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Is the movie ‘Nuremberg’ about the wrong Jewish psychiatrist?
Douglas Kelley, the real-life U.S. Army psychiatrist portrayed by Rami Malek in the recently released motion picture Nuremberg, wrote a book titled 22 Cells in Nuremberg that came out in 1947, a year after he finished his five-month stint at the Nuremberg trials.
Nearly 60 years later, interviews conducted by Leon Goldensohn, a Jewish psychiatrist who replaced Kelley at the historic war crimes trials, were published in The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist’s Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses. Goldensohn who spent more time with Nazi prisoners than Kelley did, and this book, translated into 16 languages, arguably sheds more light on the Third Reich criminals.
Goldensohn and Kelley were responsible for monitoring both the physical and mental health of the Nazi prisoners, and both their lives ended tragically: Goldensohn died of a heart attack in 1961, five days after his 50th birthday; Kelley died by suicide in front of his family at the age of 45.
Leon Goldensohn’s son Dan, now 77, said that his father’s interactions with the prisoners were deeper than the ones Kelley had.
“There’s a couple of defendants who say in Leon’s book how much they preferred talking to him,” Dan Goldensohn told me.
One of those defendants was Hermann Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe, the German air force, who complimented Goldensohn on his technique as a psychiatrist.
“I feel freer to talk to you than to some other psychologists,” Goering told him.
I checked in with Leon Goldensohn’s sons and daughter and their cousins when the movie Nuremberg opened and the actor portraying Douglas Kelley appeared larger than life on the silver screen. The movie was about “the wrong psychiatrist,” Dan Goldensohn told me over the phone.
“We lost our chance to have Leon’s work once again in the public eye, because of Kelley,” Dan said. “When people talk about an Army psychiatrist at Nuremberg, Kelley’s name comes up. Leon’s name hardly does. Anyway, we have our jealousies.”
A French production company did make an hour-long program based on the Goldensohn book that aired on The History Channel, but the psychiatrist’s surviving relatives said it was not well done. Dan Goldensohn said the family came close to signing a deal with an Italian company for a film or TV series based on the book.
“It suddenly collapsed as soon as they heard that this other movie was signed with real actors and a real director,” he said.
‘The best brother in the world’
Dr. Eli Goldensohn, a world-renowned neurologist at Columbia University who died in 2013 at 98, took up the book project when he retired at the age of 83. Eli, who was four years younger than Leon, spent 10 years gathering and organizing materials, writing short summaries of all the interviews, and transcribing all those that hadn’t been transcribed. Eventually, he donated his brother’s papers to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
When the book was published in the fall of 2004, Eli Goldensohn told me his only disappointment was that it “didn’t really describe Leon’s wonderful war record.” Leon Goldensohn had been Division Psychiatrist of the 63rd Infantry Division, which fought in France and Germany, and received several decorations for service on the front lines.
Eli remembered his older brother fondly.
“The Nazi prisoners respected Leon because he was an objective person and was fundamentally a gentleman who was able to meet them on any level,” Eli told me back in 2004. “He was the best brother in the world. I did this book to memorialize the existence of one of the finest people I ever knew.”
Anticipating Hannah Arendt
Eli Goldensohn’s son and daughter assisted him on the book. Ellen Goldensohn, who had served as editor-in-chief of Natural History magazine for many years, helped with the copyediting. Her brother Marty Goldensohn, a veteran of public radio newsrooms, introduced Eli to his friend Jim Bouton, the former Yankee pitcher and best-selling author, who convinced Eli to pursue a deal with a major commercial publisher. (Eli ended up signing with Knopf, where the interviews were turned into a book by Ashbel Green, the editor who had worked with such dissident writers as Andrei Sakharov, Jacobo Timerman and Vaclav Havel.)
Ellen Goldensohn said her uncle Leon’s work was prescient, given that it came 17 years before Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
“In 1946 he really knew the banality of evil and what was asked of these people who ran the Nazi regime,” she told me.
Marty Goldensohn remembers that his mother Betty, who lived to be 101, complained about her husband commandeering the extra bedroom in their assisted living apartment for the book project.
“Eli, get these file boxes out of here or I’m going over to the other side,” she joked, the other side being the Third Reich.
Marty said his father’s labor of love on the book was motivated, in part, by a sense of history, something he shared with his brother Leon.
“Leon was a Jewish doctor and he had compassion,” Marty told me. “He was in the middle of something that the historian Tony Judt once described as ‘a seam of evil.’ He was at the seam and how could he resist asking the key questions that had to do with the horror that had been perpetrated?”
The ‘Good’ German
Of the 476 pages in The Nuremberg Interviews, 33 are devoted to Goering, who told Goldensohn he was nauseated by Picasso, referred to the virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Sturmer as “that stupid journal” and claimed that of all the accusations leveled against him, the charge of looting art treasures caused him the most anguish.
