A Conversation Between Author Doreen Rappaport and Holocaust Survivor Jack Kagan

One of the stories in Beyond Courage centers around Idel (Jack) Kagan, a Polish Jew who helped dig a tunnel to freedom out of the Novogrudok labor camp. It wasn’t just the tunnel escape that astounded me. It was Jack’s courage and persistence at such a young age. He was fourteen years old and had already tried to escape once before. The outcome of that first attempt was frostbite and the amputation of his toes …
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Keeping One’s Faith –
A  Conversation Between Author Doreen Rappaport and Holocaust Survivor Israel Cohen

When Passover came, I was determined not to eat any bread. My friend Yossel told me that I was too weak and sick to forgo my bread even for a day. But on the first night of Passover, I didn’t eat anything but the soup. When the lights went out at night, Yossel and I recited the parts of the Haggadah we remembered. Read more (download pdf)

Marianne Cohn Plaque

Marianne Cohn: Uncovering a Life

My journey learning about twenty-two-year-old Marianne Cohn, who smuggled Jewish
children from occupied France to safety in Switzerland and  lost her life doing so, began with three pages in a book. The book, Jewish Resistance in France, 1940–1944, was written by  Anny Latour, herself a French Jewish resister. I immediately knew that this young woman, Marianne Cohn, was an example of the people I write about — “the extraordinary ordinary people” who find themselves at a particular moment in history and assume a mantle of responsibility and danger they never imagined for themselves. Read More (download pdf)

 

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