A few months back, I was working on the book and became so terrified that I had to stop. I hadn’t realized how hard it would be to confront an atrocity that my loved one had personally experienced. I hadn’t realized how deeply it would hurt to read my great uncle’s testimonies over and over again and get so deeply absorbed into them.
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Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, president of the First Czechoslovak Republic, created a motto for his country that endures to this day: Truth Prevails. The fact that this dictum works on so many levels—personal, cultural, and political—demonstrates its brilliance.
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We have said and believed “never again.” Yet now, there are concentration camps at the U.S. border.
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The alarm has been sounding for a long time. And now, it won’t give me a moment’s peace. I hear my daugher sobbing, why does everybody hate me. I see the spider arms of a swastika, black on blood red. I hear, this isn’t going to go away no matter what we do. These words circle in my head. And the longer they do, the more determined I become to stop what I’ve been told will happen again, to stand up every time I’m told to sit down.
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As uncomfortable as it may be, we must all face the horror of hate. No one is exempt from this responsibility. No matter how seemingly small the effort, we must stand against hate and stand up for one another.
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Right now, we—or at least, I—need the gleaming memory of the First Czechoslovak Republic, a democracy founded and led by an idealistic, intelligent, and remarkably good human being. His power came from conviction, idealism, and, yes, love—the most enduring power there is.
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As we witness brazen disdain for human decency and contempt for the core values of democracy, where can we turn to sustain and support our spirits? As we watch institutionalized corruption, oppression, and persecution breed suffering and chaos, what do we hold onto?
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Moments ago, I was about to sit down to write another installment about my trip to Toronto in February. But first, I checked the news. Only a few hours ago, a white van jumped the curb and struck a number of pedestrians near Yonge and Finch, in north Toronto. They don’t know yet how many are dead. I pictured the busy streets of the city, the gray pavement of the…
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Elation is the best word to describe my discovery of my great Uncle Stefan’s connection with renowned scholar Paul Robert Magocsi. I recently met Professor Magocsi at the University of Toronto. Learn more in my latest blog post about our conversation and about the biography I’m writing about Stefan, an epic of escape and survival before, during, and after the Holocaust.
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Tomorrow is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. These are my handsome great uncles in 1951 Vienna with their 1934 BMW. Seven years earlier, they hid in holes in the ground left by uprooted trees while Nazis searched for them with bloodhounds. The Nazis had put a bounty on both of their heads, determined to capture the brothers, who had cunningly escaped. The man who hid them in the woods, Ilya…
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