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Andy Samberg plays a famous Jewish WWII photographer in upcoming biopic
(JTA) — A historic wartime photography partnership from the 1940s — often credited as the first to capture many of the horrors of the Holocaust — is getting the Hollywood treatment.
Kate Winslet stars in “Lee” as model-turned-wartime-photojournalist Lee Miller, who often worked alongside David E. Scherman, a Jewish photographer portrayed in the film by Jewish actor and comedian Andy Samberg. The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday.
Miller, then employed by Condé Nast, and Scherman, employed by LIFE Magazine, were among the first to enter the city of Nuremberg, the Dachau concentration camp and Berchtesgaden, where the Nazi Party had its “Eagle’s Nest” fortified alpine retreat. They also covered the D-Day invasion of Europe, the first battles on the beaches of Normandy and the liberation of Paris in 1944.
While on assignment, Scherman survived two small plane crashes. His first near-death experience in wartime came in April 1941, before the United States had entered the war. Scherman was headed to Cape Town when his ship was shelled by a German warship disguised as a merchant vessel. Scherman’s photographs of the warship, smuggled back to the United States in tubes of toothpaste and shaving cream, were published in LIFE and later used by the British navy to identify the boat and sink it.
Scherman was also one of the first photographers to enter Munich during the war, where he discovered Hitler’s home, the location of which was not yet known to Allies, according to his obituary in The New York Times. It was there that he and Miller took some of the most iconic photographs from their creative partnership — most notably of Miller in Hitler’s bathtub, coincidentally snapped on the day of Hitler’s suicide in Berlin. In the series of photographs, a portrait of Hitler sits on the tub to her left, and her boots, still dusty from the duo’s visit to Dachau earlier that morning, dirty up the towel on the floor. The concentration camp had been liberated the day before.
“She understood the meaning of being able to stomp her dirt and mud-laden boots on Hitler’s prissy bath mat — it was the mud of Dachau, which she had just seen and witnessed,” Ellen Kuras, the cinematographer who worked on “Lee,” told Vanity Fair. “Lee Miller had a great sense of irony. Even though we may not have seen that in photographs, we wanted to be able to capture that.”
When Miller finished posing, Scherman took her place and Miller took the camera, her son Antony Penrose told the Jewish News ahead of an exhibition about her photography in 2015. (Penrose also wrote “The Lives of Lee Miller,” the book upon which the screenplay for “Lee” was based, and he stars in the film as an extra.)
“Now if you were to see the photo of Scherman, Lee tilts up to fully include the showerhead prominently,” Penrose explained. “Why? Because Scherman was Jewish and that morning they had been in a very different type of shower room, one that was disguised as such, but was in fact a gas chamber. There are thousands of words in those two pictures.”
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The post Andy Samberg plays a famous Jewish WWII photographer in upcoming biopic appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘With or Without Russia’s Help’: Iran Pledges to Block South Caucasus Route Opened Up By Peace Deal
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – Iran will block the establishment of a US-backed transit corridor in the South Caucasus region with or without Moscow’s help, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader was quoted as saying on Saturday by the Iran International website, one day after the historic peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“Mr. Trump thinks the Caucasus is a piece of real estate he can lease for 99 years,” Ali Akbar Velayati said of the so-called Zangezur corridor, the establishment of which is stipulated in the peace deal unveiled on Friday by US President Donald Trump. The White House said the transit route would facilitate greater exports of energy and other resources.
“This passage will not become a gateway for Trump’s mercenaries — it will become their graveyard,” the Khamenei advisor added.
Baku and Yerevan have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Azerbaijan took back full control of the region in 2023, prompting or forcing almost all of the territory’s 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.
Yet that painful history was put to the side on Friday at the White House, as Trump oversaw a signing ceremony, flanked by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The peace deal with Azerbaijan—a pro-Western ally of Israel—is expected to pull Armenia out of the Russian and Iranian sphere of influence and could transform the South Caucasus, an energy-producing region neighboring Russia, Europe, Turkey and Iran.
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UK Police Arrest 150 at Protest for Banned Palestine Action Group
People holding signs sit during a rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, August 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
London’s Metropolitan Police said on Saturday it had arrested 150 people at a protest against Britain’s decision to ban the group Palestine Action, adding it was making further arrests.
Officers made arrests after crowds, waving placards expressing support for the group, gathered in Parliament Square, the force said on X.
Protesters, some wearing black and white Palestinian scarves, chanted “shame on you” and “hands off Gaza,” and held signs such as “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” video taken by Reuters at the scene showed.
In July, British lawmakers banned Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes in protest against Britain’s support for Israel.
The ban makes it a crime to be a member of the group, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
The co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori, last week won a bid to bring a legal challenge against the ban.
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‘No Leniency’: Iran Announces Arrest of 20 ‘Zionist Agents’
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addresses a special session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 20, 2025. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
i24 News – Iranian authorities have in recent months arrested 20 people charged with being “Israeli Mossad operatives,” the judiciary said, adding that the Islamic regime will mete out the harshest punishments.
“The judiciary will show no leniency toward spies and agents of the Zionist regime, and with firm rulings, will make an example of them all,” spokesperson Asghar Jahangiri told Iranian media. However, it is understood that an unspecified number of detainees were released, apparently after the charges against them could not be substantiated.
The Islamic Republic was left reeling by a devastating 12-day war with Israel earlier in the summer that left a significant proportion of its military arsenal in ruins and dealt a serious setback to its uranium enrichment program. The fallout included an uptick in executions of Iranians convicted of spying for Israel, with at least eight death sentences carried out in recent months. Hit with international sanctions, the country is in dire economic straights, with frequent energy outages and skyrocketing unemployment.
In recent weeks Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi affirmed that Tehran cannot give up on its nuclear enrichment program even as it was severely damaged during the war.
“It is stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe. But obviously we cannot give up of enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride,” the official told Fox News.