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How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank
(JTA) — You’d think that in a country so closely identified with Anne Frank — perhaps the Holocaust’s best-known victim — cultivating memory of the genocide wouldn’t be a steep challenge.
That’s why a recent survey, suggesting what the authors called a “disturbing” lack of knowledge in the Netherlands about the Holocaust, set off alarm bells. “Survey shows lack of Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands,” wrote the Associated Press. “In the Netherlands, a majority do not know the Holocaust affected their country,” was the JTA headline. “The Holocaust is a myth, a quarter of Dutch younger generation agree,” per the Jerusalem Post.
“Survey after survey, we continue to witness a decline in Holocaust knowledge and awareness. Equally disturbing is the trend towards Holocaust denial and distortion,” Gideon Taylor, the president of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which conducted the study, said in a statement.
Like other recent studies by Claims Conference, the latest survey has been challenged by some scholars, who say the sample size is small, or the survey is too blunt a tool for examining what a country’s residents do or don’t know about their history. Even one of the experts who conducted the survey chose to focus on the positive findings: “I am encouraged by the number of respondents to this survey that believe Holocaust education is important,” Emile Schrijver, the general director of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, told JTA.
One of the scholars who says the survey doesn’t capture the subtleties of Holocaust education and commemoration in the Netherlands is Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College in Maryland. Contreras studies the historical memory of the Holocaust and Second World War in Holland. In a Twitter thread earlier this week, she agreed with those who say that “the headline that’s being plastered everywhere exaggerates the idea that young people in NL know nothing about the Holocaust.”
At the same time, she notes that while the Netherlands takes Holocaust education and commemoration seriously, it has a long way to go in reckoning with a past that includes collaboration with the Nazis, postwar antisemitism, a small but vocal far right and a sense of national victimhood that often downplays the experience of Jews during the Shoah.
“It’s such a complex issue,” Contreras told me. “There’s no one answer to how the Holocaust is remembered in the Netherlands.”
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I took the opportunity to speak with Contreras not only about Dutch memory, but how the Netherlands may serve as an example of how countries deal with Holocaust memory and the national stories they tell.
Our interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Tell me a little bit about when you saw the survey, and perhaps how it didn’t mesh with what you know about the Netherlands?
Jazmine Contreras: My major problem is that every single outlet is picking up this story and running a headline like, “Youth in the Netherlands don’t even know the Holocaust happened there. They cannot tell you how many people were killed, how many were deported.” And I think that’s really problematic because it paints a really simplistic picture of Holocaust memory and Holocaust education in that country.
There are multiple programs, in Amsterdam, in other cities, in Westerbork, the former transit camp. They have an ongoing program that brings survivors and the second generation to colleges, to middle schools and primary schools all across the country. And they also have in Amsterdam a program called Oorlog in Mijn Buurt, “War in My Neighborhood,” and basically young people become the “memory bearers” — that’s the kind of language they use — and interview people who grew up and experience the war in their neighborhood, and then speak as if they were the person who experienced it, in the first person.
You also have events around the May 4 commemoration remembering the Dutch who died in war and in peacekeeping operations, and a program called Open Jewish Houses [when owners of formerly Jewish property open their homes to strangers to talk about the Jews who used to live there]. It’s really amazing: I’ve actually been able to visit these formerly Jewish homes and hear the stories. And, of course, the Anne Frank House has its own slew of programming, and teachers talk a lot about the Holocaust and take students to synagogues in places like Groningen, where they have a brand new exhibit at the synagogue. They are taking thousands at this point. The new National Holocaust Names Memorial is in the center of Amsterdam.
I think, again, this idea that children are growing up without having exposure to Holocaust memory, or knowledge of what happened in the Netherlands, is a bit skewed. I think we get into a dangerous area if we’re painting the country with a broad brush and saying nobody knows anything about the Holocaust.
Have you anecdotal evidence or seen studies of Dutch kids about whether they’re getting the education they need?
