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A Jewish producer of ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ sees his family history in the Oscar-nominated Netflix film
(JTA) — The film producer Daniel Dreifuss has only one surviving photo of a distant relative: his grandfather’s cousin, who fought for Germany in World War I and died in combat two days before the war’s end.
He has a few more photos of his grandfather, who also wore the German uniform in WWI — only to be rounded up by the Nazis two decades later during Kristallnacht and thrown into a concentration camp, as even the Jews who had fought for their country were not safe from its campaign of race extermination.
Dreifuss, who was raised in Brazil after his surviving ancestors fled the war to Uruguay, held up these weathered black-and-white photos to his Zoom camera as he spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his home in Los Angeles. One shows his grandfather’s cousin in his military uniform, the other shows his grandparents posing together, between the wars.
“Twenty years later, your country, that you just gave your health for and your cousin for and your family for, sends you to a camp,” he said. “It’s a lot of trauma to have to go through in one lifetime.”
These family stories echoed through Dreifuss’ mind when he first read the script for a proposed modern take on “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the classic 1928 novel about the German army’s hellish experiences during World War I. Nearly a century later, author Erich Maria Remarque’s descriptions of trench warfare and of the utter lack of heroism, valor or patriotism felt by its soldier protagonists resonated with Dreifuss.
“I said, ‘I know these people,’” he recalled. “Not because they are some distant relatives that I’ve heard of, but because I am the grandson of one of those kids who were in the film.”
Dreifuss’ parents met at a Jewish youth group in Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s. “My father was my mother’s madrich,” he recalled, using the Hebrew word for a youth group counselor. After they were later married, they moved to Israel partially to avoid Brazil’s military dictatorship and became left-wing political activists. They left Israel just before the Yom Kippur War and relocated to Scotland, where Dreifuss was born, before returning to Brazil to raise him.
Dreifuss had his bar mitzvah in the city of Belo Horizonte before later moving to Rio, which has a much larger Jewish community. “My family was never at all religious, but culturally Jewish,” he said, recalling Passover celebrations and gefilte fish recipes. He did not have many Jewish friends growing up, but his Brazilian friends were interested in Judaism and would attend his family’s Jewish events.
Daniel Dreifuss, a producer of Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” holds up a photo of his grandfather Max Dreifuss from 1919, recovering from his German military service in WWI. Max was sent to a concentration camp once the Nazis took power. (Courtesy of Daniel Dreifuss)
This global upbringing is reflected in Dreifuss’ interest in international film. It took a decade for him to mount his remake of “All Quiet,” which was eventually set up with a German production company and released by Netflix this past fall amid another endless military conflict in Europe. No one, he said, wanted to fund a resolutely anti-war film that refused to glorify its combatants, a film that was “never a hero’s journey, not the story of someone who came, you know, beat 1,000 people with their bare hands, triumphs and looks down on top of a hill at the end with some sweeping score.”
But that journey has been validated by the film’s impressive Oscar total, which surprised industry observers. At the nomination ceremony last month, “All Quiet” received nine total nods, the second most of any film this year, including for best picture — which the novel’s original 1930 Hollywood adaptation, directed by Jewish filmmaker Lewis Milestone, won. (This year’s Academy Awards will be held March 12.)
Considering the Nazis had once led a campaign of book burning against the source material and terrorized German movie theaters that showed the original movie adaptation, accusing it of being a “Judenfilm,” Dreifuss sees the new film’s success as a historical victory, too. “I love that my name will be associated with a story that was deemed degenerate by that regime,” he said.
When he was first presented with an early draft of the new “All Quiet” script, in 2013, Dreifuss was coming off of the success of another international historical film he had produced. “No,” a 1980s-set Chilean political drama, starred Gael Garcia Bernal as an ad executive tasked with convincing his country to vote the dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office. The film netted Chile’s first-ever Oscar nomination for international feature film, although Dreifuss himself is not Chilean.
In researching “No,” Dreifuss said, the film’s team had trouble finding Chileans who would admit to having cast their real-life vote in Pinochet’s favor — even though 40% of the population did so. “We couldn’t find one single person who supported him,” he recalled. “At some point, years later, no one wanted to say, ‘I supported it, I voted, I was on that side.’” He saw a parallel to the history of geopolitics in the run-up to WWII, when many Western countries — including his family’s adopted homeland of Brazil — were initially sympathetic to the Nazis.
When Hollywood studios turned down the proposed remake of “All Quiet,” forcing Dreifuss to turn to European financing, he saw an opportunity to mount the first-ever German adaptation of the property, which would allow the film to open up a “historical perspective” on how the aftermath of WWI led to the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.
