My parents were married in Prague on December 10, 1936. They were your and prosperous and they thought the world was their oyster. They were so lucky to get a visa out in early 1939. Many didn't.

My great grandfather Simon Korelitz immigrated to the U.S. from Belarus in 1888 at age 21. He was a peddler who settled in Haverhill, Mass. and had 7 children, one of which was my father's father Sam.

It is an honor for me to talk about the woman I admire most in this world. She is not famous like Oprah Winfrey. She has no high diploma like Michelle Obama.

When I went to Egypt in 2008 for a study abroad program, I didn’t tell my mother I was there until about a week after I settled in. In all honesty, I had forgotten to tell her I made plans to be in Egypt.

My mom was born in 1918 in Italy. At age 2 her dad immigrated to the US for a better life, followed by her mom when she was 6.

Both my great-grandfathers came to America as immigrants by themselves, from Greece under the Ottoman empire before World War I.

In the dark loom of life, Emma wove her story with threads of resilience and hope. Born in the alleys of poverty, her childhood was a dance between hunger and emotional abandonment

My dad was a factory worker. He spent over forty years getting up at the crack of dawn to work ten to twelve-hour shifts in the cold, windowless factories that fueled this country’s manufacturing industry.

He was my grandfather, a Hungarian Jew who came to America in 1914, from an impoverished and illiterate family. One of his legs was shorter than the other by several inches, the result of an explosion in the celluloid plastics factory where he worked as a child.

My aunt Carla came into my life when she married my uncle. We were all so taken aback and impressed by this tall, strong, beautiful, SMART woman he had met!