Anecdotally, yes. I was invited to attend a children’s commemoration that they do at the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater in Amsterdam, which is the former Dutch theater that was used as a major deportation site. And it’s children who put on a commemoration themselves. Again, not every child is participating in this, but if they’re not participating in the children’s commemoration, then they’re doing the “War in My Neighborhood” program, or they’re doing Open Jewish Houses, or they’re taking field trips. That’s pretty impressive to me, and it’s pretty meaningful. They want to help participate in it in the future. They want to come back because it leaves a lasting impression for them.
Let’s back up a bit. Anne Frank dominates everyone’s thinking about Holland and the Holocaust. And I guess the story that’s told is that she was protected by her neighbors until, of course, the Nazis proved too powerful, found her and sent her away. What’s right and what’s wrong about that narrative?
Don’t forget that Anne Frank was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands. And I think that part of the story is also really interesting and left out. She’s this Dutch icon, but she was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands, and the Dutch Jewish community was single-handedly responsible for funding, at Westerbork, what was first a refugee center. I think that’s really complicated because now we also have a discourse about present-day refugees and the Holocaust.
Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College, specializes in Dutch Holocaust memory. (Courtesy)
I’ve also never quite understood the insistence on making her an icon when the end of the story is that she’s informed on and dies in a concentration camp. The idea that the Franks were hidden here fits really well into this idea of Dutch resistance and tolerance, and her diary often gets misquoted to kind of represent her as someone who had hope despite the fact that she was being persecuted. In the 1950s, her narrative gets adopted into the U.S., and we treat it as this globalizing human rights discourse.
We don’t talk about the fact that she’s found because she’s informed upon, and we don’t talk about the fact that you had non-Jewish civilians who were informers for a multitude of reasons, including ideological collaboration and their own financial gain.
And when it was talked about most recently, it was about a discredited book that named her betrayer as a Jew.
That was a huge controversy.
I get the sense from your writing that the story the Dutch tell about World War II is very incomplete, and that they haven’t fully reckoned with their collaboration under Nazi occupation even as they emphasize their own victimhood.
On the national state level, they have officially acknowledged not only the extensive collaboration, but the failure of both the government and the Crown to speak out on behalf of Dutch Jews. [In 2020, Prime Minister Mark Rutte formally apologized for how his kingdom’s wartime government failed its Jews, a first by a sitting prime minister.] Now, the question is, what’s happening in broader Dutch society?
Unfortunately, there was an increase in voting for the Dutch far right, although they’ve never managed to get a majority or even come close to it.
Something else that’s happening is that many ask, “Why should Dutch Jews get separate consideration after the Second World War, a separate victimhood, when we were all victimized?” The Netherlands is unique because it’s occupied for the entirety of the Second World War — 1940 to 1945. There is the civil service collaborating, right, but there’s no occupation government. So it’s not like Belgium. It’s not like France, not like Denmark. And there was the Hunger Winter of 1944-45 when 20,000 civilians perished due to famine. You have real victimhood, so people ask, “Why are the Jews so special? We all suffered.”
And at the same time, scholarship keeps emerging about the particular ways non-Jewish Dutch companies and individuals cooperated with the Nazis.
The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, which has done so much of this research, found that Jews who were deported had to pay utility bills for when they weren’t living there. You have a huge controversy around the the Dutch railway [which said it would compensate hundreds of Holocaust victims for its role in shipping Jews to death camps]. The Dutch Red Cross apologized [in 2017 for failing to act to protect Jews during World War II], following the publication of a research paper on its inaction. A couple of decades ago, the government basically auctioned off paintings, jewelry and other Jewish possessions, and in 2020 they started the effort to give back pieces of art that were in Dutch museums. Dienke Hondius wrote a book on the cold reception given to survivors upon their return. Remco Ensel and Evelien Gans also wrote a book on postwar Jewish antisemitism.
So a lot has been happening, a lot of controversies, and, thanks to all of this research, a lot happening in order to rectify the situation.
It sounds like a mixed story, of resistance and collaboration, and of rewriting the past but also coming to terms with it.
