Antisemitism could flourish on Elon Musk's Twitter, Netanyahu asked about Trump’s chances of overturning election, Netflix to air series from 'Shtisel' actor, the secret Jewish history of birdwatching.

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Ben Foster transformed his body to play the real-life role of Harry Haft in 'The Survivor.' (HBO)

A Jewish boxer survived Auschwitz by fighting other prisoners for the amusement of the Nazis. HBO and Barry Levinson turned his true story into a movie, “The Survivor,” which debuts today.

Ben Foster, the actor who plays the lead in the film, studied the shtetl dialects of his ancestors from Romania and Ukraine to fine-tune his portrayal of Harry Haft. He found inspiration in his grandmother, who escaped pogroms and immigrated to America. “My children would not be here,” Foster said, if her parents “hadn’t had the courage to escape the ugliness of antisemitism.”

Haft would go on to fight heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano. In the film, he boasts an admirable Yiddish accent, ranges from emaciated to meaty, and feels guilty over his role in the deaths of fellow Jews during the war. As PJ Grisar writes in a mixed review, the movie asks an implicit question: How Haft survived not just physically, but spiritually. “It’s the right question,” Grisar says, “but like a good punch, it has its strongest impact when it isn’t telegraphed.”

Read our interview with Ben Foster ➤

Read our review of “The Survivor” ➤

March of the Living

The memorial statue and surrounding stones at Treblinka. (Photo: Nora Berman)

Our Nora Berman is reporting from Poland this week and sent in this dispatch after visiting the site of the Treblinka death camp…

The smell of the pine trees is overpowering, reminiscent of my childhood in Vermont. I couldn’t help thinking how much less pleasant the smells would have been when Treblinka was active.

Isolated in the middle of the woods an hour-and-a-half northeast of Warsaw, the camp where nearly 1 million Jews were exterminated was completely plowed under by the Nazis in early 1944. Unlike Auschwitz, where barracks and other structures remain intact and house a museum, at Treblinka, the emptiness speaks.

A cobblestoned path winding through the woods marks the train tracks by which the prisoners were shuttled to their deaths, with stone pillars in place of SS guard towers.

At the site of the former gas chambers and burial pits lies a massive granite memorial, surrounded by fields of 17,000 jagged rocks, some labeled with the towns and communities from which the 870,000 Jews killed here came from.

Related: “There are millions of dead Jews in Poland, and they seem to haunt the living,” Nora writes of the complex relationship between the country and its Jewish citizens.

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Is Elon Musk Jewish? No, but Jews are worried his Twitter could let antisemitism flourish. (Design by Grace Yagel)

What Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter could mean for Jewish users:The platform has proven a fertile space for Jewish ideas and conversation, but it has also been plagued with antisemitic vitriol, sometimes including death threats. Musk, a populist provocateur who sees Twitter as a public square, may provide cloud cover for such voices to grow louder, especially if he welcomes back people who have been kicked off the platform. “Unfettered speech is almost as dangerous as yelling fire in a crowded theater,” tweeted Abe Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League. “Jewish tradition teaches us that life and death is in the power of the tongue. Read the story ➤

Opinion | This time, can we skip the debates and just sign the Iran Deal? The Biden administration is reportedly on the cusp of backing a new Iran deal, which means the Jewish community may replay the divisive debates that preceded the first deal in 2015. Our Rob Eshman suggests: Let’s not go there. The proposed deal has downsides, he says, but is still the best option. Read his essay ➤

Related: Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress that re-entering the 2015 nuclear deal, “whatever the imperfections are,” remains the best way to stop Tehran’s rush toward a bomb.

