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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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In Israel’s election, Netanyahu faces a reckoning over Oct. 7 failure
With barely two weeks remaining before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, the country has been consumed by an extraordinary confrontation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior former aides over what he knew before the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, what he did with that knowledge and whether his office subsequently sought to rewrite the historical record.
The immediate catalyst was a bombshell television interview in recent days with Maj. Gen. (res.) Avi Gil, Netanyahu’s former military secretary, who served alongside him before and during the attack that killed approximately 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Gil had remained largely silent for three years, expecting to present his evidence to a state commission of inquiry. But with Netanyahu blocking such an inquiry, amid transparent scheming to deflect blame, Gil decided to speak publicly.
What he described went considerably beyond the failures of intelligence and military preparedness that have already been extensively documented. Gil accused Netanyahu’s office of attempting to falsify an official record from the morning of the attack. He challenged the prime minister’s account of early warnings he received. He confirmed that Netanyahu rejected recommendations for preventive military operations against Hamas. And he described how political considerations influenced decisions over hostage negotiations, potentially prolonging the captivity of people who could have been brought home earlier – and alive.
His testimony is particularly consequential because it directly challenges a 55-page document Netanyahu released in February, presenting his version of the events preceding Oct. 7. Submitted to Israel’s state comptroller, the document portrayed Netanyahu as having repeatedly advocated tougher action against Hamas while security officials underestimated the threat. It has become central to his defense against accusations that his longstanding policy of containing Hamas helped create the conditions for the catastrophe.
Gil, who attended the relevant meetings and recorded his experiences in 16 notebooks, described the published document as a profoundly incomplete and misleading account, containing lies and half-truths. It failed to reflect even half of what he witnessed.
A separate investigation published Friday by Yedioth Ahronoth, comparing Netanyahu’s account with original records of security deliberations, reported significant omissions and distortions, including instances in which Netanyahu allegedly rejected proposals to target Hamas leaders that his February document presented as initiatives of his own.
Most explosive was Gil’s account of an alleged attempt by Netanyahu’s then-chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, to change the official time of a telephone conversation on Oct. 7 from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. Moving the time backward could create the impression that Netanyahu had been issuing instructions from the first moments of the assault. Gil said a stenographer told him she had been instructed to alter the record, prompting him to notify the attorney general.
Nitzan Alon, another retired general who headed the government’s hostage release operation, and took part in negotiations throughout much of the war, also told reporters that “it was possible to end the war a year earlier” and save the lives of numerous hostages who eventually died in captivity.
Another remarkable confrontation involves Ronen Bar, the former head of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, whom Netanyahu has repeatedly blamed for the failures of Oct. 7. In late September, Bar announced plans to sue Netanyahu for defamation, accusing him of conducting a campaign of false allegations about his conduct before the massacre. Bar said he had warned Netanyahu about a looming security disaster and demanded disclosure of the original records of security meetings, communications and warnings, including the prime minister’s contacts with foreign officials.
Those demands have acquired additional significance amid reports that senior officials from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates warned Netanyahu about Hamas preparations shortly before the attack. Netanyahu categorically denies receiving such warnings and has threatened legal action over the reporting.
Gil’s revelations arrived alongside another striking intervention from a former Netanyahu confidant. Yoav Horowitz, , once Netanyahu’s chief of staff and director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, told Kan’s Reshet Bet radio last week that he had gradually come to understand that Netanyahu’s decisions were driven primarily by considerations of personal political survival rather than the national interest.
Now a senior aide to leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot, Horowitz attributed that transformation to the corrosive effects of prolonged power, observing that “too much time in power corrupts,” and framed the approaching election as being about saving the country.
Horowitz now heads the team preparing its first 100 days in government. His criticism therefore comes from a former trusted aide who has become an active political opponent, adding another dimension to the dispute over Netanyahu’s leadership.
The question of political survival also figured prominently in Gil’s account of the hostage negotiations. Asked whether coalition pressures had influenced decisions that delayed agreements to free hostages, Gil said some hostages could have returned earlier and that political calculations had played a role in the decisions that kept them in captivity.
Netanyahu has rejected Gil’s allegations, and his Likud party has characterized the latest revelations as politically motivated propaganda. Netanyahu and his supporters maintain that senior security officials failed to recognize the imminent danger.
The country is still struggling to establish a common factual account of its most traumatic day in decades, while the officials who participated in the crucial decisions offer sharply conflicting versions of what happened. Meanwhile, the families of those killed on Oct. 7, survivors of the massacre and former hostages continue demanding answers about the decisions that shaped their lives.
The public appetite for an inquiry into the disaster is overwhelming. A September 2025 survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 74 percent of Israelis supported establishing a state commission of inquiry, including 68 percent of Jewish respondents identifying with the political right. A subsequent survey conducted in February 2026 found that 92 percent of Israelis considered it important to investigate the events.
The absence of such an inquiry has left journalists, former officials, politicians and bereaved families conducting an increasingly contentious public investigation of their own. Documents appear selectively, witnesses offer competing recollections, and allegations that might otherwise be tested through sworn testimony and access to classified evidence become weapons in an election campaign. With spiraling suspicions being leveled at Netanyahu, the election will take place amid unresolved questions – and a rage that grows more toxic by the day.
