Written for the Concord Monitor, New Hampshire, U.S.A.- 21 Oct 2007

. . . "She tells me that there are times when it is extremely difficult, when it’s cold and the wind and the rain are their only company.  They try to scrounge money for paraffin for a crude heater and for cooking.  Despite the rain and the cooler weather, the winter is the season of the shack fire.  People desperate to stay warm use unsafe heaters or bring burning coal in a tin can into their shacks.  One shack catches fire and everything nearby is soon engulfed. A hundred homes or more can be lost at a go. . . "

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Kopaigorod: To Dig a Town

A Roots Journey to the Ukranie by Ian Edelstein

     Site of Concentration Camp Near Kopaigorod, Ukraine

The Angels of Philippi

. . . "Among the old mattresses, broken bottles, and half-buried stones in a drainage basin near the train station, boys from the Xhosa tribe play baseball.  These are the Philippi Angels and they will play every week until the rainy season.  Because the drainage is mostly rock, it fills with water in the lightest rain and takes weeks of sun to dry out. . ."

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. . .Before leaving Kopaigorod, I needed to see the concentration camp that Dora and her family had been kept in and that had produced those mass graves in the back of the cemetery.

It was not easy to find. There are no signs. It doesn’t exist on any maps. We asked townspeople near the railroad station and, after several faulty directions and a few elderly who denied any knowledge of such a camp, we found a boy of no more than 10 who brought us to this spot and described how the buildings had stood, long before his birth. His grandmother had told him this information, stressing that he never forget, that someone may come one day and ask. . .

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