The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Coming out Tuesday May 1, 2007:

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: April 29, 2007
New York Times

Sitka, Alaska

ASIDE from geography, Sitka, a boomerang-shaped island in the southeastern panhandle of Alaska, has very little in common with the imaginary city named Sitka conjured up by Michael Chabon in his latest book, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.”

In this fourth novel, which comes out Tuesday, Mr. Chabon takes a historical footnote, a pie-in-the-sky proposal to open up the Alaska Territory in 1940 to European Jews marked for extermination, and asks: What if? What if this proposal, which in real life was supported by the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, but killed in Congress, had actually passed?

Here's a quote from an article by Tom Kissa in the Anchorage Daily News:

"Imagine, if you please, a city of 3.2 million people on the shores of Baranof Island around Sitka. The official language is Yiddish, the inhabitants are Jews, and their lights stretch across the in-filled sound from Mount Edgecumbe to some place called Shvartsn-Yam. They have been gathering in Southeast since World War II, when U.S. officials hatched a plan to transport refugees from Europe to the territory of Alaska."

See the article below from Alaska History and Cultural Studies for background:

The King-Havenner Bill of 1940

Dashed Hopes for a Jewish Immigration Haven in Alaska

By Hannah L. Mitson

01-01-1998

maryt

Parenting Advice from a Polish Holocaust Hero

From NPR All Things Considered, Mar.3, 2007

Before there was Benjamin Spock, there was Janusz Korczak.

Janusz Korczak was a Jew born in 1878 in Warsaw. He went on to become a physician and one of Poland's most famous writers — not only of parenting guides, but of children's books, too.

A new book called Loving Every Child has compiled the writings of Janusz Korczak some of which were written in the 1920s.

Korczak was also the director of two orphanages. After the Nazis took control of Poland in September 1939, he received offers of refuge but refused to leave his young charges, who were forced into a Jewish ghetto. And when those 200 or so children were rounded up for deportation to the Treblinka concentration camp, Korczak famously accompanied them in a dignified march to the train station. Most of them, including Korczak, perished in Treblinka.

A Quote from Loving Every Child:

Know yourself before you attempt to get to know children. Become aware of what you yourself are capable of before you attempt to outline the rights and responsibilities of children. First and foremost you must realize that you, too, are a child, whom you must first get to know, bring up, and educate.

theteach :)