Articles

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The continuing breakup of the former Soviet Union plays out in misery and hardship. Women in the break-away republic of Chechnya wash clothes on the outskirts of Grozny from a hot water pipe. Most of the city's residents are without hot water and electricity.

Chechnya Update

As dusk falls on the Chechen capital, Grozny, in southern Russia, the sounds of dogs barking, neighbors chatting, and the theme song to a popular Brazilian soap opera mix with the sounds of automatic gunfire and distant explosions. But the conversations continue, soup

Jason Eskenazi April 27, 1996
Factional fighting destroyed worker's shacks in Tokoza, South Africa. With such violence in its recent past, South Africa's emergence from tyranny has been halting and uncertain.

Truth on Trial:South Africa’s Past Shades its Future

By the evolving standards of the new South Africa, Themba Khoza might seem to be what he says he is: “the main man,” filled with promise, living out a dream that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Born in Zululand

Bill Berkeley March 17, 1996
Rose and Isak Arbuz, from New York, stand in front of the Warsaw grave commemorating his brother, his brother's girlfriend and another couple who were part of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. Their skeletons were recovered from a basement and were buried together. The Jews fought from April 19 to May 16, longer than France and Poland fought against the Germans. There were only 220 insurgents against 2,090 Germans, Ukranians and Latvians. "All it was about, finally, was that we not just let them slaughter us when our turn came," wrote Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the uprising. "It was only a choice as to the manner of dying."

Survivors

Text and photos by Jill Freedman In the Lublin region, on November 2, 1943, an operation, given the code name “Harvest Festival” by the Germans, was begun. Its object was the murder of those survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising who had been

Jill Freedman February 16, 1996
This vintage postcard shows young women participating in a fire drill at the New York State Training School for Girls in Hudson.

Punishing Women, Punishing Girls

Shirley Wilder still carries scars from her first weeks at the New York State Training School for Girls in Hudson, where she was sent soon after her 13th birthday. This vintage postcard shows young women participating in a fire drill at the New

Nina Bernstein February 16, 1996
Alone and confused, Melody, 8, follows her grieving mother into a bar across from the funeral home where her twin sister's body was handled. Melody doesn't outwardly dwell on the fact that she, too, has AIDS, but she will tell anyone who asks that she probably won't live much longer.

Milestones

Most Fridays, George Whitman doesn’t have the strength of will to take his four children to the community dinners for people affected by AIDS. There is the hour he spends in verbal combat with his two oldest boys – Corey, 15, and Ryan,

Doug Root and Randy Olson February 16, 1996
Tomato machines carry farmworkers to sort newly-picked tomatoes in the fields of Stanislaus County, near the Westley Head Start center. Years ago, center supervisor Ismelda Cantu decided she didn't want to make the hot, dusty labor on the tomato machines her life work.

Migrant Head Start: Following the Seasons of the Soil

WESTLEY, California – Just as farmwork has changed, so has care for children of those who work in America’s fields. Head Start, for migrant farmworkers’ children, follows their parents’ seasons on the soil. A father weary after a day in the fields picks

Kay Mills February 15, 1996
The soul of the new ghetto lies in service workers like Mourtala Sall and his wife. He drives taxis six nights a week, and she cares for their two-year-old daughter while earning up to $50 an hour braiding hair for African-American women in their kitchens. They are saving to open a Senegalese restaurant, the first one, Mourtala hopes, to cross out of Harlem and into middle-class Manhattan. "Americans like our food," Mourtala says. "But white people won't go to Harlem."

Caste Party: Africa Arrives in America

The United Gnegnos of America held their annual ball recently at the Bronx’s Parkside Plaza. Gnegnos (pronounced “NYE nyose”) are a caste, actually the lowest caste, among the city’s 20,000-odd Senegalese immigrants. To attend a Gnegnos function, to have even heard of it

Joel Millman February 7, 1996
Denis Goldberg left South Africa after spending 22 years in prison. AP Wirephotos

South African Exiles

In exile, now, and far away, it is still easy to recall clearly the joy of sitting alone beside a waterhole, silently listening to the sounds of wild game. Waiting patiently, I anticipated and watched the movements of buck, of lion, of elephant

Steven Mufson July 25, 1995
William J. Schilling at a deposition of Jones Day attorneys in a lawsuit involving the Keating savings and loan.

In Whose Best Interests?

Mark J. Saladino was on the spot. Under professional ethics rules, the young attorney was required to maintain the confidences of his law firm’s clients. However, a coworker — a secretary to a powerful partner in his office — had come to him

Rita Jensen May 23, 1995
The aged members of the burial society sit in the Ceremonial Hall of the Jewish cemetery in Prague. Most of the 1,000 registered Jews in Prague are in their 70's and 80's. The chief of the cemetery, Arthur Radvanské, stands at right. He tended the bathrooms of the SS hospital in Auschwitz. He was ordered to massage Josef Mengel every Monday and Friday from 1942-1945 at Auchwitz.

