(Songs of love, songs of war, songs of faith, and songs of...)
Songs of love, songs of war, songs of faith, and songs of spring. Here is an unusual collection of poems reflecting the dreams and sense of wonder of a gifted, sensitive Jewish poet who is able to convey the tenderness of man’s agonies and loves, his despairs and his hopes, his failings, and dreams of a better world. Herb Brin’s poems resonate with a deep sense of history, from the battlegrounds of the Second World War to the era of Kennedy, from reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust to the miracles of faith, tinged with hope for a better world.
(In a proud affirmation, “Ich bin ein Jude” - I am Jewish ...)
In a proud affirmation, “Ich bin ein Jude” - I am Jewish - journalist and poet Herb Brin retraces the train routes over which boxcars transported millions of Jews to their bitter fate during the Holocaust. Boarding in Istanbul in the 1970s, Herb travels through Greece, Yugoslavia, and Austria, then onward to Poland, where he visits the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Majdanek, seeking the sorrowful stories of the Jews who lost their lives and families. Along the way, Brin searches for links to his and his people’s past. In the shtetl of Konin, where his grandfather lived, all traces of Jewish life, down to the cemetery, have been erased. Herb Brin was well-known as a courageous journalist and publisher. But as an internationally known poet, he also built a worldwide following for his brash style and unflinching passion.
(A moving collection of poems reflecting Herb Brin’s love ...)
A moving collection of poems reflecting Herb Brin’s love of nature and his passion for the Jewish spirit. His verses are the cry, the laughter, the little sorrows, and the eternal triumphs of a man and of a people. “Your Rubio poems reverberate in the soul. It is a joy to have your wonderful books grace my personal library.” - Rabbi Alexander Schindler.
(Light, joyful poetry you will not find here. These are po...)
Light, joyful poetry you will not find here. These are poems infused with passion, with pain, with indignation, and especially with anger, as Herb Brin sweeps through millennia of Jewish history, directing his fury at the persecutions of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the travesties of war and persecution and especially the Holocaust. Brin also writes movingly of the California Gold Rush, of his travels through Mexico and Guatemala. He encompasses the passing of human life, conveying the innocence of childhood, the agonies of childbirth, the sorrows of aging. Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel wrote: "Your poems are timeless: poignant, eloquent, thoughtful. Your voice, Herb, penetrates the Jewish soul, for it brings such ancient fears and hopes to life."
(In this moving collection of poems, Herb Brin lyricized m...)
In this moving collection of poems, Herb Brin lyricized man’s basic humanity and his all-too-frequent inhumanity. Above all, Brin shines a light on injustice, as he turns his eye to conflicts that roil across the expanse of history. "Where there is conflict, pray for conscience," wrote Brin as, in powerful verse, he forces the reader to confront his or her own conscience.
(What is the measure of a man? In this extraordinary colle...)
What is the measure of a man? In this extraordinary collection of poems, Herb Brin rages against injustice and oppression with deeply felt passion. Herb brings to his poetry the same burning indignation against bigot and tyrant, the same compassion for the persecuted as he did in his widely-quoted newspaper columns.
Herb Brin was a pugnacious journalist, editor, poet, and dogged campaigner for liberal and Jewish causes. He is the author of poetry, nonfiction and autobiography books, and post-Holocaust travelogues.
Background
Ethnicity:
Herb Brin's parents were Jewish imigrants from Poland and Russia.
Herb Brin was born on February 17, 1915, in Chicago's Northwest Side to a poor family of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. His father is Solomon Brin, his mother is Pia Fannie Brin. Herber's childhood was extremely difficult. When he walked to school through a gauntlet of anti-Semitic neighborhoods where signs posted on windows read "No Jews and Dogs Allowed" he encountered a gang of Polish immigrant toughs who left him with a six-inch scar on his leg and the abiding hatred of anti-Semitism.
Education
During the 1930s Herb Brin attended several colleges and universities, including DePaul University and the University of Chicago, but never received a degree.
Herb Brin initially worked as a reporter in the early 1940s for the City News Bureau in Chicago.
Brin enlisted in the army shortly after Pearl Harbor, but an accident during boot camp in which he broke both feet caused Brin to sit out World War II, so instead, he contributed to Yank magazine and continued to write for the Chicago News Bureau. The capstone of his military career was an August 1945 interview with General Jacob Devers, commander of the Sixth Army Group, during which the four-star general stated that the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima would have no effect on the course of the war. Brin wrote two versions of the story, one of which retained the general's absurd comments and the other with more sober quotes of Brin's own invention.
