Blogerim

On the occasion of Julia Child’s 100th birthday I watched the film “Oma & Bella.”

Oma and Bella © Salzgeber & Co. Medien GmbH

Oma and Bella share with Julia Child a love of cooking. They are not yet 100, but not far off: they are 84 and 88 and live in Berlin. Fifty years ago they went dancing at the “Las Vegas”; today they go to the “Chalet Suisse” and drink Berliner lager. Oma’s granddaughter made a film about them: having their hair done, out on a boat trip, watching television, and again and again, cooking in Oma’s kitchen. → continue reading

I thought I was losing my visual cognition yesterday noon, at the Jewish Museum’s canteen, when a colleague bought a candy bar which looked like a snickers in every way except for the writing, which spelled STÜRMER. I turned out to be healthy. Consulting the website of chocolate makers Mars, Inc., I learned that STÜRMER-bars are part of a “happy day edition” campaign to boost sales during the European Football Championship. Sometimes, we get paranoid at the Jewish Museum, so I was quite relieved to find that not everybody associates STÜRMER (which means “striker”) with the notoriously anti-Semitic 1920s and 1930s publication…

Naomi Lubrich, Media

“German Jews are interesting,” remarks the Israeli director Arnon Goldfinger dryly in his award-winning documentary film Ha-Dira (הדירה 2011).

Gerda and Kurt Tuchler © Goldfinger / Tuchler family archive

Clearing out the apartment of his recently deceased Jewish-German grandmother Gerda in Tel Aviv is the point of departure of Goldfinger’s investigative journey through time. Until then, his grandmother’s German past was kept secret from her family. One can imagine therefore how perplexed the many relatives were when they stumbled upon some editions in the apartment of the Nazi propaganda newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack) from 1935. → continue reading