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The Neppi Modona Diaries: Reading Jewish Survival through My Italian Family
Recreates the life of Italian Jews under the fascist regime by telling the tales of four of the author's distant cousins
284 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 1997
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June 26, 2025
The book, for me, begins on page 248, which is when Kate Cohen tries to sum up much of what had bothered me about the first 247 pages.
I sympathize with her cousins. The war was terrible for them, but they are not, in and of themselves, sympathetic characters. I think Kate's dilemma is much the same. She wanted to tell her cousins' story and she did, so that's good, but they do not seem like very agreeable people. And that's okay. I'm sure they would not find me terribly agreeable either, so we're even.
It is hard to be American at this point in time, this point in time being June of 2025. With America's blessings, ordnance, and financing, Netanyahu is crushing Gaza--literally, much of Gaza has been flattened--and obliterating Gaza's people, men, women, and children.
As this is happening, MAGA applauds and the world turns its face away. If this is retribution for October 7, 2023--undeniably one of the most heinous, brutal massacres of innocent people in history--where does it end?
As hard as it is to be an American, how much harder it must be to be American and Jewish, specifically a Jew by birth and heritage who is nonetheless strictly secular, a Jew who does not believe that as long as it's Israel that does it (annihilates a people), it is okay.
Courtesy of the Holocaust, Israel has been given a free pass, indefinitely.
And Hitler laughed.
I sympathize with her cousins. The war was terrible for them, but they are not, in and of themselves, sympathetic characters. I think Kate's dilemma is much the same. She wanted to tell her cousins' story and she did, so that's good, but they do not seem like very agreeable people. And that's okay. I'm sure they would not find me terribly agreeable either, so we're even.
It is hard to be American at this point in time, this point in time being June of 2025. With America's blessings, ordnance, and financing, Netanyahu is crushing Gaza--literally, much of Gaza has been flattened--and obliterating Gaza's people, men, women, and children.
As this is happening, MAGA applauds and the world turns its face away. If this is retribution for October 7, 2023--undeniably one of the most heinous, brutal massacres of innocent people in history--where does it end?
As hard as it is to be an American, how much harder it must be to be American and Jewish, specifically a Jew by birth and heritage who is nonetheless strictly secular, a Jew who does not believe that as long as it's Israel that does it (annihilates a people), it is okay.
Courtesy of the Holocaust, Israel has been given a free pass, indefinitely.
And Hitler laughed.
Displaying 1 of 1 review