mother ‘adopted’ an elderly woman whose building he’d purchased in 2021

By Matt Lebovic

Dutch wartime diary used by author Nina Siegal in 'The Diary Keepers,' her 2023 book (NIOD)

March 6, 2023, 3:19 am

Holocaust-era Dutch ‘diary keepers’ depict horrors outside of Anne Frank’s hideaway

For her sprawling book, journalist Nina Siegal read through hundreds of wartime diaries to portray difficult day-to-day lives of Dutch during Nazi Germany’s five-year occupation

By Matt Lebovic

Corrie ten Boom shows the hiding place in her home in Haarlem, the Netherlands (courtesy: Corrie ten Boom House)

February 18, 2023, 9:57 am

How a ‘watchmaker’s daughter’ hid hundreds of Jews beneath the Nazi occupiers’ noses

A new book explores how, by concealing them behind a false wall, Corrie ten Boom helped rescue hundreds of Jews and Dutch resisters from German clutches during World War II

By Matt Lebovic

Members of the Christian Front pose with rifles in the 1940s (public domain)

February 8, 2023, 3:36 am

‘Ultra’ podcast depicts little-known Nazi-funded plot to topple US government

Rachel Maddow’s eerily timed series depicts how ultra-right nationalists prepared to bomb Jewish sites while ‘bought’ members of Congress disseminated Nazi talking points

By Matt Lebovic

'Holocaust Namenmonument' founder Jacques Grishaver at the memorial, Amsterdam, December 27, 2022 (Matt Lebovic/Times of Israel)

January 27, 2023, 5:29 am

Dutch Holocaust survivor, memorial founder Jacques Grishaver to address UN

Founder of acclaimed ‘Namenmonument’ in Amsterdam will deliver remarks for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in New York on January 27

By Matt Lebovic

Dutch Jewish Council in Nazi-occupied Netherlands (public domain)

January 26, 2023, 6:05 am

Nazi-appointed Jewish Councils largely exonerated in transnational comparative study

In her new book, Dutch historian Laurien Vastenhout disproves long-held, often damaging assumptions about Holocaust-era ‘Judenräte’ in France, Belgium and the Netherlands

By Matt Lebovic

Negatives of photos taken by Polish firefighter Z. L. Grzywaczewski in 1943 (Maciek Jazwiecki/Polin Museum)

January 17, 2023, 9:51 am

21 never-published photos of Warsaw Ghetto Revolt’s aftermath found in Poland attic

Uncovered in dusty boxes, pictures were taken clandestinely by a Polish firefighter in 1943 as he protected Aryan Warsaw from flames engulfing the ghetto

By Matt Lebovic

Filmmaker David Wilkinson at Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Courtesy)

January 7, 2023, 1:16 pm

‘The great unpunishment’: How, why so many Holocaust perpetrators got away with it

Fewer than 600 of those who enacted the Holocaust received heavy sentences after WWII. David Wilkinson’s docu explores how the mass of Nazi criminals, collaborators escaped justice

By Matt Lebovic