A crime beyond words: the word ‘genocide’ and the Nuremberg Trials,
by Annette Wieviorka, K: Jews, Europe, the XXIˢᵗ century, 2026-10-15.

Eighty years after the Nuremberg trials, Annette Wieviorka revisits the trial transcripts and focuses on one word: “genocide.” This term, which appears twenty-one times over ten months of hearings, remains rare and vague, applied to situations as diverse as those of the Czechs, Poles, and Norwegians—and almost never to refer to the Jews.

Aramco’s ownership in 1958:

• 30%: Standard Oil of California (now Chevron)
• 30%: Texaco (now Chevron)
• 30%: Standard Oil of New Jersey/Esso (now ExxonMobil)
• 10%: Socony Mobil (now ExxonMobil)

Was Dracula a Jew? (Gothic fiction, the blood libel, and the vampire’s borrowed features),
by Eliezer Aryeh, Eliezer’s substack, 2026-10-27.

In the spring of 1882 a teenage servant girl named Eszter Solymosi disappeared in the Hungarian village of Tiszaeszlár. She vanished on a Shabbat just before Passover, and Jews of the village were accused of ritual murder. Fifteen years later, in 1897, Bram Stoker published a novel about a foreign count who drains the blood of English women. Scholars still dispute whether the Count was meant to be viewed as a Jew.

The synagogue of witches: Jewish iconography and the image of the witch,
by Eliezer Aryeh, Eliezer’s substack, 2026-10-21.

What passed between hated groups was a shared vocabulary: the synagogue, the Sabbath, the cat and the goat, the poison. The witch took her signs of belonging to a hated sect from the Jews: her gathering was named for their house of worship, and in 1421 the Buda code sent a convicted sorcerer through the streets in a peaked Jew’s hat. On Trachtenberg’s reading, the Jew received being associated with the devil in return, the horns, the tail, and the goat that the heretic and the witch had worn first.

For as long as he can remember, M.R. Manheim felt an obligation to preserve his family’s wartime story.

“My wife said I’ve been writing this book since I was 10 years old,” Manheim told JNS in a recent interview.

That childhood memory came during a family vacation with his uncle Elliot, when stories about World War II suddenly began flowing freely around the dinner table.

by Steve Linde

https://www.jns.org/feature/world-war-ii-family-saga-sifts-through-patriotism-identity-acclimation-and-pluck

Typhoid. Cholera. Yellow fever. Poverty. Life in America was tough in 1801. The health epidemics touched everyone, including Jewish communities. In the early 19th century, benevolent societies emerged to help families in crisis.

The Hebrew Orphan Society is the oldest of those organizations, and it is still operating, albeit with a slightly different focus. This year the Charleston, S.C.-based nonprofit commemorates its 225th anniversary of continuous operation.

by Bill Motchan

https://www.jns.org/orphan-remains-in-the-name-though-the-mission-has-evolved