Three documents tell the story of Miriam Dranger, a Jewish girl who sang for the Gestapo, saved her younger sister, and lived with a war that internally did not end in 1945.
Miriam Szurek walked into the most feared address in occupied Warsaw and came out alive.
Miriam Dranger and her sister Edna after…
A Holocaust Survivor Who Wore War, Faith, and Family on a Single Chain. The necklace Edna wore every day. Tangled. Heavy. Entire.
It made a sound before you saw it.
A soft clinking. Gold against silver. Enamel brushing glass.
She wore it every day, a necklace so crowded with charms that they tangled into one…
Why Jews Still Fight for Home — and What America Owes
I have a photograph of my father-in-law standing alone in a desert, holding a rifle. On the back, in Edna’s handwriting, it says: “Harry Brill, 1948, Israel — in the Army.”
He survived the Holocaust by hiding in the forests of eastern Galicia. In 1947…
A Beach in Nantucket. A Gas Chamber in Treblinka.
Summer of '42
Two meanings of “Summer of ’42.”
A coming-of-age romance for Americans. A season of mass murder for Europe’s Jews.
In 1971, I was fourteen, sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching Jennifer O’Neill break my heart.
Summer of ’42 was the film everyone was talking…
