Life

A Living Lens: The Forverts Reunited Nava Semel’s Family

By Alana Newhouse January 31, 2008

From the mailbag: I just received a note from Israeli author and journalist Nava Semel. Ms. Semel was writing to alert us to the publication of her new book, “Israisland,” but she included a story that she rightly surmised might interest me.

“My American grandfather found out that his abandoned son survived the Holocaust through an article in the Yiddish Forward in 1946,” she wrote. “My late father Itzhak Artzi was then a young Zionist leader and he gave an interview to Forward correspondent in Paris. The interview was published in New York and my grandfather saw it. Forward is indeed responsible for uniting my family and ending the split.”

Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s Arts & Culture editor, is touring the country, speaking about her new book, “A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life From the Pages of the Forward.”

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