One way of shielding children from gender stereotypes: Keep their biological sex secret. Three-year-old twins Zyler and Kadyn Sharpe scurried around the boys and girls clothing racks of a narrow consignment store filled with toys. Zyler, wearing rainbow leggings, scrutinized a pair of hot-pink-and-purple sneakers. Kadyn, in a T-Rex shirt, fixated on a musical cube that flashed colorful lights. At a glance, the only discernible difference between these fraternal twins is their hair — Zyler’s is brown and Kadyn’s is blond.
People across the world are gathering together today to light lamps, feast on sweets and set off fireworks. It’s to mark the most important day of Diwali, the five-day festival of lights. Diwali comes from the Sanskrit word Deepavali, which translates as "rows of lighted lamps". It marks the beginning of spring in the southern hemisphere and coincides with the Hindu New Year. It also celebrates the spiritual triumph of light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance. Diwali’s Light Festival is celebrated everywhere with Hindu, Sikh or Jainist populations, most notably in Asia.
Olga Costa was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1913, at the outset of World War I. Her parents, Jacobo Kostakowsky and Ana Falvisant Bovglarevokeylandel, were immigrants who had fled czarist Russia to escape persecution of the Jews. Costa and her younger sister Lya were raised in Berlin, where their father, a violinist and composer, exposed them to the arts at a young age. But after the end of the war, her family, along with many other Russians, fled Germany. In 1925 they set sail from the French port of Saint-Nazaire, arriving in Veracruz, Mexico later that year.
Anyone who has seen “Casablanca” knows the connection between Portugal and World War II refugees. But few know the story of the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who in 1940 saved tens of thousands of lives only to be punished for this heroism by his own government. As we mark Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, we should honor this man who engaged in what one historian called “perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.”