Survivor
A poem by John D. Kovac
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John D. Kovac
John D. Kovac is a New Jersey attorney and essayist whose writing explores Zionism, Jewish identity, culture, literature, and the tensions between liberalism and political extremism. A graduate of the University of Delaware and the University of San Diego School of Law, he also pursued graduate studies in English literature at Rutgers University, focusing on twentieth-century American poetry and literary theory. His work is shaped by a lifelong engagement with history, political theory, moral philosophy, and aesthetics.
No Army
Growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust gave me sensitivities and a way of seeing the world different from that of most American Jews. As the child of Holocaust survivors, I inherited contradictory impulses: fear and defiance, insecurity and pride, grief and resilience. I grew up with pain that engendered anger, though over time that anger slowly eased as the 1970s became the 1980s became the 1990s, and America grew kinder and more hospitable not only to Jews, but to many groups that had once faced prejudice and discrimination.
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