Once Upon a Time in Krakow at the Old Jewish Quarter Café

Once Upon a Time in Kazimierz, a little restaurant in the heart of Krakow’s old Jewish ghetto, is better than most museums. Set inside a row of recreated, turn-of-the-19th-century Jewish traders’ shops, it’s arguably one of the smallest restaurants in the city, with eleven candlelit tables offering a dining experience from another century, like walking into…

The First Parisian Skyscrapers were also a Notorious World War II Jewish Camp

A relatively austere low-income housing complex in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, the Cité de la Muette is not a remarkable collection of buildings. At first glance, it’s a council estate like any other, where residents go about their daily business seemingly unfazed by the history that lies both within its walls and beneath them.…

Heartbreak Hides in the Walls of This Paris Mansion

Museums are usually a feast for the eyes, but rarely are they this much of a treat for the heart. Cozied up beside Paris’ Parc Monceau you’ll find just that: the opulent Musée Nissim de Camondo, a perfectly preserved mansion from 1911 that belonged to the affluent Camondo family. As stunning as the interiors and antiques are, it’s the…

A 19th Century Eating Tour of the Lower East Side

Pastrami, pickles, bagels with cream cheese, smoked lox salmon, pumpernickel and rye breads! Many of the food we traditionally associate today with New York can be traced to a particular period in time, and a very distinct neighbourhood – the iconic Lower East Side of the late 19th century. This was once one of the…

The Secret NYC Gallery that brought Picasso & the Avant-garde to America

Did they ever tell you about the nice Jersey boy who brought Modern Art to America’s shores? It wasn’t a Rockefeller, or a Guggenheim – just a kid from Hoboken, New Jersey with an eye for talent. Behind the doors of a little 5th floor attic-level apartment on 291 Fifth Avenue, he displayed raunchy Rodins,…

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Greetings from Rabbi Shaul’s Sacred Taxidermy Museum, Brooklyn, NY

It’s a day like any other in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Yiddish-painted school buses go to-and-fro, and women tighten the tichels around their heads; every man is silhouetted by a pair of perfectly curled sideburns, and the local grocer has a two-for-one deal on blintzes. Tel-Aviv notwithstanding, the Big Apple is home to our planet’s largest Hasidic…

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The Zoo that Hid Jews from the German Army

It’s at times of great inhumanity that you can find the greatest examples of humanity, if you look closely enough. During WW2, the Warsaw Zoo provided shelter to over 200 Jews who sought refuge from the horrors of the Holocaust. Several families were hosted in the residential villa of the zoo’s owners, and temporary hiding-places were created…

Coco Chanel was Definitely a Nazi

That’s quite a statement isn’t it? You may have heard rumblings about this back in August 2011 when author Hal Vaughan released his book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War. But I don’t think we’ve really heard enough about it. I don’t really think we got a firm grip on the fact that today’s most…