The post In Israel’s election, Netanyahu faces a reckoning over Oct. 7 failure appeared first on The Forward.
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Archaeologists uncover a 300-meter section of ancient aqueduct in Jerusalem
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a 300-meter (984-foot) section of Jerusalem’s ancient Lower Aqueduct, providing another window into how engineers about 2,000 years ago ensured that the city would have an adequate supply of water for residents and pilgrims.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) began the dig three months ago in advance of the planned construction of a new neighborhood in East Jerusalem, at the city’s edge. Such “salvage excavations” are often carried out prior to major construction projects in Israel to ensure that any ruins discovered at the site can be mapped and protected even if they aren’t excavated at the time.
Believed to have been built in the Hasmonean period in the second and first centuries B.C.E., this engineering system carried spring water from the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank, through Solomon’s Pools south of Bethlehem, to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It remained in intermittent use until the early 20th century.
Although parts of the aqueduct have been uncovered in previous excavations, this is the first time such a large section will be made permanently accessible to the public, Benyamin Storchan, an IAA archaeologist and the excavation’s co-director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Authority.
Based on earlier discoveries and a wide range of research, archaeologists had strongly suspected where the newly uncovered section was located.
“We were able to work with municipal urban planners to ensure that the shape of the new neighborhood will be determined not only by its natural topography, but based on the antiquities found there,” Storchan said.
The aqueduct, the discovery of which was made public on Sunday, will be preserved as a promenade/archaeological park at the entrance to the future neighborhood by the IAA and Israel Land Authority.
Bringing Water to Jerusalem
Before the aqueduct was built, the landlocked city of Jerusalem relied on the Gihon Spring and rainfall runoff for its entire water supply, Storchan said. Under Hasmonean rule, Jerusalem’s population grew and the need for water increased. That was especially true during Jewish festival times, when pilgrims doubled or even tripled the population.
The solution involved transporting water from springs in the Gush Etzion region, a hilly area more than 800 meters above sea level. Spring water had to be channeled to collection areas, and then toward Solomon’s Pools, an extensive water-storage complex built south of Bethlehem. From there, two major aqueducts, the Lower Aqueduct and the Upper Aqueduct, carried water toward Jerusalem – a distance of more than 20 kilometers (12 miles).
The Lower Aqueduct, which appears to predate the Upper Aqueduct, “is an engineering marvel,” Amit Re’em, the IAA’s Jerusalem district archaeologist, said in a press statement. “Even today, with all our modern technology, building such a system would require extensive planning and effort. The thought that, about 2,000 years ago, they managed to bring water to Jerusalem this way is astonishing.”
Its route had to follow the contours of the rugged topography while maintaining a gentle gradient for the water to flow by gravity alone, without mechanical pumps. Along most of its route, the water dropped just one meter in elevation per kilometer.
“The newly exposed section reveals the various stages in the history of the water system,” the IAA said. “Initially, the water flowed in a built, plastered channel. Then, about 500 years ago, during the Ottoman period, ceramic pipes were installed within the original channel, the outer face of the aqueduct wall was plastered and small stones were pressed into the plaster while still wet.”
Used for about 2,000 Years
One of the aqueduct’s most remarkable characteristics was its longevity. Believed to be constructed during the Hasmonean period, it was repaired and reused through successive eras, including the Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods.
The fact that various kingdoms and rulers decided to repair and not replace the water system “is one of the most fascinating parts,” Storchan said of the waterway. Rather than repurposing an older structure for a different use, successive rulers retained the aqueduct’s original purpose.”, “here we see a single installation being reused again and again for its original function.”
The aqueduct was used until about a century ago, when modern water infrastructure, including electric pumping stations, proved more efficient. Its long history of repairs, however, complicates archaeological dating, Storchan said. Those who repaired it over the millennia added plaster, repaired collapsed sections and modified the channel, sometimes obscuring evidence of the original construction.
Utilizing modern technology
Still, the latest excavation gives researchers an opportunity to reexamine longstanding questions with advances in scientific dating methods.
“Today, technology is more advanced than it was then. We’re working with all kinds of specialists to pinpoint the dating of the original construction,” Storchan said.
One such method is optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), which can estimate when mineral grains in sediment were last exposed to sunlight. Combined with the analysis of mortar, plaster and archaeological layers, the technique may help narrow the dates associated with different stages of the system’s development.
For Storchan and his colleagues, every new insight is a cause for celebration.
“Our job as archaeologists,” he said, “is to fill in another piece of the puzzle.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Archaeologists uncover a 300-meter section of ancient aqueduct in Jerusalem appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani faces growing pressure over Jewish NYPD Commissioner Tisch and over Israel from left flank
(JTA) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing increasing pressure from some on the leftmost flank of his voting coalition, and an ICE shooting Thursday led democratic socialist allies to add their voices to a major demand: dump police commissioner Jessica Tisch.
