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‘Origin’ story: How Ava DuVernay’s new movie connects the Holocaust, slavery and caste
(JTA) — Early in the new drama “Origin,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning Black author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) calls her cousin from Berlin to share that, as part of her research into American racism, she intends to learn more about the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.
Her cousin is unimpressed.
“Leave Jewish folks alone,” Marion (Niecy Nash) advises Isabel. “They don’t need you. Write about us.”
But this movie’s version of Wilkerson can’t abide by that. In her mind, the fates of Jews and Black people are connected by the hidden system of “caste”: arbitrary societal hierarchies that encourage cruelty and subjugation. This is the thesis undergirding “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” the 2020 bestseller by the real-life Wilkerson, which deems Nazism and American racism — alongside India’s own rigid caste system — as the caste systems that have “stood out” the most “throughout human history.”
And “Origin,” the new film by Ava DuVernay now in theaters and based in part on this book, is devoted to making those connections plain.
Here’s a Jewish guide to what “Origin” has to say about the Nazis and their connection to Wilkerson’s broader thesis.
What is ‘Origin’ about?
Written and directed by DuVernay (“Selma,” “When They See Us”), “Origin” is a dramatization of the writing of Wilkerson’s “Caste” that uses historical recreations and the author’s own family story to capture the book’s cerebral tone.
The film opens with the 2012 murder of Black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, later recreating Nazi-era Germany, the Jim Crow South and other moments it connects through the idea of caste.
Well-regarded 20th-century Jewish texts make up some of the onscreen Wilkerson’s research process, including a quote by Holocaust survivor Primo Levi and glimpses of the 1956 anthropological book “Israel Between East And West,” by Raphael Patai. Palestinians are also name-dropped at one point, with a scholar from the Dalit caste — the “untouchable” lowest tier of India’s caste system — telling Wilkerson he feels a kinship with them as well as Black people.
The book “Caste” itself has sometimes been attacked in recent years as an example of “critical race theory,” an academic analysis of racist structures that conservatives say amounts to indoctrination and have sought to ban from classrooms. Wilkerson’s book is one of about a dozen at the center of an ongoing lawsuit involving a Texas public library that had tried to remove a selection of titles against the wishes of some residents; another is the picture book “In The Night Kitchen,” by the Jewish author Maurice Sendak.
“Caste” is also being targeted by a Texas Republican state representative as one of 850 books that he says “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”
Jim Crow and the Nuremberg Laws
One Nazi-era event dramatized in “Origin” is the 1935 drafting of the Nuremberg Laws, the race-purity strictures that declared Jews to be racially inferior and outlawed relations between them and Germans.
The film emphasizes the fact that the real-life Nazi officials who came up with the laws drew heavy inspiration from the Jim Crow South’s segregation laws, which made it a crime for Black and white people in the South to enter relationships, attend the same schools or share the same public spaces.
Wilkerson’s book notes that the Nazis could not understand why the Americans hadn’t included Jews in their race laws “when it was so obvious to the Nazis that Jews were a separate ‘race’ and when America had already shown some aversion by imposing quotas on Jewish immigration.” The film’s version of Wilkerson tells a relative at one point, “The Jews and the Nazis were the same color,” emphasizing that caste isn’t necessarily about skin color.
In a famous photograph of German shipyard workers in 1936 delivering the “Heil Hitler” salute, one man in the photo is standing with his arms folded, apparently refusing to pledge his loyalty. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
‘The man in the crowd’
Another Nazi-era event DuVernay dramatizes is a famous photograph of German shipyard workers in 1936 delivering the “Heil Hitler” salute. One man in the photo is standing with his arms folded, apparently refusing to pledge his loyalty.
It’s an image that has gone viral in recent years and that Wilkerson included as an opening anecdote in “Caste” to illustrate the power of being a lone voice against injustice. In the years since the photograph was taken, the man has been identified by a living relative as August Landmesser, a one-time Nazi Party member who had fallen in love with a Jewish woman the year before the photo was taken.
“Origin” imagines the courtship between Landmesser and his Jewish lover, Irma Eckler, as playing out in secret, via clandestine meetings in jazz clubs, defying the Nazis’ caste structures. Eventually, the couple have children and try to flee across the border but are arrested for violating the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade “pureblooded” Germans like Landmesser from romancing Jews.
In real life, according to a family history authored by one of the couple’s daughters, Landmesser was sent to prison and then drafted to fight for the Nazis in 1944, declared missing in action and believed dead before the war ended. Eckler was sent to a concentration camp and sent her last recorded letter in 1942.
