Just Follow the Rules for Asylum
People fleeing oppression or death should be prepared to jump through a few, simple bureaucratic hoops, right?
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The Meaning of Yom Hashoah
We all come to Yom Hashoah -- Holocaust Remembrance Day – by different paths. For me, it’s an ongoing education into my family’s history, which I detail in my memoir, The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family’s True Holocaust Story. And this year in particular, Yom Hashoah
Cuba Libre in Marseille
The United States wouldn’t have him – my parents said it was because of Walter’s tuberculosis, and maybe that was true, maybe the timing of their US visa application or the mandatory health exam was bad, but maybe it was because the US was notoriously stingy with visas for
The Forgotten Woman of the Holocaust
There once was a woman named Hilde Hirschkind née Bomeisl, and she was my brother Walter’s mother. She wasn’t, however, my mother, because she died long before I was born, under circumstances that were shrouded in mystery. Her face was unknown to me for more than 50 years.
The Signpost
As I discuss in my memoir, The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family’s True Holocaust Story, I went spelunking in my basement for a photograph of a half-brother I’ve never met, in order to help out a nephew I didn’t know I had, and came across,