Category: Excerpts

A Cache of Letters: An Excerpt from When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home by Elisa Brodinsky Miller

A Cache of Letters: An Excerpt from When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home by Elisa Brodinsky Miller

By the rules of the retirement center in Bloomfield, Connecticut where my father had lived, the family was allotted five working days after his death to clear out the belongings from his cottage. My brother and I had agreed: we wouldn’t save any furniture, just the china, the stemware, the samovar, and the contents of his study. It all was to go into a storage unit near his home in Wallingford, CT. Together, later, we three siblings would sort through it all. Each of us would take what we wanted and we’d toss the rest. We doubted there would be any scraps between us; we three are much too different. Exactly a year after our father’s death, I traveled from Seattle, my sister came from Charlotte, to stay with my brother and his wife.

Postcards from a Ukrainian Past: An excerpt from Epic Journey by Andrei Kushnir

Postcards from a Ukrainian Past: An excerpt from Epic Journey by Andrei Kushnir

We are pleased to present an excerpt from Epic Journey: The Life and Times of Wasyl Kushnir by Andrei Kushnir. The book presents an account of the author’s father, Wasyl Kushnir, in his own voice, as he and his family lived through the harsh Soviet regime in Ukraine, famine during the Ukrainian Holodomor, and forced labor in Germany during World War II, eventually emigrating to the U.S., making a new life and raising a family. The following excerpt presents selections of postcards sent to Wasyl Kushnir (mostly from his parents) during the years 1943–1944, with a short introduction from Andrei Kushnir.

A Japanese Righteous Gentile: The Sugihara Case

A Japanese Righteous Gentile: The Sugihara Case

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2020, we are sharing an excerpt from Meron Medzini’s Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era. This book is Open Access and freely available at OAPEN.org.

In the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Japan is represented by one individual deemed worthy to be included: a man who helped some 6,000 Jews escape from Lithuania in the summer of 1940. His name was Vice Consul Sugihara Chiune (or Sugihara Sempo), who granted transit visas to Japan to some two thousand, six hundred Polish and Lithuanian Jewish families, thus saving them from either probable extermination by the Germans or prolonged incarceration or Siberian exile by the Soviets.