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A lackluster exhibit gives short shrift to Claude Lanzmann’s legacy — and to the Shoah’s victims
For reasons both political and cultural, it’s a worrying moment in history when New York City dedicates valuable gallery space to pale echoes of exhibits from German-speaking museums. That is currently the case, though, for The Recordings: Voices from the Shoah Tapes — the new exhibition at The New York Historical (formerly The New York Historical Society) and Documents of Injustice: The Case of Freud at the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC.
The Austrian Cultural Forum is a tiny vertical glass and aluminum skyscraper a block away from MoMA in New York’s Midtown East. Built in 2002 on a plot of a townhouse and with that aesthetic in mind, it is a hidden gem. On the ninth floor overlooking St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a single room represents the Freud Museum’s current exhibit of the trove of documents testifying to the legal appropriation of the Freud families’ assets and the murder of Sigmund Freud’s sisters (Freud, his wife and daughter Anna escaped from Austria to London, where he died 22 days after Hitler invaded Poland.) The minimal exhibition comprises six wall banners, a single display case of documents, and a TV screen with four intercut testimonies from Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. In the videos, Jewish women who grew up in the same district as Freud’s famous Berggasse 19 address bear witness to the sudden absence of legal and social protection after the Nazi Anschluss in March, 1938.
Barely a mile north at the Historical, a bewildering series of absences dog the small but potentially important Shoah exhibit — itself a splinter of the concurrent display at the Jewish Museum of Berlin — Claude Lanzmann: The Recordings.
The most striking absence in a show dedicated to highlighting the audio tapes Claude Lanzmann recorded during the research for his documentary film, is the lack of the film Shoah itself in all its 9-hour sobering majesty: not an excerpt cycling on a wall monitor, not a related screening or two in the auditorium while the show is up — nada. The several stations all have screens showing transcripts and translations next to headphones where two visitors at a time can listen and one larger screen has video testimony that Lanzmann chose not to use.
As Lanzmann told me when I interviewed him for the Forward, at the heart of Shoah are some crucial silences. The Fortunoff video at ACF spells that out a little more in the dedication at the end of the testimonies: “You cannot interview the dead.”
The Recordings, for their part, bear witness to some of the sounds and testimonies that were available to Lanzmann as he embarked upon his filming but chose not to use. The film itself is so arresting, and so epic in scale that, for example, he could exclude all of his research on the atrocities in Lithuania without significantly affecting the final 9 hour-long monument. As the descendant of Lithuanians and after historian Simon Schama’s trip there for PBS, the newly-public testimony from witnesses Lanzmann interviewed in Lithuania at NYH is deeply arresting.
According to Louise Mirror, CEO of NYH, the institution chose to host this shadow show as the United States heads to its 250th birthday to promote democracy “by showing what democracy isn’t.” But that’s at least one step too far into negative space — promoting democracy by showing one instance of fascism, an exhibition for audio tapes that are not on display, tapes that were research for the documentary Shoah that were not used for the documentary. So, yes, the film shows the indifference of the populations of Europe to the (murderous) removal of Jews, but the NYS’ show’s deferrals and absences do not serve that same idea.
Unlike the modest but appropriate setting of the Freud room which, sharing the same name as the Viennese show, is explicitly a satellite show,vThe Recordings has its own name and is jammed into the first third of a single long exhibition hall with Stirring the Melting Pot. That latter is a putatively companion exhibition of NYH archive photos showing the multicultural history of New York City. The logic is clear, explicit even, but not good — New York has always been a place of refuge: where Jews, Hungarians (Jews and not), Ukrainians, Ethiopians (Jews and not), Italians and many others could make a new home.
It’s scant solace for the ethnic cleansing of Europe and this unfortunate juxtaposition shows an almost obscene disproportionality.
Any significant exhibition about the Shoah must center loss in some way or other. The multi-year catastrophe we call by that name was the unthinkably vast systematic destruction of a European civilization and murder of its people by a modern, developed, mechanized European nation state. The extent of the civilization is essentially unrepresentable, its annihilation is unfathomable, and the bureaucratised slaughter of millions incomprehensible. So not only do we feel grief and horror at the inhumanity of it, but we also feel loss at our own inability to grasp the enormity of the events.
To put up a few neighborhood photos of the New York “Melting Pot” after listening to the negative space defining the yawning abyss at the moral heart of modern culture feels a little like bringing a box of chocolates to the Tree of Life shivas. It’s inadequate and inappropriate, if you want to do a Holocaust exhibition, do it properly, if you want to promote democracy, do it properly.
The occasion for the exhibit, apart from America’s birthday, is the 100th anniversary of Lanzmann’s birth, 80 years since Auschwitz was liberated and 40 years since Shoah was released. Lanzmann left all his archive to the Jewish Museum of Berlin, where the main show is, but little or none of that material has either physically or spiritually come to New York. Sadly, though there are significant moments of horror and enlightenment, this show is a poor commemoration of a great man, a catastrophic historical loss and an immense cultural achievement.
The post A lackluster exhibit gives short shrift to Claude Lanzmann’s legacy — and to the Shoah’s victims appeared first on The Forward.
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4 killed in Haifa strike as Trump issues ‘you’ll be living in Hell’ ultimatum to Tehran
(JTA) — Four people — including a couple in their 80s — were killed when an Iranian missile crashed into their home in Haifa on Sunday, in the latest direct strike in the month-old U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The missile was not intercepted because it had broken off from a larger munition, determined Israeli authorities, who said the people killed were not in their building’s bomb shelter at the time of the strike.
