Elie Wiesel and Worthy Remembrance
See, Wiesel has often made this claim quite explicit: I am above politics, my message is so precious and pure it cannot afford to be sullied by compromise. Such is the transcendent dignity of the…
Category: Khurbn
Dr. Mengele’s Granddaughter
In one of my talks, in the Droste Huelshof Gymnasium in Freiburg, I spoke about my own Holocaust-related experience, as well as about my work as a research analyst at the Nuremberg trial of the…
On Moshe-Leib of Sassov
Before we leave Sassov, let us take a minute to ask ourselves these last questions: Was Reb Moshe-Leib the forerunner of all those helpless men and women who, generations later, eternities later, continued to…
Among the Survivors by Hedy Epstein
In June 1981 I attended the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Israel. I frequently overheard survivors asking other survivors, “in which camp or ghetto where you? When were you there?” When told, the…
Hatred/1 by Hedy Epstein
Before starting my work for the U.S. Civil Censorship Division in Germany, I was to spend two weeks in training in Poissy, located just outside Paris. I was joined by other young German and Austrian…
Conclusion to “Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership”
President Bill Clinton once rightly observed that the Holocaust should be “‘ever a sharp thorn in every national memory.’” The same ought to be said of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to…
A Jewish Vocation
This week I finished Marcel Reich-Ranicki‘s autobiography, The Author of Himself. He was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the foremost literary critic in post-war Germany. As I read him, I thought of my…
List/27
I recently read David Roskies’ book, The Search for a Usable Jewish Past, and from its pages I noted the following books or authors to read: Ahad Ha’am S. Y. Agnon, The Bridal Canopy, A Simple Story,…
A Reader to an Author
“A whole world collapsed before my very eyes, but you, my favorite author, are bringing it to life again.” –Miriam, in I.B. Singer’s Meshugah
Western Civilization
The uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began in the spring of 1943 and lasted about twenty days. Of the thousands of Jews still in the ghetto when the uprising began perhaps a…