The Universal within the Particular

But the nagging question that has accompanied academic work on cultural memories of violence, apart from the historical knowledge it produces and helps to keep alive, is its relevance for our contemporary world, its ability to contribute to change. As much as the collage of Holocaust testimonies makes us painfully ...
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The Universal within the Particular

The Counter

Around the same time, I was watching the Netflix series Immigration Nation about the activities of the American Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ICE, and also the short documentary film The Last Time I Saw Them featuring interviews of Holocaust survivors who had been separated from their families. Several things ...
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The Counter

On the Uses of the Palm

In my case, she’s not really my sister. In 1980, a nationwide policy was introduced in China allowing every couple to give birth to only one child. At a population control symposium that spring, a group of rocket scientists at the Chinese University of Science and Technology used cybernetics – ...
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On the Uses of the Palm

Being Ahead of All Departures

In Paris in the 1920s, Hemingway has returned from the bookstore run by the lovely Sylvia Beach, who is very nice to him, letting him borrow books without a deposit. It is with that goodness in his heart that Hemingway returns to his cramped flat and tells his wife about ...
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Being Ahead of All Departures

Child Separation

A documentary poem reacting to a film about the separation of children from their parents in Nazi camps

The child Fred is told by his mother: “You must not look back.”And he did not look back – and he survived – and his mother did not.Orpheus was not as strong you were, Fred – he looked back, the poor thing.On December 6th, 1938, in the middle of the ...
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Child Separation

Separation

Deserts, hurricanes, and classrooms

Personally, these stories brought to mind a student, Jonathan, who recently took my college writing class. He’s a first-year full-time student who manages a fast-food restaurant in City Heights, a dense refugee-packed neighborhood in San Diego.  Four years ago, he was my strongest 8th grade English student in middle school. He ...
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Separation

Memory’s Fragile Thread

Judaism’s view of – and response to – family separation as theological crisis

Heda Kovaly’s memory of the day in spring 1941 when she was sent to the Gross-Rosen labor camp focused on an evanescent memento of her murdered mother: “My mother, I couldn’t think of anything except my mother, my mama, and I remember sitting on the ground and held out my ...
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Memory’s Fragile Thread

Muscovite

An excerpt from “The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time”

During the years I was writing this book, my mother began to lose her memory, or, as she often said, she started “getting stupid.” I traveled frequently to London at this time, and on one of these trips visited the house in Belsize Park in which Sigmund Freud spent the ...
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Muscovite

Poland’s Immoral Refugee Policy

EU files lawsuit for refusing to admit refugees

On June 13, the European Commission filed a lawsuit against Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, accusing them of violating European Union law by refusing to admit refugees. The next day, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło gave a speech at the site of the Auschwitz death camp to mark the 77th anniversary ...
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Poland’s Immoral Refugee Policy