German filmmaker Edward Berger, who also helmed several episodes of the espionage miniseries “Deutschland 83,” stepped into the director’s chair, and he also has a co-writing credit. German star Daniel Brühl, who has played many historical villains to the Jewish people in films ranging from “7 Days in Entebbe” to “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” took a key supporting role as the lead negotiator for the armistice agreements — the sole figure in the movie trying to find a peaceful resolution for his country. (The historical figure Brühl portrays, Matthias Erzberger, was vilified as a traitor by the German right and assassinated in 1921 by antisemitic nationalist radicals who were precursors to the Nazis.)
Though there are no explicitly Jewish characters in the film, Dreifuss believes it still speaks to the fate that would soon await Europe’s Jews.
“We know what followed in the decade in Germany,” he said. “So we could bring that to the film in subtle ways.”
He pointed to the armistice plotline that foreshadows how the Treaty of Versailles left Germany in a deeply disadvantaged position, creating an opportunity for Hitler’s brand of national populism. There are also scenes in which thoughtless German generals, driven by nationalistic fervor and wounded pride, send entire squadrons to their deaths mere minutes before the armistice is set to take effect. In one sequence, the film’s lead, the soldier Paul (Felix Kammerer), steals a goose from a French farming family of non-combatants and says: “It’s a hatred of the other, of not understanding, of being raised to have an enemy.”
Dreifuss is dipping into a different chapter of world Jewish history with his next project: a Showtime miniseries produced with the co-creators of the Israeli Netflix series “Fauda” that explores CIA operations in the Middle East and is partially set during the Lebanon War in which Israel had a heavy, and oft-criticized, military presence. The series will air this summer.
He has also been pitched a host of WWI and WWII-related projects in the wake of the success of “All Quiet.” But, he joked, “I would love for people to not only think of me as the war guy, or as the dictator guy.”
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The post A Jewish producer of ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ sees his family history in the Oscar-nominated Netflix film appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds
(JTA) — The financial services company Credit Suisse had hundreds more bank accounts with Nazi ties than it had previously revealed, a new investigation reported this week.
The findings were discovered when independent investigators audited UBS, the Swiss bank that acquired Credit Suisse in 2023.
“What the investigation has found to date shows that Credit Suisse’s involvement was more extensive than was previously known, and it underscores the importance of continuing to engage in research efforts about this horrific era of modern history,” Neil Barofsky, a lawyer overseeing the inquiry, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Barofsky’s report found 890 accounts potentially linked to Nazis: 628 individuals and 262 legal entities.
The investigation also found that Credit Suisse provided support to the “ratlines” that enabled Nazis to escape Europe and enter Argentina, opening and maintaining accounts for the Argentine Immigration Office.
Specifically, Barofsky said in his testimony, Credit Suisse provided funds “to finance bribes, obtain fraudulent travel documents, and pay for living expenses and transportation for fugitives, including perpetrators of the Holocaust.”
Barofsky’s investigation into UBS also found multiple previously unreported instances of the forced sale of property owned by Jews during the Holocaust. It also found that Credit Suisse held accounts for the German foreign office during the Holocaust, which dealt with the deportations of Jews.
Last May, Argentina declassified more than 1,800 documents related to the ratlines at the behest of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named for the late Nazi hunter. Barofsky’s research into Credit Suisse’s involvement in the ratlines is ongoing, he said.
The findings represent a potentially explosive capstone to years of investigation into Credit Suisse’s Nazi ties.
Jewish organizations have long claimed that in addition to playing a key role in financially supporting Nazi Germany, Credit Suisse has held onto money looted from Jews long after the war. In 1999, the Swiss bank paid Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors a settlement of $1.25 billion in restitution for withholding money from Jews who had tried to withdraw their funds.
In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish advocacy group, alleged that the bank had also hidden information about its ties to Nazis who fled to Argentina.
The bank hired Barofsky the following year to investigate its record but fired him in 2022, angering U.S. lawmakers including Sen. Chuck Grassley, now chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2023, as the top Republican on the Budget Committee, Grassley charged that Credit Suisse was obfuscating its Nazi ties, saying, “When it comes to investigating Nazi matters, righteous justice demands that we must leave no stone unturned. Credit Suisse has thus far failed to meet that standard.” Barofsky was soon rehired.
Tuesday’s hearing grew heated when Barofsky said the bank was still interfering with his investigation. He argued that his investigation could not be completed without access to 150 documents related to a 1998 restitution settlement between UBS and Holocaust survivors, which Barofsky says may contain the names of specific account holders he is investigating.
Robert Karofsky, president of UBS Americas, alleged Tuesday that giving Barofsky access to those documents could violate attorney-client privilege.