There’s a really complex history here of both wanting to present it as “everybody’s a victim” and that the resistance was huge. In fact, the data shows 5% of the people were involved in resistance and 5% were collaborators. So it’s not like this wholesale collaboration or resistance was happening. It was only in 1943, when non-Jewish men were called up for labor service in Germany, that they got really good at hiding people and by then it was too late.
Right. My colleagues at JTA often note that the Nazis killed or deported more Dutch Jews per capita than anywhere in occupied Western Europe — of about 110,000 Jews deported, only a few thousand survived.
Yes, the highest percentage of deportation in Western Europe.
A room at the Anne Frank House museum where she and her family hid for two years during the Holocaust in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (Photo Collection Anne Frank House)
Since this week is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let me ask what Holland gets right and wrong compared to maybe some other European countries with either similar experiences or comparable experiences.
The framing of that question is difficult because there’s so many unique points about the Holocaust and the occupation in the Netherlands. Again, it was occupied for the entirety of 1940-45. You have a civil service that was willing to sign Aryan declarations. The queen, as head of a government in exile in London, is basically saying, “Do what you need to just to survive.”
One of the big problems is there are people like Geert Wilders [a contemporary right-wing Dutch lawmaker] who practice this kind of philo-Semitism and support of Israel, but it’s really about blaming the Muslim population for antisemitism and saying none of it is homegrown. They don’t have to talk about the fact that there was widespread antisemitism in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
In the Netherlands they’re not instituting laws around what you can and can’t say about the Holocaust like in Poland [where criticizing Polish collaboration has been criminalized]. There are so many amazing educational initiatives and nonprofit organizations that are doing the work. And even these public controversies ended up being outlets for the production of Holocaust memory when survivors, but mostly now the second and third generations, use that space to talk about their own family Holocaust history.
Tell me about your personal stake in this: How did the Holocaust become a subject of study for you?
I specialize in Dutch Holocaust memory. I’m not Jewish, but my grandparents on my mother’s side are Dutch. For my first project I looked at relationships between German soldiers and Dutch women during the war during the occupation, and I eventually kind of made my way into the post war, when these children of former collaborators were still very marginalized in Dutch society. It ties into this. I do interviews with members of the Jewish community, children of resistance members and children of collaborators and how these memory politics play out.
What is the utility of events like International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the major Holocaust memorials in educating the public about the Holocaust and World War II?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day and May 4 result in the production of new memories about the Holocaust and the Second World War. I was at the 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration when the prime minister formally apologized. It was a really big moment, and it allowed the Jewish community, and the Roma and Sinti community, a space to remember and to share in that and to speak to it as survivors and the second and third generation.
Unlike the United States, the Netherlands is a small, insular country, so the relationship between the public and the media and academics is so close. So in the weeks before and the weeks after these memorials, academics, politicians and experts are publishing pieces about memory. That’s useful to the production of new memories and information about the Holocaust.
But what about the other days of the year? Will putting a monument in the center of Amsterdam actually change how people understand the Holocaust? That is a question that I think is harder to answer. The new monument features individual names of 102,000 Jews and Roma and Sinti and visually gives you the scope of what the Holocaust looked like in the Netherlands. But does that matter if somebody lives outside of Amsterdam and they’re never going to see this monument?
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The post How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Swiss broadcaster removes footage of host criticizing Israeli bobsled team during its first Milan runs
(JTA) — A Swiss sportscaster spent the 57 seconds of the Israeli bobsled team’s first run in Milan denouncing Israel and the team’s captain, drawing criticism from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and casting a shadow over the historic outing.
The team came in last in its first efforts in the Winter Olympics, finishing 26th of 26 teams in two two-men heats on Monday. A third heat is scheduled for Monday afternoon, while the four-man event takes place next weekend.
It has been a disappointing showing so far for the team, which is making its first appearance in the Olympics following a years-long journey propelled by A.J. Edelman, an American observant Jew who has sought to do for Israel’s winter sports profile what the unlikely Cool Runnings bobsled team did for Jamaica in the 1990s.