A view of “The Empty Library,” Berlin’s memorial to books burned by the Nazis, Aug. 27, 2008. (חזרתי via Creative Commons)
Nazi book bans and Remarque
Perhaps inspired by recent book-banning efforts in the United States, DuVernay’s film also heavily emphasizes the Nazis’ own book-burning practices. A segment showing Wilkerson’s research visit to Berlin lingers on the city’s book burning memorial, “The Empty Library,” an underground illuminated sculpture of empty white shelves. Designed by the acclaimed Israeli artist Micha Ullman, the sculpture’s image in the film is given more screen time than even the city’s more famous Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and is accompanied by flashbacks of a public Nazi book burning taking place.
One book in particular is frequently name-dropped in the film as a target of the Nazis, although its Jewish history is considerably more complicated: the World War I novel “All Quiet On The Western Front.” The book’s German author, Erich Maria Remarque, was frequently accused by the Nazis of being Jewish, though he wasn’t; his antiwar novel, which is heavily critical of Germany’s military failures, was seen by the Nazis as demoralizing, as was its initial 1930 film adaptation, directed by a Jew. The book was recently remade into a Netflix movie that was heavily decorated with Oscar nominations.
Subjugation vs. extermination
Also during Wilkerson’s Berlin visit in the film, she gets into an argument with a German academic over the efficacy of linking slavery to the Holocaust.
While slavery persisted for several generations and involved unspeakable suffering, the companion states, the fundamental aims were different: slavery was an arm of capitalism designed to exploit humans for profit, while the Holocaust was a project to exterminate all Jews from the earth.
It’s an argument that has often proved heated in the U.S. in recent years, as some Jews have fought against race-based history concepts that they claim prioritize Black suffering over their own. A Jewish leader in the right-wing parent activist group Moms For Liberty told JTA last year that she was inspired to campaign against public education after her daughter faced a quiz question in school whose “correct” answer was that slavery was worse than the Holocaust, which she said she considered “a Holocaust-minimizing question.”
Undeterred, the film’s Wilkerson continues to insist on the resemblance between the two on the basis of caste: that both institutions served to designate a lower class of people who could be mistreated by an upper caste as “an undifferentiated mass of nameless, faceless scapegoats.”
A late-in-the-film montage makes this point explicit, as it cuts between scenes of Jewish women and children being abused at a concentration camp; Black women being abused onboard a slave ship, and the murder of Trayvon Martin.
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The post ‘Origin’ story: How Ava DuVernay’s new movie connects the Holocaust, slavery and caste appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ukraine Condemns Russian FM Lavrov’s Comments Calling Zelensky a ‘Pure Nazi,’ ‘Traitor to Jews’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 18, 2025. Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
Ukraine has lambasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people,” describing his comments as antisemitic and urging Israel and Jewish organizations to condemn them.
Lavrov attacked Zelensky, who is Jewish, during a new interview published in Krasnaya Zvezda, the official publication of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“Zelensky made a 180-degree turn from a person who came to power with slogans of peace, with slogans like ‘leave the Russian language alone, it is our common language, our common culture’ and in six months turned into a pure Nazi and, as Russian President Vladimir Putin correctly said, a traitor to the Jewish people,” Lavrov said in remarks echoing the Kremlin’s propaganda that the Ukrainian president is “nazifying” Kyiv.
Lavrov’s comments resembled previous rhetoric from Putin in 2023, when he called Zelensky a “disgrace to Jewish people.”
In response, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced Lavrov’s remarks as “antisemitism,” noting the top Russian diplomat claimed in 2022 that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood.”
“Such statements are not just insane. They must be called out for what they truly are: antisemitism,” Heorhii Tykhyi posted on X/Twitter. “We urge Israel and Jewish organizations worldwide to condemn Lavrov’s repeated and outrageous falsehoods.”
“Zelensky is a pure Nazi and a traitor to the Jewish people”, said Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
Just to remind, in 2022, this same person claimed that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood”.
Such statements are not just insane. They must be called out for what they truly…
— Heorhii Tykhyi (@SpoxUkraineMFA) March 2, 2025
As part of its ongoing propaganda campaign to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia has relied on such rhetoric and claims invoking the Nazis for decades, insisting that Kyiv has no distinct culture or state and has always been part of Moscow’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.”
For example, in an attempt to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Putin labeled its leaders as “neo-Nazis” and invoked World War II rhetoric, claiming that Russia’s so-called “special military operation” was meant to “de-nazify” the country.