“The NYPD’s Strategic Response Group must be disbanded as quickly as possible, and Commissioner Tisch must step down,” said Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won her Democratic primary with Mamdani’s endorsement. The democratic socialist, who is expected to join Congress next year representing Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, was referring to the heavily armed police department unit that often responds to protests.
The calls for Tisch’s removal follow strident criticism of the mayor from pro-Palestinian activists on Wednesday night who called him names, including “traitor” and “Ziohran,” when he showed up at an Oct. 7 Israeli peace vigil mourning the loss of both Jewish and Palestinian lives. The demonstrators assailed him for not doing more to advance the pro-Palestinian agenda that has long been central to his political beliefs, raising questions over whether he could lose parts of his base as he pledges to be a mayor for all New Yorkers.
The demand for Tisch’s removal came after an ICE agent shot and wounded a Dominican man in his car on Thursday afternoon while his 5-year-old son was in the back seat. Avila Chevalier, who joined protests against ICE on Thursday, wrote on X that the NYPD “spent more time protecting a militia that just shot someone than protecting New Yorkers.”
Mamdani’s decision last year to retain Tisch — a self-described “proud Zionist” who comes from a prominent Jewish family — was seen as a reassuring move by moderates and establishment Jewish organizations including UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council. (70 Faces Media, the parent company of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and New York Jewish Week, receives UJA funding.)
A number of progressives were skeptical of the decision at the time, citing her background as an appointee of Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, and her past criticism of campus pro-Palestinian protests. Some viewed her as an impediment to criminal justice reform.
Meanwhile, some on the left have dinged him for not yet following through on campaign promises 10 months into his term, including dissolving the Strategic Response Group, or backing down from his vow to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a plan which he later said he did not have the power to execute.
Anti-Zionist groups including Pal-Awda, Within Our Lifetime and a number of student organizations who rallied against Mamdani at the Oct. 7 vigil accused him of succumbing “to Zionist pressure.” Protesters called him a “traitor” and a number of chants rang out including, “Mayor Mamdani you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” drowning out speakers at the vigil and forcing the organizers to move it behind police barricades to keep the protesters from overrunning the event.
Among those protesters’ many gripes with the mayor was his decision to retain Tisch. One sign at the demonstration depicted Mamdani with the text, “Chief Executive of the NYPD SRG” with a Star of David in the middle, and a name tag on the mayor’s chest reading, “Ziohran.”
Criticism was also directed at Mamdani for not stopping Israeli real estate events at synagogues, and for his strategy to combat antisemitism, released last week, which allocates funds to a number of community-based organizations aimed at preventing hate crimes. Some critics have charged that some of the funding will aid Zionist organizations.
“The Jewish community is a large part of New York and it should be cherished. But you cannot fund these Anti-Defamation Leagues that prioritize Zionism over Judaism,” a John Jay College student protester, who declined to be named, told JTA during the demonstration.
On Thursday, the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter — which Mamdani has called his “political home” — wrote that Tisch “must end NYPD complicity with ICE” and that if she “cannot put a stop to these injustices, she must be fired.”
“Abolish ICE. Disband the SRG. Fire Tisch,” wrote Illapa Sairitupac, a fellow democratic socialist who won the Democratic nomination for a Lower Manhattan State Assembly district. Mamdani endorsed both Sairitupac and Avila Chevalier this past year.
While some protesters at the vigil said they were Mamdani voters — and one speaker even identified herself as a former intern for the now-mayor — some of the mayor’s allies have stressed that the crowd protesting him was not representative of his base.
“If I had to gamble, I would gamble that the vast majority of them were people who never supported him,” activist Abby Stein told JTA on Thursday night, during the Mazals gala held by left-wing group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. Mamdani was due to attend the JFREJ event, but because of the ICE shooting was instead in the Bronx, where he denounced the federal agency and demanded that it cease its operations in New York City.
Many of the signs excoriating Mamdani at Wednesday’s protest outside of City Hall were signed with the name of the Maoist Communist Union, an organization that opposed Mamdani before he took office. Some protesters were handing out copies of Spartacist, the Trotskyist International Communist League’s journal.
“We certainly didn’t support Mamdani or vote for him,” said Erica Jones, among the Trotskyist protesters. “We knew he was running as a Democrat and he would be as big of a sellout as AOC and Bernie Sanders and all the rest of those who claim to have, at one time, stood for socialism but in reality, stand for the capitalist masters who are oppressing us all.”
Stein, a member of the DSA in addition to JFREJ, called out some of the protesters’ rhetoric and the choice to crash the Israelis for Peace Oct. 7 vigil. But she also acknowledged that there was overlap between their demands and her views, including over the police commissioner.
“There are things that people are upset over that I think are legit — like keeping Jessica Tisch on, for example,” Stein said. “A lot of us were not very happy about it.”
Ultimately, Stein said there is “always going to be something to protest” with any politician, and pointed to a quote from New York’s mayor in the 1970s and ‘80s, Ed Koch: “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Mamdani faces growing pressure over Jewish NYPD Commissioner Tisch and over Israel from left flank appeared first on The Forward.
