Pope Pius XII, head of the Roman Catholic Church during World War II, did not speak out publicly against the destruction of Europe’s Jews. With increasing frequency over the years, scholars have addressed the issue of papal silence and... Read More

Roses are one of the oldest plants known to man. They appear in Shakespeare’s plays, as in this passage, from Antony and Cleopatra: “He wears the rose of youth upon him.” It is written that Persian poets and Mogul emperors lured... Read More

When Bella Abzug died in 1998, newspapers reported that she had been the first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives. It wasn’t true. Florence Prag Kahn served in the House from 1925 to 1937, one of 156 Jews elected to... Read More

The author was born and raised in the Hungarian village of Tab where his parents grew and sold fruit and walnuts. In July 1944, when he was twelve, Rosner, his parents, and ten-year-old brother were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau... Read More

Primo Levi, who died in 1987 in what is believed to be a suicide, was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and one of the most profound writers to emerge from the Holocaust. Levi’s testimony to the horrors he suffered can be... Read More

Bialystok, Brooklyn, and Miami Beach—these are the cities brought to life in Living Root. Bialystok was the Russian-Polish city from which Heller’s grandfather, a rabbi and teacher, fled in 1911, leaving behind the pogroms and... Read More