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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: Encore presentarion: Oscar nominations hide the real Canadian Jewish story of ‘Oppenheimer’
Description: In one of 2023’s buzziest blockbuster films—Oppenheimer, about the real-life head of the top-secret wartime Manhattan Project—the film’s director neglected to include an important Canadian figure.
A Jewish scientist from Winnipeg, Louis Slotin, was a key part of the team of groundbreaking researchers at the Los Alamos atomic laboratories. He helped build and assemble the bombs that would be dropped on Japan in 1945, ultimately ending the Second World War.
Slotin’s family thought he was researching medical uses for nuclear radiography. They only learned the truth after he was killed in a controversial experiment after the war had en...