Ukrainian soldier rescuing a tiny baby from the devastation caused by Russian shelling near Irpin in Kyiv oblast | Photo: Timothy Fadek, CNN Author’s Note: I’m thankful to Askold Melnyczuk whose words made me want to write in the midst of this war in Ukraine. I’m also...
I can’t write anything long because we’re still on the run, with my kids who are right here next to me. So, in brief: Ukraine was not “dragged into” war; it was attacked. Without even a pretext like Hitler’s attack on Poland. I know other...
Ursula Zadik’s German passport, issued by the Nazis on December 9, 1936.This is the second page, which shows the Nazi insignia stamp. My parents, Ursula and Erwin, didn’t leave Nazi Germany until 1939. By then my father had been in a concentration camp and my mother...
Russian demonstrators outside the US Embassy in Moscow, Russia, March 27, 1999.Photographer unknown. Author’s collection. Editor’s Note: This essay appeared in Volume 13 MARYLAND: JANUARY 6, 2021 My neighbor Paula, a calm and sensible woman married to a retired Coast...
Yury Lvovich during the war (1941-46) “ . . . But there is another victim: my son, a Komsomol member, who fought in the war as an artillery officer and was among the first to take Berlin. His war decorations and awards, earned with courage and blood, defending the...
Editor’s Note: When we posted this interview, we asked readers to send us any questions they might have, so we could forward them to Sharon for a response. We’ve included several of those questions and her subsequent responses after Natylie’s interview. ✢ After four...
On a misty September day in 1914, King George the Fifth, dressed in shooting gear, stands in a field at Windsor Home Park. He aims his hammer gun at a target several hundred feet away, and fires. Beside him, a dapper man in his thirties named Dick Sheppard covers his...
“Alexander and Bucephalus” by Victor Adam Lemercier You’re a foot soldier in the invincible Macedonian army. You are led by a man named Alexander who may be a god. But lumbering toward you on this day in 331 B.C. is an animal that outweighs you by 6,000 pounds....
Editor’s Note: This excerpt from Self-Portrait in Bloom is set in Tehran, Iran, during the Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980-1988. The Shamlous referred to here are the iconic Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000) and his wife Aida. Photograph permission has...
Editor’s Note: this essay was selected to appear in Pushcart Prize XLVI (2022 edition) The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of...