The Swiss sportscaster, Sebastian Renna, used the run to detail allegations against Edelman, whom he referred to as “a first-time Olympian and self-described ‘Zionist to the core’ who has posted several messages on social media in support of the genocide in Gaza.” He listed comments allegedly made by Edelman and questioned why he should be allowed to compete given the International Olympic Committee’s rules barring athletes from making political statements.
Commentator Stefan Renna on Swiss public broadcaster RTS sparked controversy during Israeli captain AJ Edelman’s second bobsleigh run at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, bringing up Edelman’s past social media posts supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including one… pic.twitter.com/TenlLtbRiw
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 17, 2026
The Swiss national broadcaster, RTS, issued a statement about the footage, which it removed from its website, on Tuesday. “Our journalist wanted to question the IOC’s policy regarding the athlete’s statements,” it said. “However, such information, while factual, is inappropriate for sports commentary due to its length. Therefore, we removed the segment from our website last night.”
The clip had drawn praise from critics of Israel and excoriating comments from its defenders. “Beyond disgusting that the Jew-hating Swiss ‘sportscaster’ spewed bigotry & bile at @Israel Olympic Bobsled team & its captain @realajedelman as they competed,” Huckabee tweeted.
Edelman, who posts frequently on social media in support of Israel and against antisemitism, did not dispute any of Renna’s allegations but rejected their thrust.
“I am aware of the diatribe the commentator directed towards the Israeli Bobsled Team on the Swiss Olympics broadcast today,” he tweeted on Monday. “I can’t help but notice the contrast: Shul Runnings is a team of 6 proud Israelis who’ve made it to the Olympic stage. No coach with us. No big program. Just a dream, grit, and unyielding pride in who we represent. Working together towards an incredible goal and crushing it. Because that’s what Israelis do. I don’t think it’s possible to witness that and give any credence to the commentary.”
On Tuesday morning, Edelman was sanguine as he prepared to take the ice again.
“Today I take the final 2man run of my career, with the Shul Runnings team that is making history,” he tweeted on Tuesday morning from Milan. “What an honor it is to wear this flag. What a blessing to be one of our people. Anyone can say anything about us, but you know what? They can only say it because we’re here. Because Israel makes the impossible possible. Victors, never victims.”
The post Swiss broadcaster removes footage of host criticizing Israeli bobsled team during its first Milan runs appeared first on The Forward.
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Was playwright Avrom Goldfaden a Zionist?
זינט די סאַמע ערשטע יאָרן פֿון דער ציוניסטישער באַװעגונג איז דער טעאַטער געװען אַ װיכטיקער מיטל פֿאַרן פֿאַרשפּרײטן אירע אידעען. מען האָט פֿאָרגעשטעלט אױף דער בינע סײַ די ייִדישע פּראָבלעמען — אַזעלכע װי אַנטיסעמיטיזם, דלות, שלעכטע מידות — סײַ די לײזונג: אַ ייִדישע מדינה. צװישן די דראַמאַטורגן זײַנען געװען די אָבֿות פֿונעם פּאָליטישן ציוניזם, אַזעלכע װי טעאָדאָר הערצל און מאַקס נאָרדױ.