Jewish community groups and the international community at large have repeatedly denounced Russia’s use of Holocaust and World War II terminology to justify its invasion of Ukraine, which Kyiv’s allies have condemned as an aggressive land grab.
Lavrov’s remarks came after a tense meeting between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump last week, as early steps for ceasefire negotiations remain fragile. The high-level White House talks on Friday added further uncertainty to a potential US-Ukraine deal on natural resources and peace efforts with Russia.
During the meeting, Trump and US Vice President JD Vance called on Kyiv to express greater gratitude for US support and accept a ceasefire with Russia, despite the lack of clear security guarantees from Washington.
Speaking with reporters in the room, Trump told Zelenskyy that he is not in a position to make any demands and accused him of “gambling with World War Three.”
“You don’t have the cards … You’ve allowed yourself to be put in a very bad position,” Trump said, referring to the ongoing war with Moscow.
After the meeting, Russian officials praised Trump for his “proper slap down” of Zelensky and dismissed the Ukrainian president’s claims that Russia illegally invaded the country in 2022.
Kremlin spokesperson Dimitri Peskov reportedly told reporters that Trump’s shift in foreign policy “largely coincides with our [Russia’s] vision.”
During the London Summit with European leaders last weekend, Turkey offered to host peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. As a NATO member, Turkey had previously facilitated negotiations after Russia’s 2022 invasion and helped secure a grain export deal in the Black Sea. Ankara has emphasized that any future discussions must include both countries.
The post Ukraine Condemns Russian FM Lavrov’s Comments Calling Zelensky a ‘Pure Nazi,’ ‘Traitor to Jews’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ivy League Schools Score Mediocre Grades in New ADL Campus Report Card
Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
Ivy League institutions launched mediocre policy responses to rising anti-Jewish hatred during the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Campus Antisemitism Report Card.
Released on Monday, halfway into spring term, the report lists grades that are based on two criteria, “what’s happening on campus” and “university policies and responsive action.” In total, the ADL assessed 135 colleges and universities across the US, only eight of which — Elon University, Vanderbilt University, University of Alabama, Florida International University, University of Miami, City University of New York’s (CUNY) Brooklyn College, CUNY Queens College, and Brandeis University — merited an “A” grade.
No Ivy League institution — save Dartmouth College, which notched a “B” grade — earned better than a “C,” a mark given to Brown University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Princeton University, Yale University, and Columbia University rated lowest, scoring “D” grades.
“I said it last year, and I’ll say it again: every single campus should get an ‘A.’ This isn’t a high bar — this should be standard,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a press release announcing the report. “While many campuses have improved in ways that are encouraging and commendable, Jewish students still do not feel safe or included on too many campuses. The progress we’ve seen is evidence that change is possible — all university leaders should focus on addressing these very real challenges with real action.”
Harvard’s receiving a “C” comes amid a period described by observers as a low point in its history. The institution, America’s oldest and arguably most prestigious, recently settled a merged lawsuit in which two groups accused it of refusing to discipline an allegedly antisemitic professor and other perpetrators of anti-Jewish discrimination, hate speech, and harassment. For months, the university’s legal counsel strove to dismiss the complainant’s charges, arguing that they lacked legal standing. Meanwhile, its highly reputed Law School saw its student government issue a defamatory resolution which accused Israel of genocide; its students quoted terrorists during an “Apartheid Week” event held in April; and dozens of its students and faculty participated in an illegal pro-Hamas encampment attended by members of a group that had shared an antisemitic cartoon earlier that year.
Antisemitic outrages have continued into the 2024-2025 academic year. In November, Harvard’s Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life was criticized by rising Jewish civil rights activist Shabbos Kestenbaum for omitting any mention of antisemitism from a statement precipitated by antisemitic behavior. The sharp words followed the office’s response to a hateful demonstration on campus in which pro-Hamas students stood outside Harvard Hillel and called for it to banned from campus.
“We have noticed a trend of expression in which entire groups of students are told they ‘are not welcome here’ because of their religious, cultural, ethnic, or political commitments and identities, or are targeted through acts of vandalism,” the office said, seemingly circumventing the matter at hand. “We find this trend disturbing and anathema to the dialogue and connection across lines of difference that must be a central value and practice of a pluralistic institution of higher learning.”
In response, Kestenbaum, said: “Harvard Jews were told by masked students ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’ outside of the Hillel, the Chaplain Office finally released a statement that did not include the words Jew, Zionism, Israel, or antisemitism. A total abdication of religious responsibility.”
