Jewish History & Culture
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Remembering Rudolf Vrba's 5 per cent
On April 7, 1944, Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz, one of very few to do so; he died recently at age 81, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Vancouver, British Columbia. Vrba once said that he spent 95 percent of his life on science and 5 percent on the Holocaust. It is worth […]
Grossman's Fate
The recent publication of “A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman With the Red Army, 1941-1945” (Pantheon) brings attention to a writer who deserves to be better known and whose personal story illuminates the tragic dimension of Russian Jewry during the Communist era. Grossman (1905-1964) was a journalist as well as the author of short stories […]
A World of Music
A few weeks ago, the Paris-based world music ensemble Les Yeux Noirs performed at Royce Hall as part of UCLA Live. Led by brothers Olivier and Eric Slabiak, violin virtuosos who are the Paris-born grandchildren of Polish Jewish immigrants, Les Yeux Noirs played improvisations on Russian, Yiddish, Romanian and Roma songs, as well as their […]
The Sayings of Chairman Levine
“When is a dirty bathroom a broken window?” This is the question that opens Michael Levine’s recently published business tome, “Broken Windows, Broken Business” (Warner Business Books). Levine is a successful Hollywood publicist. I am indebted to him forever for one of my most memorable Tommywood moments — a séance with Hollywood’s evergreen legend, Robert […]
COMEDY MATTERS (Albert Brooks)
“After 9/11, all I did was sit around and be scared,” Albert Brooks told me recently. “After a year and a half,” Brooks now says, “I just got tired of it.” He wondered, “Why isn’t this being processed? Do we never mention it?” Looking at what Hollywood was releasing to the public, he concluded that […]