אַבֿרהם גאָלדפֿאַדן (1840־1908), דער „פֿאָטער פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער“, איז ניט געװען קײן פּאָליטישער דענקער. בײַ אים איז דער טעאַטער געװען אַן אָרט, װוּ אַ ייִד „זאָל האָבן װוּהין צו אַנטלױפֿן אױף עטלעכע שטונדן פֿון זײַנע ביטערע דאגות, װאָס פֿאַרפֿאָלגן אים אַ גאַנצן טאָג.“ דערפֿאַר, זאָגט ער װײַטער, „איז געװען שטענדיק מײַן פּלאַן צו פֿאַרפֿאַסן נאָר קאָמישעס מיט געזאַנג און טאַנץ, װאָס ס׳הײסט אָפּערעטע.“
אָבער אין דער אמתן זײַנען װײַט ניט אַלע פּיעסעס זײַנע געװען קאָמיש און לײַכטזיניק. װי עס באַװײַזט די דײַטשישע פֿאָרשערין מעלאַניע דאָריס ליקאַס (אוניװערסיטעט פֿון געטינגען) אין איר בוך „דער ייִדישער טעאַטער צװישן ציוניזם און ייִדישער אַסימילאַציע אַרום 1900“, איז דער ייִדישער טעאַטער געװען „אַ שפּיגל פֿון יענער צײַט“. אין זײַנע דראַמאַטישע װערק האָט גאָלדפֿאַדן באַהאַנדלט די װיכטיקסטע סאָציאַלע און פּאָליטישע פּראָבלעמען פֿון ייִדישן קיום אױפֿן שװעל פֿונעם צװאַנציקסטן יאָרהונדערט.
כּדי צו אַנטפּלעקן געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע און פּאָליטישע טענדענצן אין גאָלדפֿאַדנס שאַפֿונג מאַכט לוקאַס אַ פּרטימדיקן אַנאַליז פֿון די טעקסטן. זי באַטראַכט ניט נאָר די באַקאַנטע װערק װי „שולמית“, „בר־כּוכבא“ און „משיחס צײַטן“, נאָר אױך דאָס לעצטע װערק זײַנס, „בן עמי“ (1906), װאָס איז אױפֿגעפֿירט געװאָרן אין ניו־יאָרק. דער טעקסט איז קײן מאָל ניט געדרוקט געװאָרן אָבער אַ כּתבֿ־יד האָט זיך אָפּגעהיט אין ייִװאָ.
גאָלדפֿאַדן האָט באַשריבן „בן עמי“ װי אַ „נאַציאָנאַל־פּאַטריאָטישע מוזיקאַלישע דראַמע“, װאָס איז „ספּעציעל געשריבן געװאָרן פֿאַר מײַן ייִדישן פֿאָלק“. די פּיעסע ברענגט צונױף די פּראָבלעמען פֿון יענער צײַט: רעװאָלוציע און פּאָגראָמען אין רוסלאַנד, אַסימילאַציע, שמד, עקאָנאָמישע סתּירות. זײ װערן פֿאָרגעשטעלט דורך ליבע־באַציִונגען, משפּחה־קאָנפֿליקטן און פּאָליטישע װיכּוחים.
װי עס איז טיפּיש פֿאַר גאָלדפֿאַדן, װערן רעאַליסטישע געשעענישן געמישט מיט ראָמאַנטישע פֿאַנטאַזיעס: אַ גוטהאַרציקער קריסטלעכער באַראָן, װאָס האָט געראַטעװעט אַ ייִדיש מײדל רחלע פֿון אַ פּאָגראָם, האָט זיך אַנטפּלעקט װי אַ געהײמער ייִד. דער סוף איז גוט, דער באַראָן האָט חתונה מיט רחלען, און די אַסימילירטע העלדן טוען תּשובֿה.
דער תּמצית פֿון דער פּיעסע װערט אױסגעדריקט אַלעגאָריש אין אַ ליד אינעם פּראָלאָג. אַן אַלמנה זיצט „בײַ דער כּותל־מערבֿי אין גאַנץ טיפֿן טרױער“ װעגן דעם ביטערן מצבֿ פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָלק. זי װערט געטרײסט דורכן כאָר, װאָס זאָגט צו, אַז אָט־אָט, וועלן די קינדער אירע „אַלע צוזאַמען /קומען צו דער מאַמען / זי זען אין אַמאָלעדיקער פּראַכט.“ אַזױ, האַלט לוקאַס, מאַכט גאָלדפֿאַדן קלאָר די אידעע פֿון זײַן דראַמע: ייִדן װעלן זיך אומקערן קײן ארץ־ישׂראל און אױפֿבױען דעם נײַעם בית־המקדש.
