Beneath the black rocks

My mother’s face betrayed nothing but the utmost delight. She touched my father’s arms and chest, all the places where the flowers were blooming.  They cut into the ocean in a perfectly perpendicular line. Their color changes depending on how much of the rock is submerged in water in low or high tides and how much sunlight reflects on their…

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Nazis and the layers of shame

The Polish Nazis—with swastikas tattooed in their armpits—were quiet. No one knew they existed until it was too late. We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen—because so many people succumbed to their darkest instincts; because so many others stood silent. But let us also tell our children about the Righteous among the Nations. Among…

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Dictator at the Podium: The First 100 Days Takes Me Back 25 Years

The absurdity of the judge’s order threw us back into our Kafkaesque reality. That we could, as we do, live in the realm of eternal mirrors,working our way at the same time through unmowed grasses. Czesław Miłosz When on December 13th, 1991—the tenth anniversary of martial law being declared in communist Poland to crush the political opposition—I stepped on the tarmac…

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