Nobody wants to be a refugee. To be forced from your home, your family, all that is familiar. No one wants to be one of the 1,995 children separated from their families at the border because of a most inhumane policy. Every minute, 20 people must flee their land because of terror, war or persecution,…
The awful night my family crossed the Soviet border is still seared in my mind. Hours of threats and violent searches had pushed us to the edge. I stared at the guards with machine guns. My father stared at the guard captain who was deciding our fate. But the rest of my family was looking…
They were called “so-called” refugees, told they were alien to American culture and warned against as potential enemies of the United States. This heated anti-refugee rhetoric in America was directed against Jews trying to flee Europe, not Mexicans or Syrians. Back in the 1930s and ’40s, the fear was of Nazi and Communist infiltrators sneaking…
The German Girl By Armando Lucas Correa, translated by Nick Caistor Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, $26.99 The drama of the St. Louis, the ship that once promised last-minute rescue for hundreds of German Jewish refugees, is compelling enough without fictional embellishment. In 1939, the trans-Atlantic liner voyaged from Hamburg, Germany, to an abruptly…
The Trump administration’s treatment of asylum seekers and immigrant communities is filling many Americans with horror and dread. During the dark days of this administration, we are seeing immigrants who have built homes, businesses and lives in America have their legal status arbitrarily revoked by refusals to extend TPS. We are hearing the screams of…
My Kir Royale is fabulous, and so is my company: Evelyne and Jean Pierre Grosfils, and my granddaughter Naomi. We are dining at Yume — a word which means “dream” in Japanese, but in this case refers to the name of an elegant Asian fusion restaurant in Brussels. This is no ordinary dinner, or even…
In these times when families are being heartlessly separated, I cannot help but think of my maternal great-grandmother Alice (Goldman) Sherman. In 1920, she escaped with her four children, among them my grandmother Jennie, from a village they called “Yumpelah,” near Kiev. My great-aunt Dora would later tell my mother that she witnessed firing squads…
I still remember the moment, 38 years ago, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, when I overheard my mom tell my dad in a hushed voice that Dr. Parsa had just been executed. My mom’s shoulders were shaking and her voice was low. She said that the revolutionary forces had put Dr. Parsa in…
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