די געשטאַלט פֿון דער אַלמנה בת ציון, װאָס זיצט „אין דעם בית־המקדש / אין אַ װינקל חדר“ געפֿינט מען שױן אין „שולמית“ אינעם באַרימטן ליד „ראָזשינקעס מיט מאַנדלען“. דאָרט איז דאָס אַן אַלעגאָריע פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָלק װאָס בענקט נאָך זײער הײמלאַנד. אין „בן עמי“ איז דאָס פֿאָלק שױן גרײט אַראָפּצוברענגען די גאולה.
עס איז טשיקאַװע צו לײענען װי גאָלדפֿאַדנס אַ פּערסאָנאַזש אין דער פּיעסע האָט זיך פֿאָרגעשטעלט דאָס אומקערן פֿון ייִדן אין ארץ־ישׂראל. דאָס װעט פֿאָרקומען „דורך רעװאָלוציאָן אין אַ גינסטיקער צײַט און געלעגנהײט“. די דאָזיקע רעװאָלוציע דאַרף זיך אָנהײבן אין דער טערקישער אימפּעריע, „װען די טערקישע געבילדעטע יוגנט װעלן זיך רעװאָלטירן אַראָפּצוּװאַרפֿן פֿון זיך דעם דעספּאָטישן יאָך“.
דעמאָלט װעט די ייִדישע יוגנט אין ארץ־ישׂראל „אױך קענען אױפֿהײבן די פֿרײַהײט־פֿאָן און מיט װאָפֿן אין די הענט אַרױספֿאָדערן זײער גערעכטלעכע הײמאַט [היימלאַנד].“ די ייִדן אין אַנדערע לענדער דאַרפֿן דערבײַ „בלײַבן טרױ זײערע רעגירונגען“, אָבער „שטײן פֿאַרטיק בײַם ערשטן סיגנאַל פֿון דאָרטן זיך אָפּרופֿן מיט מאַטעריעלער און פֿיזישער הילף, זײ צו שיקן געלט און אײגענע סטראַטעגיקער, װאָס האָבן גענאָסן זײער בילדונג אין ציװיליזירטע לענדער און דאַן — איז דער זיג געװוּנען.“ װי אין אַנדערע ציוניסטישע פּראָיעקטן פֿון יענער צײַט, װערט די אַראַבישע באַפֿעלקערונג ניט דערמאָנט.
להיפּוך צו גאָלדפֿאַדן, האָבן די דײַטשיש־שפּראַכיקע ציוניסטישע מחברים טעאָדאָר הערצל און מאַקס נאָרדױ ניט קײן אינטערעס צו ארץ־ישׂראל. זײער דאגה איז דער אַנטיסעמיטיזם, װאָס לאָזט ייִדן ניט אינטעגרירן זיך אין דער מאָדערנער געזעלשאַפֿט אין דײַטשלאַנד און עסטרײַך. דער קאָנפֿליקט צװישן ייִדן און קריסטן אין הערצלס דראַמע „דאָס נײַע געטאָ“ (1895) שפּילט זיך אַרום עקאָנאָמישע און סאָציאַלע ענינים.
הערצל װײַזט, אַז אַפֿילו װען ייִדישע געשעפֿטסלײַט באַמיִען זיך צו פֿאַרבעסערן די עקאָנאָמישע לאַגע פֿון קריסטלעכע אַרבעטער, װערן זײ סײַ װי ניט באַהאַנדלט װי גלײַכע מיט די קריסטן. ניט געקוקט אױף דער קולטורעלע אַסימילאַציע און דעם עקאָנאָמישן דערפֿאָלג געפֿינט זיך די ייִדישע בורזשואַזיע אין אַ נײַעם געטאָ מחוץ דער קריסטלעכער געזעלשאַפֿט. סימבאָליש װערט דאָס פֿאָרגעשטעלט דורך אַ דועל, אין װעלכן אַ ייִד װערט פֿאַרװוּנדעט דורך אַ קריסט.