In conversations with Goldensohn, Goering insisted that he was never antisemitic, that Adolph Hitler was a great leader who was betrayed by some of his subordinates and that he, Goering, would go down in history as a man who did much for the German people.
When Leon Goldensohn pressed Goering on his culpability in the genocide of European Jewry, the prisoner gave a classic “Good German” defense: “Certainly, as second man in the state under Hitler, I heard rumors about mass killings of Jews, but I could do nothing about it and I knew that it was useless to investigate these rumors and to find out about them accurately, which would not have been too hard, but I was busy with other things,” he said. “And if I had found out what was going on regarding the mass murders, it would simply have made me feel bad and I could do very little to prevent it anyway.”
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Majority of House Democrats vote to defeat Lebanon war powers measure
(JTA) — A House resolution aimed at preventing U.S. involvement in hostilities in Lebanon failed Thursday.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and fierce critic of Israel, forced a vote on the House floor Thursday. It was defeated 324 to 92, with 91 Democrats voting in favor. The sole Republican vote came from Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who will be departing Congress next year after losing his primary.
The resolution, which would have ordered President Donald Trump to remove U.S. troops from Lebanon within seven days, was defeated after Democratic Party leaders noted in a joint statement that there are “no U.S. servicemembers involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon.”
The statement issued by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar continued: “We stand with the Lebanese people, the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces in their efforts to live peacefully and defeat Hezbollah, a violent terrorist organization that is a sworn enemy of the United States.”
Jewish Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Dan Goldman of New York also voted “no” on the resolution, writing in a joint press release that their opposition “should not be taken as an approval of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s prosecution of Israel’s military action in Lebanon.”
“To the extent that American armed forces are present in Lebanon, it is to support the current Lebanese government, which deserves our assistance,” the statement continued.
But Tlaib defended her resolution in a post on X Thursday ahead of the vote. “The people of Lebanon can’t wait another month for Congress to act,” Tlaib wrote. “Every day that we do nothing, 11 more Lebanese children are killed or injured by the Israeli military in this U.S.-supported invasion. Congress must pass today’s Lebanon War Powers Resolution.”
Tlaib was citing a UNICEF report of data from Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health last month that found 77 children in Lebanon had been killed over the course of a week as Israeli strikes continued to pummel the country.
Some of those who opposed Tlaib’s resolution, including Nadler and Goldman, said they would vote for an alternative version of the resolution that would preserve cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces in their fight against Hezbollah.
The defeat of the resolution came the same day that Hezbollah rejected the latest ceasefire agreement brokered between Israel and Lebanon, as fighting between the Iranian proxy and Israel has intensified in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, the House narrowly passed a resolution for the first time that would limit President Donald Trump’s power to continue the war in Iran. While the development was largely symbolic, it marked a rebuke of the president’s increasingly unpopular strategy in Iran.
On Friday, 85 members of Congress also signed onto a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on the Trump administration to “use every available diplomatic tool to halt imminent settlement construction in the E-1 area of the West Bank,” a corridor east of Jerusalem.
Citing Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s orders to demolish a Palestinian Bedouin village in the West Bank last month, the letter, which was led by Democratic Reps. Mark Pocan and Jan Schakowsky, who is Jewish, argued that the issue of settlements in the area had reached a “critical and final inflection point.”
“The window for meaningful diplomatic intervention is closing rapidly, and we believe it is not too late for the United States to act,” read the letter, which was also signed by Nadler and Jewish Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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After years of hostile relations with Israel, Slovenia’s new prime minister signals diplomatic reset
(JTA) — Less than an hour after Slovenia’s newly elected prime minister, Janez Janša, was sworn into office by the country’s parliament, he had the Palestinian flag lowered from a government building.
The move marked the first step in a sharp reorientation of Slovenia’s posture towards Israel under Janša. The right-leaning prime minister, who previously held office in 2022, replaced a prime minister for the liberal Freedom Movement party.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced on Thursday that Israel would open its first-ever embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, writing in a post on X that the move was a statement of “friendship, dialogue, and a shared belief in freedom, democracy, and security.”
“The election of Prime Minister @JJansaSDS marks a new chapter in relations between Israel and Slovenia,” Saar wrote. “After years of the hostility of the previous government- we now have an opportunity to rebuild, strengthen, and deepen a real partnership.”
Saar wrote in another post on X that he had spoken with Tone Kajzer, who was appointed as Slovenia’s minister of foreign affairs under the new administration, and that he had “pledged all the assistance necessary” to ensure the “swift establishment” of the embassy.
Janša replied to Saar’s post Thursday, writing, “Welcome to Ljubljana. 🇸🇮🇮🇱Looking forward to a new era in Slovenia-Israel relations.”
