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Eastern Europe

Leaving for Auschwitz

I leave for Auschwitz in an hour. Even that sentence has an ominous quality, as if I’m going there not as a visitor but as a Jewish captive and can hear the trains rolling in on the tracks and there is a bustle about of people and suitcases, children and old people with canes. I’m […]

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family poems & stories

Must Be Found Again in a New Whole

I’m back at my home now in California and I’ve been feeling very tired since my return. I think it is a combination of a few things: Jet lag and not sleeping enough this past week A little bug I picked up on the plane Travelers emotional exhaustion It’s the last item on the list […]

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Jewish ukraine

They Won

I’m a little upset lately, in seeing life going on here in Ukraine without many Jews being present. This area used to have many, many Jews and now they are largely gone. As I mentioned in my last post, Khotyn used to have 24 synagogues and now there is barely one. 18,000 Jews reduced to […]

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family Jewish ukraine

Khotyn – Cultural Longing and Identification

I returned again to Khotyn yesterday evening. I’m not exactly certain as to why, but perhaps that will unfold as I am here. The excuse I told myself in planning to come here was that I wanted to photograph more of the remaining Jewish people here in town. I’ve been itching to put together images […]

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favorites Jewish poems & stories ukraine

Babi Yar – Light from Darkness

This morning I went to the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, where a large massacre of Jews took place in September of 1941. I wasn’t quite sure why I was going, but I went anyway, open to whatever I might find. What I found profoundly surprised me. I found Beauty. The ravine is a lovely […]