אַן ענלעכע פּראָבלעם װערט פֿאָרגעשטעלט אין נאָרדױס דראַמע „דאָקטער קאָן“ (1899). דער העלד איז אַ באַגאַבטער מאַטעמאַטיקער, װאָס װיל באַקומען אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר־שטעלע כּדי צו מעגן חתונה האָבן מיט אַ פֿרױ פֿון אַ פֿאַרמעגלעכער קריסטלעכער משפּחה.
אָבער די אַנטיסעמיטישע אַדמיניסטראַציע פֿונעם אוניװערסיטעט גיט אים ניט קײן שטעלע, און די משפּחה װיל אים ניט האָבן פֿאַר אַן אײדעם. װי אין הערצלס פּיעסע פֿירט דער קאָנפֿליקט צו אַ דועל, דאָס מאָל צװישן קאָן און דער פֿרױס ברודער. קאָן װערט שװער פֿאַרװוּנדעט און שטאַרבט.
הערצל און נאָרדױ זײַנען בײדע געװען די פֿירנדיקע ציוניסטישע פּאָליטיקער פֿון יענער צײַט, אָבער אין זײערע דראַמאַטישע װערק איז ניטאָ קײן שפּור פֿון אַ פּלאַן צו האָבן אַ ייִדישע מלוכה, שױן אָפּגערעדט פֿון װידער אױפֿבױען דעם בית־המקדש. אין זײערע פּיעסעס האָבן די מאָראַלישע קאָנפֿליקט און סאָציאַלע פּראָבלעמען פֿון ייִדן אין דער קריסטלעכער געזעלשאַפֿט ניט קײן לײזונג.
לוקאַסעס פּרטימדיקער פֿאַרגלײַכיקער אַנאַליז אַנטפּלעקט דעם װיכטיקסטן חילוק צװישן גאָלדפֿאַדן און די דײַטשיש־שפּראַכיקע מחברים. גאָלדפֿאַדן האָט זיך געװענדט צו דעם ייִדישן עולם און געקענט קונציק צופּאַסן ערנסטע פּאָליטישע טעמעס צום לײַכטן סטיל פֿון זײַן באַליבטן זשאַנער פֿון אָפּערעטע. הערצל און נאָרדױ האָבן געשריבן פֿאַרן ברײטערן דײַטשישן עולם, װאָס האָט ניט געהאַט קײן אינטערעס צו דער ציוניסטישער פּאָליטיק. די פּראָבלעם פֿון זײערע העלדן איז געװען אַנטיסעמיטיזם, ניט דאָס אױפֿבױען אַ ייִדישע מלוכה.
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Forever curious, never daunted, Frederick Wiseman sought to repair the world through film
Frederick Wiseman, whose 60-year project of quietly asking America to look at itself — without sermon or embellishment, yet wielding the camera with an ethical ferocity‚ has died at the age of 96. Wiseman was a documentarian par excellence, but — as his year-long 2010 MOMA retrospective and his winter-long 2025 Lincoln Center appreciation show — he was more than a filmmaker and more dynamic than the institutions he critiqued. The 45 films he made between 1967 and 2023 embody the very process of American self-reflection.
Born Jan. 1, 1930, in Boston, Mass., Wiseman grew up in a Jewish household that never made a big show of its Jewishness, yet never let it slip from mind. His father, Jacob Leo Wiseman, was an accomplished lawyer; his mother, Gertrude Leah Kotzen, had a number of jobs but Wiseman once told the Forward that “not being able to study acting was her life’s regret.” In countless interviews, Wiseman described his upbringing as secular but culturally Jewish — one with plenty of Yiddish and the Forverts on the kitchen table. It was a childhood that inculcated a moral restlessness that he would spend his entire creative life channeling through film.
Before the camera, there was the classroom: Williams College, then Yale Law School. Law was his first chosen arena, and there is something telling in that. To make a good lawyer, you need curiosity, patience and the stamina to sit with contradiction. Wiseman found the law constricting and he turned, gradually and then completely, to filmmaking, where the rules were up for grabs but the moral stakes were never abstract.
