It’s a simple gravestone, a small, ground-level marker identical to the four stones beside it. Nothing about the inscription, “Semper Idem” —“ Always the same” — hints at the significance of this 31-year-old man’s untimely death. But here, at the edge of Mount Carmel Cemetery, in New York City, 100 feet from traffic streaming by…
Leo Frank had no children. But the Jewish lynching victim’s descendants include nieces, nephews and their children — who were kept in the dark about their famous relative’s 1915 murder. Cathee Smithline was 18 when her mother, who was Frank’s niece, handed her a 1965 book about the infamous case entitled “A Little Girl Is…
This editorial was translated from Yiddish by Chana Pollack Frank is dead. The tragedy ended with blood and murder. The hand that persecuted the unfortunate one for more than two years didn’t rest until it made an end to his young life. A heavy hand! A cruel hand! This is the same hand that held…
A century ago, Cobb County, Ga., was a sleepy farming community outside Atlanta, home to about 25,000 people. Now the county is an affluent suburb with a population of 700,000, including a booming Jewish community of about 8,000 families served by four synagogues, two restaurants doling out bagels and deli food, and a Kroger supermarket…
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the trial of Leo Frank in Atlanta, let’s begin by stating for the record: No, the Leo Frank case was not the impetus for the founding of the Anti-Defamation League. It is true that the organization, now celebrating its centennial, was founded the same year as the…
The trial, conviction and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank a century ago is considered by some historians to represent a turning point in the history of Jews in America. In hindsight, we can acknowledge the irony in that assertion: A horrible incident of anti-Semitic injustice and violence led to a positive outcome, forging a powerful…
The 1913 trial and conviction of Leo Frank stoked a fiery public debate across America about race, religion, class and anti-Semitism. Frank’s case was so important to the Jewish community that the Forward’s editor, Abraham Cahan, traveled to Atlanta in 1914 to visit Frank in his jail cell. Cahan devoted 250 pages to Frank in…
The conviction and lynching of Leo Frank a century ago galvanized the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, the centenary of Frank’s murder trial is galvanizing neo-Nazis. A slew of anti-Semitic websites, some professionally designed and purporting to be balanced online archives with URLs like leofrank.info and leofrank.org, are seeking to attract curious researchers…
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