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One week later, as we returned from work, there, in the middle of the camp, in the Appelplatz, stood a black gallows.
We learned that soup would be distributed only after roll call, which lasted…
The sunset lit up the sky, splashing the drab tenements with gold, bringing memories of Sabbath candles and the smell of gefüllte fish. When I had lived on Hester Street, I would…
Apples. That’s what New Yorkers of the 1930s remember. Apples of the Hesperides, neatly stalled on corner after corner, sold on the last trembling line of decency by men who were unwilling to beg…
There are contradictions and ambivalences in our celebrating Thanksgiving. We are recent Americans. It wasn’t the Mayflower that brought our people over here. We know too much about what the coming of…
In the spring of 1961, I flunked an exam that would have enabled me to write an honors thesis. In reality, it was a minor failure—I was spending most of my time at the Crimson building, where I was…
The bathroom looked as though some spiteful thug had left his calling card after having robbed the house. As my father was tended to and he was what counted, I would just as soon have nailed the door…
“I have a partner for the Point St Charles business,” said Pa.
“A partner! Why a partner?” said Aunt Julia. “Why are you afraid to do anything by yourself? And who is this partner?”
“Henoch,” he told…
As I was crossing Alexanderplatz on the first of April, I noticed a crowd of people gathering near the U-Bahn station at the other end of the square. The loudspeakers blared across the open space,…
My father lived to be ninety-eight, and until the end of his life he never failed to introduce my sister and me with a grand gesture as his “two disappointments.” We were, very simply put, an…
There was a rumpled old Polish man who boarded in the apartment of our building’s superintendent. With baggy pants, fraying suspenders, a wrinkled hat, and a wooden cane, he looked like the lovable…