Peter Ephross
By Peter Ephross
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Culture A Wiseguy’s Jewish Journey
Louis Ferrante was just a Mafia member from New York City who was serving time, until he began a jail-time journey that resulted in his conversion to Judaism after his release in 2003. In “Unlocked: A Journey From Prison to Proust” (HarperCollins), Ferrante chronicles his trip. Although the memoir focuses mainly on his days in…
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Culture Behind Bars
There’s a particularly chilling scene about two-thirds of the way through “HotHouse,” a new documentary that examines the lives of Palestinians serving time in Israeli security prisons. The film’s Israeli director, Shimon Dotan, asks female prisoner Ahlam Tamimi how many children were killed in the August 2001 terrorist attack on the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem….
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Culture Using Survivor Testimony, a Scholar Fills in France’s Holocaust Story
Holocaust Odysseys: The Jews of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and Their Flight Through France and Italy By Susan Zuccotti Yale University Press, 288 pages, $28. When it comes to Holocaust history, France gets short shrift. This is not to say that we don’t know anything about the Jewish experience in France during World War II, it’s just that…
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Culture Jesse Owens, Man and Myth at the 1936 Olympics
Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics By Jeremy Schaap Houghton Mifflin, 256 pages, $24. Hitler’s snub of sprinter Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is well known: Unwilling to recognize a black runner’s prowess, the story goes, Hitler refused to acknowledge Owens after the American athlete won the 100-meter dash….
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