Under Slovenia’s outgoing prime minister, Robert Golob, the country voted to recognize a Palestinian state in June 2024 and became one of the few European Union countries to label Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide,” a charge Israel firmly rejects. It was one of five nations to boycott the Eurovision song contest this year over Israel’s participation.
Last year, Slovenia also became the first EU country to impose a travel ban on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
For the country’s Jewish population, which numbers just 100, the spate of anti-Israel measures adopted by the former government contributed to a growing sense of isolation in the country.
But now, Janša, an admirer of President Donald Trump and an ally of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, appears eager to reset relations with Israel.
On Friday, days after an Israeli passenger plane was denied entry to the country by Slovenian authorities in a protest against the Israeli government, Slovenian politician Jernej Vrtovec announced that the airline Israir had “once again been granted authorization to operate flights between Tel Aviv and Ljubljana.”
“The time has come for a responsible Slovenian 🇸🇮foreign policy based on facts, Slovenian national interests and international law,” Janša wrote in a post on X. He added that the “politically and economically harmful period of government support for activist anti-Semitism” had ended.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Israel gives in to the politics of debasement
A small episode this week crystallized the broader pathology of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu more clearly than any grand speech or ideological argument ever could: the Knesset vote for state comptroller, one of the most sensitive institutional positions in Israeli public life.
In Israel, the 120 members of the Knesset elect the comptroller by secret ballot. The office audits government ministries, investigates failures of governance, oversees public integrity, and possesses enormous influence over public accountability. In the aftermath of the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the Gaza war, the role carries even greater significance. The comptroller may shape future investigations into catastrophic national failures and wartime decision-making.
This week — in a move straight out of United States President Donald Trump’s playbook — Netanyahu nominated his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Rabello, for the role.
Historically, the comptroller’s office has been occupied by senior judges, jurists, or respected public servants with reputations for independence. Figures such as Miriam Ben-Porat, Eliezer Goldberg, and Micha Lindenstrauss embodied a certain ethos: they were stern institutional guardians standing somewhat above partisan warfare.
The idea of placing the prime minister’s own attorney into the country’s central oversight institution struck many Israelis as grotesquely inappropriate.
Yet the truly astonishing part came during the voting itself, in which the opposition candidate was a former justice on the Supreme Court — an institution Netanyahu’s coalition has long vilified. The first round reportedly revealed substantial defections among Netanyahu’s coalition. His preferred candidate fell short. Panic spread.
Suddenly, allegations and reports emerged that coalition lawmakers were being encouraged to photograph or film their ballots in order to prove their loyalty. There was a pause in the proceedings as the Knesset speaker, Likud’s Amir Ohana, received legal advice to not allow phones in the voting area. He restarted the vote anyway. Israeli media filled with coalition lawmakers posting images of themselves voting the right way. The images and reports were the excruciating stuff of banana republics.
I cannot recall ever seeing a similar scene in a functioning democracy. Rabello was elected.
Secret ballots exist precisely because democracies understand that free voting collapses when superiors can verify obedience. The entire purpose of ballot secrecy is to protect individuals from coercion, intimidation, retaliation and patronage systems.
Modern democracies adopted secret ballots in the nineteenth century to break the power of bosses, landlords, oligarchs, and political machines that demanded proof of loyalty.
The blatant violation of these norms by Netanyahu’s coalition helps explain why so many Israelis react to him not merely with opposition, but with exhaustion, fury, and moral revulsion.
It’s not just the corruption trials, the permanent manipulation, the serial falsehoods, the failed strategic assumptions about Hamas, the relentless cultivation of tribal resentment, the attacks on state institutions, the politics of personal loyalty and the transformation of every disagreement into an existential struggle between patriots and traitors. It’s the cumulative exhaustion of watching every institutional norm eventually be subordinated to the most vulgar politics imaginable.
The episode revealed something larger than one parliamentary scandal: the culture Netanyahu has spent years cultivating. It is a system organized increasingly around personal allegiance rather than institutional responsibility. A political environment in which independent judgment becomes suspicious, dissent becomes betrayal, and every institution gradually bends toward one man’s political ambition.
So we have here a prime minister under criminal indictment pushing his own lawyer into a top civil service oversight role.
Opposition leaders Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid plan to appeal Rabello’s election to the Supreme Court, calling the vote “tainted.” Even that might not work. Several government ministers, including the justice minister, have suggested in recent months that they no longer consider court decisions binding.
And that is what outsiders often miss about Netanyahu fatigue in Israel. The anger does not emerge from one scandal, one trial, one war, or one speech. It comes from the constant sense of humiliation. This week, inside Knesset voting booths that were meant to be hidden from view, Israelis saw the whole story compressed into a single degrading scene.
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