Art deemed 'too Jewish' by 3rd Reich on display for 1st time

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Swiss art museum showcases new Bern Kunstmuseum exhibit of artwork deemed 'degenerate art' by Nazis because it was Jewish, un-German or Communist. Art deemed 'too Jewish' by 3rd Reich on display for 1st time : http://ift.tt/2hwwwt6

Train named Anne Frank sparks anger in Germany

German railway operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) stirred up a storm after deciding to name one of its new Inter City Express (ICE) trains after Anne Frank, ignoring the fact that she—like many other Jews at the time—perished after being hauled to a Nazi extermination camp via the same method of transportation.

The name was chosen when in mid-September DB called on its customers to choose the names for its new generation of urban express trains. Within a month, 19,400 suggestions for more than 2,500 names were received—one of them being Anne Frank.

A naming committee established by the company then selected names for the 25 new trains from a list of the most popular suggestions. DB explained that their goal was to eternalize Frank's memory even further in German society.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

Antia Neubauer, DB head of public relations and member of the naming committee, was quoted by the British tabloid Daily Mail as saying that her name was picked for her representation of tolerance. "It stands for tolerance and for a peaceful co-existence of different cultures, which in times like these is more important than ever," she said. Other names chosen for the trains include famous Germans such as theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, philosopher Karl Marx and composer Ludwig van Beethoven. "As different as the selected personalities are, they have one thing in common: they were curious about the world," said naming committee member and gender history professor, Gisela Mettele. Many, though, took to social media to condemn the decision, with Iris Erberl, a German politician from the conservative Christian-Social Union party, calling the decision "disrespectful." One wrote: "Am I actually the only one who finds it strange to call a train of the legal successor of the Reichsbahn Anne Frank?" The Deutsche Reichsbahn was Germany's national railway company that operated during the Third Reich, and the predecessor of DB. It gathered infamy for transporting Jews and other victims of the Holocaust to Nazi concentration and extermination camps. "The legal successor to the Reichsbahn, which does not compensate forced laborers to this day, baptizes an ICE train Anne Frank. As an historian I unfortunately find this terribly wrong," wrote another scholar.

Anne Frank

The new trains, including the one named after Anne Frank, are set to make their first voyage in December.

Over the past month, complaints have been raised in different parts of the world over the use of Anne Frank's name.

An American website that sells Halloween costumes for children, for instance, came under fire for including in its range an outfit of Anne Frank.

Moreover, Italian police and soccer authorities this month opened investigations after Lazio fans posted anti-Semitic stickers of Anne Frank wearing the jersey of their top-flight city rivals AS Roma.

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Jewish grandma stars in series of viral videos

Did your son remember to put on a sweater? Is your daughter taking her sweet time to get married? Are the grandkids always forgetting to call? In a series of videos that have gone viral, Jewish grandmother Judith Cohen pledges to take care of these issues, which plague every Jewish grandmother, with her own patented apps.

 

The videos were actually produced by American Friends of the Hebrew University (AFHU) as part of an effort to raise donations from the American public for future development of slightly more useful apps (and some other things the Hebrew University dabbles in).

American-Jewish grandma Judith Cohen stars in a new series of videos for AFHU (Photo: AFHU)

Judith Cohen, meanwhile, is in fact 84-year-old actress Barbara Malley, who easily took to the Yiddish inflection and mannerisms of a Jewish grandma.

Indeed, the myth of the Jewish grandma managed to garner tens of thousands of cumulative views on YouTube.

AFHU Chief Marketing Officer Eileen Hume was the driving force behind the series of videos and told Ynet, "Everybody has a bubbe (Yiddish for 'grandmother'), and she encapsulates the ultimate shared experience of American-Jewish culture."

In describing her "Would it kill you to call?" app, Cohen explains in the video, "After seven days without a call, a text is automatically sent to your loved ones: 'It's been a week, would it kill you to call?'"

The other two videos in the series also transform "grandmotherly" problems and concerns to a kindly Jewish app. For instance, one that updates bubbe's loved ones when it's called and cautions them against dressing improperly for the weather, or one explaining how to set up eligible Jewish bachelors with a stubborn single grandchild.

"Our starting point was stereotypes, but we handled them lovingly. We hit upon this idea by matching the famous, timeless qualities of the Jewish grandmother with life in the modern world," Hume explained with a smile.

Audience embraced the Jewish bubbe, and nearly forgot the grandmother was just as pretend as the apps she was proffering.

"It's actually really funny. Viewers responded with, 'I wish it were a real app, I'd download it.' Nevertheless, the purpose of the social media campaign is to increase awareness of the Hebrew University among a new, younger audience," Hume said.

"In that respect, the message was absolutely well received, as it reached a whole new public. We wanted it to be light-hearted and to speak to people through humor, because humor works. And we wanted to balance out the very serious and important subject matter behind the campaign with something with a little more brevity," she concluded.

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Jews around the world get ready for giant 'Shabbat Project'

German woman pens apology to US man who lost home to Nazis

Peter Hirschmann has often recounted his own story of fleeing Germany as a teenager to escape Adolf Hitler's persecution of the Jews, then joining the US Army to fight the Nazis.

But the 92-year-old started to cry as he read a three-page letter, neatly printed in blue fountain pen, which arrived out of the blue from Nuremberg and stirred very different thoughts of his past.

Its author, Doris Schott-Neuse, told him how her grandfather had acquired Hirschmann's family home under the Nazis, expressing her shame and imploring him for forgiveness.

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Israeli sports minister asks Italy to rein in soccer racism

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In a letter to her Italian counterpart, Miri Regev condemns 'despicable' stickers plastered by Lazio fans mocking Anne Frank, saying they openly identify with neo-Nazi symbols; passage from Frank's diary to be read out at all Italian soccer matches this week. Israeli sports minister asks Italy to rein in soccer racism : http://ift.tt/2yNZWft

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