Book Launch August 12, 2021
My recent book launch in person brought many friends old and new for a celebration at Lia’s in Friendship Heights.
Author: helenjschwartz
Disaster–description of Houston posted by my niece Elizabeth
This is a powerful statement! From a citizen of Houston, via a friend of a friend. ES I must help. HS Dearest Out of town peeps, I’m going to try and explain what we are seeing here. Words are not …
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Rosh Hashanah: “The Birthday of the World” by Marge Piercy
Blowing the Shofar for the Birthday of the World
On the birthday of the world I begin to contemplate what I have done and left undone, but this year not so much rebuilding of my perennially damaged psyche, shoring up eroding friendships, digging out stumps of old resentments that …
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What were you doing six years ago?
What were you doing as September began in 2010? After 9/11, after the election of Barack Obama, after the Great Recession. Before ISIS, the Iran Nuclear Pact, the mass migration of Syrian immigrants and others to Europe, the election of …
Bad Boys Street, Marais, Paris
Read the Signs: Rue des Mauvais Garçons in Paris What’s the story behind Bad Boys Road? Rue des Mauvais Garçons ©Marco/ Flickr At the heart of the Marais district in old Paris, many of the old medieval streets have retained their names. …
The Scariest Movie
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My nominee for the scariest movie is an 85-minute German TV movie, later released in American movie theaters. The Wannsee Conference draws its script from the minutes of the January 20 meeting called by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Nazi …
The Red Orchestra
A beautiful American lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Mildred Fish, married Arvid Harnack, a visiting Rockefeller Foundation fellow and returned with him to Germany in 1929. In 1942, she was tried as a member of the “Red Orchestra,” a …
Finding names
Many considerations affect the choice of characters’ names. Are they memorable? Do you have too many characters whose names begin with J? Is the name appropriate for the age and birthplace of a character. I tried to consider the first …
Nazi Shmatzi
Have you noticed that I never use the term “Nazi” in Thieves of Paris? I had been very careful where I used Nazi and where I used German in the first draft, since not all Germans were Nazis—and not all …
Countess Sampieri
One of my favorite characters in Thieves of Paris is Countess Irène Sampieri, mother of Madame Beatrice Camondo Reinach. Research on this lady began my interest in Nazi art theft. When Irène was six, her father, Count Louis Cahen D’Anvers, …