Once the infamous Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the sweeping reconstruction that began in West Berlin at the war\’s end,was repeated and even accelerated in what had been the Communist controlled East Berlin. Spectacular shopping complexes, elegant new hotels and office towers dominate the now united city.
The family of a deceased Holocaust survivor must return to a German museum a 3,200-year-old artifact that he had brought with him to the United States, a New York state appellate court has ruled.
As a new center for Jewish studies was dedicated in Berlin, JTA has learned that a new center for training Conservative rabbis and cantors will open in Germany in 2013.
A one-ton steel key symbolizing the Palestinian \”right of return\” is to be shipped from a West Bank refugee camp to Berlin as part of a citywide art festival.
Two Israeli films that deal with the conflict with the Palestinians in much different ways were recognized at the 62nd annual Berlin International Film Festival.
A Berlin radio station has fired a controversial disc jockey accused of anti-Semitism.
Pope Benedict XVI met with leaders of Germany\’s Jewish community while on a visit to his homeland.
About a dozen years ago, actor Mike Burstyn auditioned in New York for the role of Al Jolson in the national touring company of the musical “Jolson.” While waiting for a decision, he flew home to Los Angeles and on landing at LAX decided to stop by the nearby Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary and visit the grave of the legendary jazz singer.
Erik Larson attracted a loyal and appreciative readership — and that includes me — with his potent blend of social history and serial murder in the best-selling “The Devil in the White City,” a work of meticulous research that reads like a thriller. Now he puts the same skills to work in “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin” (Crown: $26), an account of the early years of Nazi Germany as experienced by William E. Dodd, who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937.
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