Elaine Rosenberg Miller

Nothing, not the Herodian palaces nor the Roman bathhouses at Masada, the 1,300-foot-high mesa arising from the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, the last refuge of the zealots fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem, moved me as much as the lonely ritual bat...

The bricks of Auschwitz I cannot go to Auschwitz I cannot go The narrow red-brown bricks bar me The Auschwitz bricks are iconic, immutable Year after year, decade after decade they stand there, mocking Witnesses to suffering, death I cannot go to Auschwit...

Oh, how I wrestled with the memory. I could see my aunt’s short, stout legs dangling on the plastic-covered couch, saying something about G‑d at the end of nearly every sentence. But I couldn’t remember exactly what she said. She died several years ago. S...

My grandparents were forced in one direction, my mother and her sister in another.

Everyone in our world seemed to be a Holocaust survivor. Yiddish-speaking. Check. Accented English. Check. Tattoo. Check. No parents of their own. Check. No stories of their childhood or teenage years. Check.

Young men, with names from Russia, Ethiopia, the Bedouin desert, killed in defense of their homeland, by invaders moving through earthen tunnels

It was an ordinary weekday. The rabbi stood at the lectern. The anguish and fear in the sanctuary was palpable.

She knew that her mother was unlike other mothers. She knew that something had happened to her, but she was never exactly sure what had happened. Her past was divided into “The War” and “Before The War,” never talking about either...

I watched my aunt. She saw me staring. The etchings on the soft underside of her forearm were as black as the dye she raised to her head. When she moved her arm, the symbols moved with her.

In the midst of the forest, she stood. In a dress one might have worn to a party. Surrounded by others, hurrying, engaged in their own thoughts....