Eugene Meyer

2 weeks ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Eugene Meyer

Is it good for the Jews? The question, somewhat nervously asked by and among American Jews, is not just Borscht Belt shtick. It reflects the chronic insecurity of Jews in America. Even among those who are secular and assimilated, there is always an underlying fear of resurgent antisemitism unfairly triggered by stereotypes and unleased by external events beyond their control. The stresses posed by slavery and the Civil War were no different. Like other Americans, Jews on both sides held strong views.

Oct 22, 2024 | eugenelmeyer.com | Gene Meyer |Eugene Meyer

“It’s just a phase.” That was what my German-born Jewish great grandmother Henrietta Giballe Previn is said to have remarked on the rise of Adolph Hitler to power in the early 1930s. The Previns had immigrated to the United States in 1886: Henrietta and Moritz (later known as Morris), with their then three children, my grandmother Rose, and great uncles Arthur (ne Ott0) and Leo.

Oct 15, 2024 | eugenelmeyer.com | Gene Meyer |Eugene Meyer

In recent long-delayed acknowledgement of our own dark past, many Confederate monuments have been taken down throughout the South and in border states. Though there are some resisters (“fine people on both sides,” Trump said at Charlottesville, Virginia when neo-Nazis sought to preserve the prominent statue of Robert E. Lee), by and large these relics of the Lost Cause have been consigned to the dustheap of history, or at least relocated to less prized locations.

Oct 1, 2024 | eugenelmeyer.com | Gene Meyer |Eugene Meyer

Peanut farmer James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., our 39th commander in chief often mocked as president but revered as ex-president, entered hospice in February 2023 and I began writing this three months later, anticipating his imminent demise. But the man has laughed at fate, so today he celebrates his 100th birthday. i am here barely updating what I wrote a year ago. Still alive but already part of our nation’s history, he is also a small part of my history.

Sep 23, 2024 | eugenelmeyer.com | Gene Meyer |Eugene Meyer

“Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round,” from a poem by Langston Hughes, is a new documentary that tells the all-but-forgotten story of the fight 65 years ago to desegregate Glen Echo Amusement Park, a destination for decades for white Washngtonians but barred to non–whites until a coalition of Black students from Howard University and largely Jewish residents of nearby Bannockburn mounted a successful months-long protest.