“Materials from the 1990’s are not within the scope of the Ombudsperson’s oversight, which is meant to be focused on Credit Suisse’s history and World War II-era conduct,” Karofsky said.
Still, Barofsky said, his report will be incomplete without those documents.
“I will be unable to provide assurance in my final report that the investigation has truly left no stone unturned,” he said.
The post Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Former Moscow rabbi says he rebuffed proposal to convert a million Russians discussed in Epstein files recording
(JTA) — When newly released audio recordings revealed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussing mass conversion and selective immigration with Jeffrey Epstein, disgraced financier and the convicted sex trafficker, the reaction in Israel was swift and deeply political.
Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused Barak of seeking to “select” Jews for immigration and charged that Israel’s political left was trying to “replace the people” after failing at the ballot box — an echo of contemporary conspiracy theories about immigration that appear to have been treated as a serious idea at the time.
The recordings, released this week as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s latest disclosure under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, capture Barak in a wide-ranging conversation with Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019. The audio appears to date to around 2013, when Barak — a longtime leader in the liberal Labor Party — was 71 years old and transitioning into the private sector.
In the recording, Barak argues that Israel should weaken the Orthodox rabbinate’s control over conversion and open the door to large-scale conversion as a demographic strategy.
“We have to break the monopoly of the Orthodox rabbinate — on marriage and funerals, the definition of a Jew,” Barak says. “Open the gates for massive conversion into Judaism. It’s a successful country. Many will apply.”
Over more than three hours, Barak speaks candidly about population trends in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, warning that without a two-state solution, Jews could lose their demographic majority.
“It will be an Arab majority,” Barak says of the territories. “It’s a collective blindness of our society.”
Barak also expresses concern about the growing proportion of Arab citizens within Israel, noting that Arabs made up about 16% of the population four decades ago and roughly 20% today. He contrasts that growth with the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population, which he says is expanding more rapidly.
As a counterweight, Barak proposes immigration, conversion and minority inclusion. He praises the Druze and Christian minorities as highly integrated and points to immigrants from the former Soviet Union as prime candidates for conversion.
“We can control the quality much more effectively, much more than the founding fathers of Israel did,” Barak says. Referring explicitly to immigration from North Africa, he adds: “They took whatever came just to save people. Now, we can be more selective.”
Barak lauds the post-Soviet aliyah of the 1990s, which brought more than 1 million Russian-speaking immigrants to Israel, and says the country could “easily absorb another million.” He recounts telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel about this idea and joking about mixed Russian-Israeli names in the military as evidence of rapid integration.
The remarks drew sharp criticism from Pinchas Goldschmidt, who spent more than three decades leading Moscow’s Jewish community before leaving the country after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In an interview, Goldschmidt said the recording echoed conversations he encountered repeatedly during his years in Russia.
“I spent 33 years in Moscow, and there was talk like this,” Goldschmidt said. “Not necessarily among the heads of the agencies dealing with aliyah, but among employees and officials who felt this was their opportunity to stop Israel from becoming a Levantine country.”
Goldschmidt said those attitudes occasionally surfaced in direct encounters with Israeli political figures. He recalled a meeting with former Israeli minister Haim Ramon, who asked whether Orthodox rabbinical courts could convert large numbers of non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
“He came to me with a number,” Goldschmidt said. “He mentioned 100,000.”
Goldschmidt said his response was categorical. “Halacha doesn’t speak in numbers,” he said, referring to Jewish law. “There is no number on the top and no number on the bottom. Halacha speaks about standards and conditions. If 1 million people are ready to convert according to Jewish law, then we will convert 1 million people. And if they are not ready, we will not convert even one.”
Goldschmidt said the meeting took place after Ramon had left government following a sexual misconduct scandal but emphasized that it was not a casual exchange.
“It was more than a conversation,” he said. “It was not a conversation over tea. If he came to see me officially, with a question like that on the table, then it meant something.”
For Goldschmidt, Barak’s claim in the recording that he discussed such matters with Putin was particularly striking. “Why do you have to speak to Putin about converting a million Russians?” he asked. “People can leave Russia without permission. The person he needed to speak to was me.”
Goldschmidt said Barak’s framing of conversion and immigration would be widely perceived in Israel as offensive. “Anyone from Middle Eastern backgrounds would hear this whole conversation as extremely racist,” he said. “And anyone who is traditional or religious would also find it very offensive.”
In his comments, Netanyahu also said Barak’s close relationship with Epstein proved that Epstein did not work for Israel or its intelligence services, saying it would make no sense for an Israeli asset to be closely associated with one of the government’s most vocal opponents.
