Rafael Medoff

While Gaza has fractured the party's elite and the small core of its most passionate activists, most Americans don't count it among their priorities. Opinion

Previous Previous Trump says Syria would do a ‘better job' of fighting Hezbollah than Israel Syria would be better at tackling Hezbollah in Lebanon, U.S. President Donald Tr… Next Up Next Up Juneteenth reminds Jewish communities that belonging requires more than a declar… As we mark Juneteenth, I am thinking about the difference between being declared… Rafael Medoff Jun 19, 2026 Posted 43 mins ago at 8: 35 AM Descendants of an enslaved Black artist are fighting to regain works of his that are being held by a number of museums. Among those rooting for their success are the family and friends of a Jewish artist enslaved by the Nazis, who have been fighting for years to regain her paintings from a Polish museum. Fate, it seems, has again linked the Black and Jewish communities in tragedy, determination, and the fight for justice. A recent feature story in The New York Times described how the great-great-grandchildren of David Drake have been pleading with major U.S. museums to surrender dozens of artistic jars, some engraved with poetry, that Drake was compelled to create when he was a slave in South Carolina. They are currently on display at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the de Young museum in San Francisco. Five years ago, a Drake “poem jar” was auctioned for $1.56-million, a new world record for American pottery. The family's argument, the Times explained, is that “these objects were essentially stolen from Drake,” because they were “made under duress, and sold or traded without his consent while he was enslaved.” That sentence struck me when I read it, because as a Holocaust historian, I have been involved with the efforts of the family of the artist Dina Babbitt to retrieve portraits that she, too, made under severe duress — as a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz. Although the horrors of American slavery and of the Nazi Holocaust obviously differ in significant ways, there are also cruel overlaps that unite the families of Black Americans and Jewish survivors in seeking to reclaim the property of their loved ones. I called Babbitt's daughter, Michele Kane, to ask her how she felt about the David Drake story. “It was inspiring to read about the Drake family's campaign,” she told me. “It feels as if we are kindred spirits in the pursuit of justice.” As a teenager, Dina was deported to Auschwitz along with other Czech Jews. There the infamous war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele became aware of her artistic talents and ordered her to paint portraits of some of the victims of his savage “medical” experiments. Mengele's camera had failed to provide evidence he was seeking of their “racial inferiority”; he thought an artist's renderings might be more useful. After the war, Dina immigrated to the United States and worked at animation studios in Hollywood, where she drew some of America's most beloved cartoon characters — including Captain Crunch, Daffy Duck, and Wile E. Coyote. Many years later, seven of Dina's Holocaust-era portraits were acquired from an unidentified source by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, a Polish government institution located at the site of the former Nazi death camp. The museum was able to trace them to Dina because she had signed the portraits “Dina 1944.” (David Drake likewise signed his pots “Dave,” with the date he created them.) Dina traveled to Poland in 1973 to verify that they were her works, but, to her dismay, the museum refused to return the paintings to her, claiming they were an inseparable part of its collection. Remarkably, the Babbitt paintings are not even on display; the museum prefers to exhibit high-quality reproductions of them, keeping the originals hidden away to protect them from damage caused by sunlight or airborne pollutants. How do you feel about this article? Choose from the options below. (0 Ratings)

Vance is not the first political leader to lose his temper because somebody, somewhere, criticized a policy of his. And it's not the first time the vice president has tried to bully an American ally through the tactic of public shaming.

Vance is not the first political leader to lose his temper because somebody, somewhere, criticized a policy of his. And when it is the Jews, public shaming is par for the course. But today, US Jews and Israelis are not the obedient vassals they were once. Opinion.

A man and his child were kicked out of a cafe because they were Jewish. Oakland, in 2024? Brooklyn, last week? Or Nazi Germany, 90 years ago?

To judge by the photos and remarks she posted on her website, she spent a good deal of time in the company of two supporters of a terrorist group—and had only praise for them.

The London borough of Hackney has decided to cancel its twin-city relationship with Haifa.

Ceuta is not the only place where Spain is an occupier. Opinion. Dr. Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

Unlike Dana Nessel, most Jews still consider the existence of the Jewish people, and the Jewish state, to be a Jewish value. They're proud to be Jews—and they're equally proud of the role Jews have played in human history.

Unlike Dana Nessel, most Jews still consider the existence of the Jewish people, and the Jewish state, to be a Jewish value. They're proud to be Jews-and they're equally proud of the role Jews have played in human history. They don't see a conflict between the two. It's not surprising antisemites don't see it that way, but it's troubling that Attorney General Nessel doesn't, either.