And one more: A new book claims that, days after the 2020 election, then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inquired about President Trump’s chances of overturning the results before calling Joe Biden to congratulate him.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Michael Aloni and Yuval Scharf in a scene from 'The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem.' (Yes Studios)

🎓 Girls raised by Jewish parents are 23% more likely to graduate from college than those with a non-Jewish upbringing, a new study suggests, even after accounting for their parents’ socioeconomic status. Jewish girls tend to “articulate a self-concept marked by ambitious career goals,” said Prof. Ilana Horwitz of Tulane University, a co-author of the study titled “From Bat Mitzvah to the Bar.” The girls also fared better than boys raised by Jewish parents. (Tulane)

📚 Public libraries unknowingly offered e-books that promote neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial. The libraries apparently failed to properly vet the electronic collection offered by an Ohio-based company that included titles like “Debating the Holocaust” and “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” as well as books filled with misinformation about homosexuality as well as COVID-19. More than 8,000 libraries in the U.S. and Canada partnered with the company. (WGBH)

🍫 Israel is in the midst of the biggest product recall in its history: of Elite chocolate suspected of containing salmonella. News reports suggest that Elite, Israel’s largest candy producer, discovered the contamination last week but only reported on it Monday. (Jerusalem Post)

💸 Tel Aviv University has severed ties with Moshe Kantor, a Russian billionaire. The fertilizer magnate joins a growing list of Jewish oligarchs who have had to scale back their philanthropic activities amidst pressure due to sanctions from the war. The school said that Kantor’s name will be removed from its Jewish studies center. (AP)

📺 Netflix announced it will air “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,” a costume-period melodrama, dropping the first 10 episodes on May 20. The series won several awards when it aired last year in Israel and is based on a bestselling novel that tracks the history of a family living through the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate and Israel’s War of Independence. It stars Michael Aloni, the lead actor from “Shtisel.” (Variety)

🧘 Liana Levi, the Los Angeles-born daughter of Israeli immigrants, has become the go-to Pilates teacher for celebrities, influencers and the handful of non-famous folk who can get into her invite-only $75-per-hour classes. “I don’t cater to the masses,” said Levi. “I cater to a demographic.” (New York Times)

Shiva call ➤ Geraldine Weiss, who blazed a trail for women in investing with her stock market newsletter, died at 96.

What else we’re reading ➤ Austria shut down a compensation fund for Nazi era victims, saying it had “fully completed its tasks” … The scientific meltdown over a controversial discovery of ‘biblical Sodom’ … Interfaith trolley offers inspiration and a whirlwind tour of religion in America.

ON THE CALENDAR

On this day in history: The first personal computer mouse made its debut on April 27, 1981, after more than a decade of development. In 1970, Xerox PARC — the Palo Alto Research Company, which was founded by physicist Jacob E. Goldman — began working on a sleek, plastic device consisting of a large wooden box on wheels with a wire “tail” connecting it to a computer. Goldman, who was born in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants, became a major figure in transforming computers from large and clunky machines to the relatively compact devices we know today.

Last year on this day, Human Rights Watch released a report that said the Israeli government is committing the crime of apartheid.

On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 25th of Nisan, the yahrtzeit of Joshua, the biblical prophet and Moses’ successor.

In honor of National Audubon Day, check out our secret Jewish history of birdwatching.

Friday at noon ET: When Brigham Young University put on “Fiddler on the Roof,” our culture reporter, Mira Fox, couldn’t hold back her curiosity — a Jewish show being put on by a Mormon university? What followed was months of reporting and this insightful chronicle of the production. Join Mira and several cast members on Zoom for a conversation about the play and the relationship between their church and Judaism. Register now ➤

VIDEO OF THE DAY

In case you missed it: I chatted with Julia Haart, the star of Netflix’s “My Unorthodox Life” and author of a new memoir, “Brazen.” This is one of the few hourlong interviews with Haart , and we were able to dive deeper beyond what viewers see on the reality series into the complexity of her religious journey.

Among the topics we discussed: What she says to Orthodox women who have criticized her, how the crumbling of her first marriage led her to consider suicide, how the death of her 5-year-old brother in a car crash made her family more religious, why she’s proudly Jewish (despite what people think) and the advice she’d give to a younger version of herself. Plus, stick around till the end – her new puppy, Joy, made a cameo. Watch the video ➤

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Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)

Thanks to Nora Berman, Jaclyn De Bonis, PJ Grisar, and Amanda Rozon for contributing to today’s newsletter. And a special shout out to Chana Pollack, our archivist, who should have been credited in Tuesday’s newsletter for having translated the article about Vladimir Putin to English from Yiddish. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

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