Columbia University’s poor mark reflects a widely held view that its officials have failed to prevent anti-Zionist activists — both professors and students — from fostering a noxious campus environment in which denigrating Jews and advocating for the destruction of Israel is defended as the pursuit of social justice.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Columbia University remains one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has produced some of the most indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university has struggled to contain members of the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which just last month committed an act of infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may be the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
CUAD struck Columbia again on Wednesday, occupying the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College to protest disciplinary sanctions imposed on student activists as punishment for a previous incident. During the demonstration, a staff member was so badly assaulted as to require medical attention, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Amid these issues, many schools did see their grades improve over the previous year, the ADL said, explaining that over 50 percent of the schools included in the Campus Report Card — including Vanderbilt University, which did not earn an “A” last year while Harvard was given an “F” — moved to improve the campus climate for Jewish students.
“The improvement on campus is largely due to new administrative initiatives implemented in response to the campus antisemitism crisis,” ADL vice president of advocacy, Shira Goodman, said on Monday. “We’re glad that improving the campus climate for Jewish students was a priority for many of these schools, and we hope all colleges and universities understand the importance of developing and enforcing strong policies and procedures to create a safe and welcoming environment for Jewish students and all students.”
Higher education institutions have an added incentive to address antisemitism, as the reelection of US President Donald Trump in November brought to Washington, DC a chief executive who has threatened to tax the endowments of those that do not.
Shortly after taking office in January, Trump issued an executive order which directed the federal government to employ “all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” Additionally, the order initiated a full review of the explosion of campus antisemitism on US colleges across the country after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a convulsive moment in American history to which the previous administration struggled to respond during the final year and a half of its tenure.
“This failure is unacceptable,” Trump said. “It shall be the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Ivy League Schools Score Mediocre Grades in New ADL Campus Report Card first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Leftist Internet Personality Confronts Ritchie Torres Over Israel Support, Unleashes Lewd and Antisemitic Tirade
US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS
In a viral video which circulated over the weekend, a leftist social media influencer followed US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) on the streets of New York City, hurling antisemitic, sexually explicit, and racially charged rhetoric at the lawmaker over his support for Israel.
The influencer, who goes by “Crackhead Barney,” confronted and grilled Torres about his stance on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The provocateur, whose real name has not been revealed to the public, taunted Torres as a “coon” and asked the lawmaker why he supports a so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
“Why are you sucking Zionist c—k?” Barney asked.
“You’re a coon. Why do you suck Zionist c—k? Is it the money?” the influencer asked. “Show us the money, Ritchie. Show us the money.”
When asked by Torres if she supports the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the influencer responded “of course.” She then claimed that Israel “is the biggest terrorist organization.” The social media personality lambasted Torres as a “terrorist” and stated that he “sucks [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s c—k.”
The leftist firebrand accused Torres of accepting “genocidal money” and asked him if he was “going to kill more babies?” She also admitted to interrupting Torres’s event at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan to protest the war in Gaza.
The content creator attempted to coax Torres multiple times into saying “Free Palestine,” a phrase which many observers interpret as a call for the destruction of Israel.
“Say ‘free Palestine’ and I will leave you alone,” Barney said.
“There is no universe in which I will say that,” Torres responded.
After finally relenting and allowing Torres to walk away, Barney shouted “free Palestine!” multiple times and said the lawmaker “supports the mass murder of babies.”
The internet personality has gained notoriety for ambushing celebrities and high-profile media figures in public, conducting impromptu interviews and engaging in provocative behavior. In the 16 months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter of 1,200 people throughout southern Israel, Barney has started targeting and harassing public figures supportive of the Jewish state. In April 2024, she made headlines after she confronted actor Alec Baldwin and pressed him to say, “Free Palestine.”
Torres, a self-described progressive, has established himself as a stalwart ally of the Jewish state. Torres has repeatedly defended Israel from unsubstantiated claims of committing “genocide” in Gaza. He has also consistently supported the continued shipment of American arms to help the Jewish state defend itself from Hamas terrorists. The lawmaker has directed sharp criticism toward university administrators for allowing Jewish students to be threatened on campus without consequence.
Warning: The video below contains lewd and explicit language.
I was walking on the streets of NYC when suddenly a pro-Hamas extremist began harassing me and hurling racial slurs. The confrontation illustrates just how unhinged the hate and harassment can be against those of us who have stood with Israel in the wake of 10/7.
Warning: the… pic.twitter.com/4QkzLAxNyx
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) March 2, 2025
The post Leftist Internet Personality Confronts Ritchie Torres Over Israel Support, Unleashes Lewd and Antisemitic Tirade first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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