In the 1990s, I interviewed Erna in her Boca Raton home for a newspaper article about Holocaust survivors. She had been telling her moving survival story in local middle- and high-schools. We became close friends. She died in 2000. I’ve always cherished her two memoirs, which also include After the Holocaust: The Long Road to Freedom.
Recently, her family asked me to make a documentary about her. So, I’ve revisited her books. They invite readers to embark on a journey with a Jewish-Polish teenager who goes through hell only to eventually, miraculously find her piece of heaven.
I dearly miss Erna. I’m excited to share her trials, tribulations, and triumphs in a visual format. I hope I can come close to matching the power and elegance of her writing.
Rubinstein has written a fine book recounting her experiences as a polish Jew who, with her three sisters, survived the concentration camps where her father, mother, and young brother perished. The book is simply written, yet its very simplicity heightens its emotional impact.
Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors. His other books have stayed with me since I read them countless moons ago. Their observations and lessons feel urgently relevant today.
This past summer, I looked for an audiobook to distract me during my travels across the country. When I realized I’d never read Greene’s classic The Quiet American, I downloaded it to my iPhone, plugged into my Airpods, and clicked play.
Narrator Joseph Porter transported me to 1955 Vietnam. Through his journalist protagonist (alter ego?), Greene warned the United States to stay out of the Southeastern Asian conflict. He also twisted and deepened the whodunit murder mystery.
These lessons will stick with me for decades to come.
Graham Greene's classic exploration of love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam
"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.
As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But…
This book is so well written and researched that readers would find its 400-plus pages fascinating even if they knew the verdict going in. What is it? Guilty as charged.
Vichy France collaborated fully and, at times, even enthusiastically with the Nazis. Even those who have already gotten over the shock of realizing this should prepare to experience a series of smaller disturbances while reading this book. The one that continues to haunt me is realizing Hitler borrowed several of the antisemitic laws Vichy passed. In some cases, they proved stricter than the Third Reich’s.
Although I had no family members in France, my relatives in Poland and Czechoslovakia paid the price for this French enterprise by being subjected to racial laws in their Nazi-occupied countries that robbed them of their humanity. This was the first step toward the bitter end most of them faced in the death camps.
This masterful book is the first comprehensive reappraisal of the Vichy France regime for over 20 years. France was occupied by Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1944, and the exact nature of France's role in the Vichy years is only now beginning to come to light. One of the main reasons that the Vichy history is difficult to tell is that some of France's most prominent politicians, including President Mitterand, have been implicated in the regime. This has meant that public access to key documents has been denied and it is only now that an objective analysis is possible. The…
Shortly after Israel was created in 1948, it faced the threat of invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies. Though the United States opposed supplying arms to either side of the conflict, American World War II veteran Al Schwimmer was determined to do whatever it takes to help Israel defend herself.
Schwimmer created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the government, and sent his pilots to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia.
Schwimmer and his team risked their lives, freedom, and US citizenship to prevent what they viewed as an imminent genocide. They evaded the FBI and State Department, gained the support of the mafia, smuggled weapons—mostly Nazi surplus—across hostile territories, and went into combat in the Middle East. This book vividly tells the story of this little-known yet historically significant mission.