The strike brings the civilian death toll in Israel to 18 as uncertainty reigns about the future of the war, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening multiple times over the weekend to pummel Iran imminently if it does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipping imminently.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social early Sunday. “Open the F–kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Iran offered no indication that it would meet Trump’s deadline, which comes as the president has extended previous deadlines for action by Tehran. A top Iranian official said the regime would respond “crushingly and extensively” to further attacks on civilian targets, including power plants and bridges. And a spokesman for the foreign ministry responded to questions about a reported framework for a ceasefire by saying, “Negotiations are in no way compatible with ultimatums, crimes, or threats of war crimes.”
The sparring comes after a dramatic weekend in the war. U.S. forces rescued an airman whose plane had been shot down during a commando raid in rural Iran, while Israel said it had killed the intelligence chief of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards during a strike on an office building in Tehran.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 4 killed in Haifa strike as Trump issues ‘you’ll be living in Hell’ ultimatum to Tehran appeared first on The Forward.
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High-Stakes US Special Forces Mission Rescues Airman From Iran After F-15 Crash
FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft takes off for a mission supporting Operation Epic Fury during the Iran war at an undisclosed location, March 9, 2026. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
US forces staged the audacious rescue of an airman behind enemy lines after Iran downed his fighter jet, officials said on Sunday, resolving a crisis for President Donald Trump as he weighs escalating the war, now in its sixth week.
The airman rescued by special operations forces, who Trump said was a colonel, was the weapons-systems officer on the downed F-15, a US official told Reuters.
“Over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History,” Trump said in a statement, adding that the airman was injured but “he will be just fine.”
The officer was the second of two crew members on the warplane that Iran said on Friday had been brought down by its air defenses. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said several aircraft were destroyed during the US rescue mission, Tasnim news agency reported.
Reuters reported on Friday that the first crew member had been retrieved, triggering a high-profile search by both Iran and the United States for the remaining airman.
Iranian officials had urged citizens to help find him, hoping to gain leverage against Washington in the war Trump and Israel launched on February 28.
Trump has threatened to escalate the conflict in the coming days with attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
Had Iran captured the airman, the ensuing hostage crisis could have shifted American public perception of a conflict that opinion polls show was already unpopular.
Trump said the airman was rescued “in the treacherous mountains of Iran” in what he said was the first time in military memory that two US pilots had been rescued, separately, deep in enemy territory.
The official told Reuters that as the weapons-systems officer was moved from near a mountain to a transport aircraft parked within Iran, US forces had to destroy at least one of the aircraft because it had malfunctioned.
U.S. AIRCRAFT HIT
The rescue effort, involving dozens of military aircraft, encountered fierce resistance from Iran.
Reuters reported on Friday that two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search were hit by Iranian fire but escaped from Iranian airspace.
Separately, a pilot ejected from an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft after it was hit over Kuwait and crashed, the officials said, though the extent of crew injuries was unclear.
Still, Trump was triumphant.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” he said in his statement.
US air crews are trained in what to do if they go down behind enemy lines, measures known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, but few are fluent in Persian and face a challenge in staying undetected while seeking rescue.
The conflict has killed 13 US military service members, with more than 300 wounded, US Central Command says. No US troops have been taken prisoner by Iran.
While Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the Iranian military as being in tatters, they have repeatedly been able to hit US aircraft.
Reuters reported on US intelligence showing that Iran retains large amounts of missile and drone capability. Until just over a week ago, the US could only determine with certainty that it had destroyed about one-third of Iran’s missile arsenal.
The status of about another third was less clear, but bombings probably damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, Reuters sources said.
The US and Israeli war on Iran has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the global economy with soaring energy prices that are fueling fears of inflation.
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On Easter, Pope Leo Urges World Leaders to End Wars, Renounce Conquest
Pope Leo XIV waves from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after delivering his “Urbi et Orbi” (To the city and the world) message, on Easter Sunday at the Vatican, April 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Pope Leo urged global leaders in his Easter message on Sunday to end the conflicts raging across the world and abandon any schemes for power, conquest or domination.
The pope, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the Iran war, lamented in a special message to the thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square that people “are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent.”
“Let those who have weapons lay them down!” the first US pope exhorted. “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!”
Leo did not mention any specific conflicts in the message, known as the “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing. It was unusually brief and direct.
The pope said that the story of Easter, when the Bible says Jesus rose from the dead three days after not resisting his execution by crucifixion, shows that Christ was “entirely nonviolent.”
“On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars,” Leo urged.
Leo, who is known for choosing his words carefully, has been forcefully decrying the world’s violent conflicts in recent weeks and ramping up his criticism of the Iran war.
In a sermon for the Easter vigil on Saturday night, he urged people not to feel numbed by the scope of the conflicts raging across the world but to work for peace.
The pope made a rare direct appeal to US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, urging him to find an “off-ramp” to end the Iran war.
In his address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday to the Square below, decorated with thousands of brightly colored flowers for the holiday, Leo offered brief Easter greetings in ten languages, including Latin, Arabic and Chinese.
The pope also announced he would return to the Basilica on April 11 to host a prayer vigil for peace.