After helping to produce Cool World, a 1965 feature about drug addiction, violence and economic hardship set in Harlem, Wiseman bought a 16mm camera and went to Bridgewater State Hospital to film Titicut Follies. His first film remains one of his most notorious, not least for influencing Miloš Forman’s 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The state hospital for the criminally insane becomes, through Wiseman’s lens, both theater and trial. The patients are on display for us as are the guards but we, the audience, are on trial too: How do we treat the weakest among us? How do we look away?
Although the film represents an early example of his unobtrusive style, it was so uncomfortably honest that the Massachusetts government succeeded in banning it from general American distribution for 20 years. It was the first known film to be censored for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security. This is where his Jewishness lived — in the refusal to flinch from the unspeakable. Wiseman spent six decades getting us to see what we really mean by the places we build, the rules we enforce, and sometimes the people we push to the margins.
His “reality fictions,” as he preferred to call them, are quiet but not passive. They have no narration — no voice-of-God explanations or neat moral conclusions. The camera simply sits, bearing witness to public housing in Chicago, an inner-city high school in Philadelphia, Boston city government, a Dallas department store, a welfare office, a library in Queens, smalltown Indiana, and two views of domestic violence in Florida. What emerges is an archive of American power and American fragility.
Even more than his contemporaries D.A. Pennebaker and the Maysles brothers, Wiseman avoided tying his stories into a single ideological bow. But, just like his friend and follower Errol Morris, he never stopped asking questions. He once said he disliked the word “documentary” because it suggested a neatness and authority that reality refuses to offer. Like a scribe working on a Torah scroll, Wiseman would spend a year or more in his editing room shaping hundreds of hours of footage into a final cut.
Every editing choice was an act of interpretation, and every interpretation was a kind of moral accounting. To watch a Wiseman film is to practice a secular version of cheshbon nefesh — an accounting of the soul. We see the small humiliations of bureaucracy, the quiet heroism of nurses, the petty tyrannies of principals, the warmth and indifference that coexist inside every institution. His films remind us that institutions, including marriage, are made up of people, and people are both better and worse than the systems they create.
Though Wiseman never foregrounded his Jewishness in public, it filtered through his choice of subjects — and his abiding belief in the dignity of ordinary lives. He loved the messy, pluralistic, contradictory spaces where authority and people meet, like a library, a community center, a city council meeting. He loved making films and was annoyed not to be able to film or edit after his 2023 feature, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, about a Michelin three star-restaurant and the family that runs it.
He once called his films “epic poems,” but they are also commentaries, in the rabbinic sense: teasing out what is hidden in plain sight, turning it over and over until it yields something that might help us live with ourselves. Wiseman was excited in 2025 when a group of archivists finished the process of restoring and digitizing 33 of his films so that his entire oeuvre can be more easily examined for years to come.
Wiseman’s focus was mainly on the United States, though he did film elsewhere — especially in Paris where he filmed at a strip club and a dance rehearsal at the Paris Opera Ballet. In later years, when asked how he chose what to film, he said simply: “Curiosity.” But curiosity, for Wiseman, was never passive. It was a demand to see. In this, he practiced a form of tikkun olam — repair of the world — that was all the more radical for being so understated. He didn’t shout. He didn’t score cheap points. He invited us to do the hard work ourselves.
He was honored, eventually, by the very institutions he made his life’s work dissecting. A MacArthur “Genius Grant,” a Guggenheim Fellowship, an honorary Academy Award, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Venice. Yet he remained — in temperament and in practice — the same outsider who first brought his camera to that state hospital in 1967, sure only that the camera should watch and listen, and that we should, too.
Wiseman’s wife Zipporah Batshaw passed away in 2021 but he is survived by his two children and a generation of filmmakers who learned from him that moral clarity need not come at the expense of complexity. They carry forward the project of asking the unasked questions, of looking at what we’d rather ignore. In that way, his legacy is not a monument but a living tradition — an ever-expanding conversation about what it means to be human, to be responsible for each other, and to stand, clear-eyed, in the face of the world as it is.
May his memory be a blessing, and may we, like him, never stop seeing.
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