Judenrein

Text and photos by Jill Freedman The Old New Synagogue in Prague is the oldest surviving synagogue north of the Alps and is barely functioning. It dates from the late 13th century. Most of the religious observant Jews in Prague are in their

Jill Freedman May 17, 1995
Clara and Elery Corson 1983. Husband and wife.

Time And Time Again: Poverty In A Maine Village

Photographers enter people’s lives for periods as short as minutes or as long as weeks. Constrained by deadlines and journalism’s compressed time, the assignment ends and we leave. We never stay, we rarely know what becomes of the people we photograph. Editors may

Steve Rubin May 17, 1995
A few miles from Nyeri, the heart of Mau Mau land, these Kikuyu children beg money from a passerby. Behind them are seen the round mud huts clustered together in protection against Mau Mau raids.

Kenya: Barely Escaping Rwanda

By Bill Berkeley and Photos by AP/Wide World Photos By the benighted standards of East Africa, the spectacle of refugees is all too grimly familiar. In a dense labyrinth of makeshift huts with scrap-metal walls and roofs fashioned from black plastic sheeting, children

Bill Berkeley May 17, 1995
Chris and her kids are crushed by the AIDS-related death of the two-year-old son of a close friend they met at an AIDS family support group. The death of the little boy, Jesse, makes Chris wonder if she can survive the death of her own children. Weeks later, despair gives way to practical considerations. She begins to plan custody arrangements for her children should she die before them. Photo by Randy Olson

An American Family Lives with AIDS

In the last three months of her life, Christine Skubis Whitman passed through the layers of dying from the AIDS virus in much the same way a newborn infant learns to live. Megan and Melody are six-year-olds fraternal twins living markedly different lives

Doug Root and Randy Olson May 16, 1995
Against a backdrop of children's artwork, Santee School kindergarten teacher Margie Oyama (right) tell Tin Hour, his daughter Marina and head Start transition project family advocate Nisseth Sath how well Marina is progressing.

Head Start: Keeping The Edge

SAN JOSE–Tin Hout sits in one of the pint-sized chairs in which parents inevitably find themselves when they confer with their child’s kindergarten teacher. His five-year-old daughter Marina stands shyly, but attentively, beside him as Santee School teacher Margie Oyama reports that the

Kay Mills May 15, 1995
The Jamaica Progressive League attracted more than 300 people in a new voter/citizens drive held a Guayanan retaurant in Brooklyn's Flatbush section this March. Would-be citizens paid $120 each for photographs, fingerprints and notarized registration forms. The first citizens will be sworn in this summer. Photo by Rachel L. Cobb

Brooklyn’s Anti-Poverty Workers: Caribbean Immigrants

Family values, religion and community renewal are among the pillars of conservative ideology, and rallying-points of Republican legislators who tend to represent districts that are rural, white and affluent. In Democratic Brooklyn, particularly the mainly black, mainly poor neighborhood called Fort Greene, the

Joel Millman May 13, 1995
A barge in the Snake River, near Lewiston, Idaho.

Slackwater

Photos and article by APF Fellow Blaine Harden   LEWISTON, Idaho — We sailed west at sunset on water the color of dark chocolate. The sun disappeared slowly into the downstream distance, notching itself between knobby, bald hills and burning out in a

Blaine Harden May 30, 1994
Denise Turner, 34 and her niece, Delenna Williams, and nephew, Derrick Williams. The two children were disfigured in a fire that killed their mother. Four years later, Delenna was shot in the chest, wrist and forehead while she and her aunt were searching for a new apartment to live in. Photo by John Sundlof

Getting Caught Up: Families Pay The Price

CHICAGO–“Oh, he’s a nice-looking young man,” Rose Doyle said softly, of the tall, muscular 24-year-old in jail togs who was being escorted into the courtroom by a sheriff’s deputy. The man was Deron Jones. On the night of March 4, 1993, he pumped

Steve Bogira May 28, 1994
Umulisa is an orphan in the displaced camp in Rutare in northern Rwanda. Too young to know her own name and unaccompanied by relatives, she has been named by people in the camp.

Terror Surrounds Rwanda’s Orphans

By Bill Berkeley and Photos by Mary Jane Camejo Sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench in an abandoned school tucked amid the steep mountain slopes of central Rwanda, 13-year-old Reveriani Rurangwa delicately runs a finger along the smooth, shiny scar that wraps around

Bill Berkeley May 16, 1994
This huge sawdust pile behind this West Athens saw mill shows the prosperity reached in the late 19th century. Photo courtesy of the Athens Historical Society

The Timber Industry and the Felling of West Athens, Maine

Everett York leans back and rests his massive weight on a worn Lazy Boy recliner that belongs indoors but looks right at home amidst the miscellaneous junk, cars and car parts that litter his trailer’s yard. Close by, his wife, Rena, reclines on

Steve Rubin February 24, 1994