Barak’s ties to Epstein — including repeated meetings years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction — have been reported previously, and there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Barak.
The post Former Moscow rabbi says he rebuffed proposal to convert a million Russians discussed in Epstein files recording appeared first on The Forward.
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Ex-Head of NYC Office to Combat Antisemitism Discusses Being Abruptly Fired by Mamdani, Replaced With Israel Critic
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, led by Moshe Davis, held its first meeting on July 17, 2025, at City Hall in New York City. Photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Moshe Davis was replaced this week as the executive director of the New York City Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and spoke with The Free Press about his firing, which came without notice, while also sharing a message for his replacement, liberal Zionist Phylisa Wisdom.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office announced on Wednesday that Davis was being replaced by Wisdom, 39, who recently served as the executive director of the New York Jewish Agenda. NYJA is made up of “liberal and progressive Zionists,” according to its website. The group has criticized Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip and opposes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. “NYC deserves a mayor who will stand up for Palestinians in the face of state-sanctioned violence,” Wisdom previously posted on X.
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism was established in May of last year by Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams.
Davis, 28, told The Free Press he was not told in advance that he was being replaced, and found out only after it was publicized online and in the news.
“I was reporting to work like I do every day … at some point, I get a text and then a tweet and then see an article that they have named a replacement for my position. Not something that was told to me in advance,” he explained. “At some point they came to my desk and said, ‘Let’s talk,’ and they were sorry for the way it was done. But they said they were looking to go in a new direction.”
“I’m a loud, proud Jewish person who walks with a kippah on my head,” he added. “A proud Zionist. Someone who takes their Judaism to heart and it means a lot to me and my family … And I think this administration maybe felt that was too much for them.”
Anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City increased by 182 percent in January during Mamdani’s first month in office compared to the same month last year, according to newly released statistics from the New York City Police Department (NYPD). There were 31 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the first month of 2026, which was more than half of all the hate crime incidents reported in January.
Davis told The Free Press this week that in the last month, he has been trying to push forward efforts to combat antisemitism in New York and protect Jewish New Yorkers but hasn’t “found much traction” from Mamdani’s office.
“You’re gonna put a new director in? Get to work. Jewish New Yorkers are on edge, are fearful of the rise of antisemitic incidents,” Davis said. “That’s what Jewish New Yorkers want to see: they want to see someone who cares about their concerns. If you can’t correctly understand where this hatred is coming, where this propaganda and [activism] is coming from, and how it effects Jewish New Yorkers, it’s gonna be a hard job.”
“I’m afraid if you’re giving too much leeway to propaganda and activism, Jewish New Yorkers are going to be targeted,” he added. “They’re going to be unsafe … that’s something that scares me.”
Wisdom said in a released statement that she was “honored and humbled” to be the new executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.
“New York City has long been a beacon of hope for the Jewish community,” said the Jewish Brooklyn resident. “We will continue to ensure that Jewish safety and belonging remains at the core of this administration’s vision for a more livable city. In a time of rising hatred and fear, I look forward to embracing this solemn responsibility — both to represent the diverse array of Jewish voices to City Hall in this critical moment, and to demonstrate the power of pluralistic democracy in the greatest city in the world.”
Mamdani’s office said that as head of the New York Jewish Agenda, Wisdom “successfully advocated for legislation in Albany to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate and testified before the New York City Council in support of increased funding for hate crime prevention.” Wisdom also previously worked in advocacy through the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center. She supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state but, like Mamdani, opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism, a reference tool for identifying antisemitic hate crimes that has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and governing institutions around the world.
Some Jewish leaders have expressed concern about Wisdom’s past work for Yaffed, an organization that pushes for more oversight of secular education in New York’s ultra-Orthodox yeshivas. Wisdom was Yaffed’s director of development and government affairs before joining NYJA in 2023.
“The leader of the Office of Antisemitism cannot have a contentious relationship with the Hassidic yeshiva community,” Yaacov Behrman, who heads public relations for the Chabad Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn, wrote on X in early January.
“When the office was created, I was part of the early conversations about its purpose: ensuring that Jewish New Yorkers feel protected and free to live openly and proudly,” he added. “And in New York, a large share of antisemitic hate crimes target Hassidic and Yeshivish Jews. It is difficult to understand how someone who has spent years publicly antagonizing yeshivas could build the relationships or provide the reassurance needed for the community most often targeted by antisemitic attacks. This is not politics. It is common sense.”
Those who support Wisdom’s appointment as the new executive director of the Office to Combat Antisemitism include US Rep. Jerry Nadler; New York City Comptroller Mark Levine; State Sen. Liz Krueger; former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; and Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.