Following the war, Brin returned to the City News Bureau of Chicago, where he uncovered the infamous Consumer Coal Company scandal. Upon presenting Mayor Ed Kelly with incriminating documents, the mayor summoned photographers, wrote out a letter of resignation, and handed it to the reporter who caught him.
In 1947 Brin moved to Los Angeles, working at first for the Glendale News-Press. He quit after the paper's publisher arranged a comical raid on a Communist Party meeting that turned out to be a gathering of the local Democratic club.
From 1947 to 1954 Brin was on staff as a feature writer and reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He became a respected feature writer, writing under city editors Paul Brecht and Taylor Trumbo. His specialty was oddball human-interest stories that Trumbo called "green suits." One of these involved a Stradivarius violin that washed ashore on a Los Angeles beach. For another story, Brin showed up at Union Station as the sole reporter to witness Charlie Chaplin's departure from Los Angeles.
Brin left the Times in 1954 to launch the Heritage Jewish newspapers in Los Angeles publishing four weekly newspapers based in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, and Central Valley and maintaining his contacts with the Los Angeles Times writing occasional features. In 1962, he represented the Times at the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem and also shot film of the trial for KTLA television.
Herb Brin wrote and investigated many of the stories himself that appeared in his papers, including several that reported on the American Nazi Party and stories following up on the Holocaust. One of the latter was a story about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust and who later became the subject of a book by Thomas Keneally and a film directed by Steven Spielberg.
The leaders of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Council who were sometimes derided by Brin as machers or big shots responded by converting its monthly house organ, the Jewish Community Bulletin, into a subsidized weekly newspaper in competition with the independently-owned Jewish press of Los Angeles. The Bulletin's successor, the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, still requires an annual subsidy of more than $2 million in charity money.
Ultimately, Brin was unable to fight the resources of the community leadership that appeared to be determined to put him out of business. After a decade of losses that drained his personal resources, Brin was forced to shut down Heritage in Los Angeles and Orange County in September 2001. One edition of the chain continued to publish under new management in San Diego, with Daniel Brin serving as senior associate editor.
In addition to his journalism, Brin was also a respected poet, publishing verse collections, including Wild Flowers (1966), Ich bin ein Jude (1971), and Poems from the Rubio (1995). He was also the author of nonfiction books, including The Eichmann Trial (1973) and his autobiography, Shouting for Justice, which he completed just before his death.
Achievements
The pursuit of justice took Herb Brin from the slums of Chicago to the glitterati of Hollywood, from civil rights marches to the crematoriums of Auschwitz, from international summit conferences to the Eichmann trial, from the silent Jews of Moscow to the 1967 battlefields of Israel. And along the way, he put his pen to some of the most vivid, passionate poetry and prose of our time.
In his works that explored the Holocaust, Brin added to the vast contribution made by half a century of journalistic service to his people, to his country, and to the communities of Southern California.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Herb Brin campaigned for liberal causes, championing the presidential efforts of Robert Kennedy in 1968.
An early opponent of the Vietnam War, Brin supported the presidential bid of George McGovern. He also was among the first to prod the city's Jewish leadership into endorsing the mayoral candidacy of Tom Bradley, the nation's first African American mayor of a big city.
In the late 1970s, Herb Brin began to take positions that alienated some of his friends on the left. He endorsed the Proposition 13 "taxpayers revolt," supported the settlement policies of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and opposed the reelection of Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
In 1979, Brin mobilized community opposition to the decision by CBS to cast actress Vanessa Redgrave, an avowed supporter of the most extreme elements of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as Auschwitz survivor Fania Fenelon in the biographical television film Playing for Time.
Views
The beginning of his lifetime career in the brawling journalism of the Thirties in his native city was covering gangland killings, corrupt politics, and poverty.
Herb Brin fought for civil rights before it was quite fashionable, and graced innumerable lecture platforms.
As a reporter-essayist, Herb Brin covered some of the crucial stories of our day, from the Eichmann trial to the 1960 Summit Conference in Paris. He ran exposes that helped track down and try Klaus Barbie and was the first journalist to break the emerging story about the oppression of Soviet Jewry. His investigative reporting on hate groups in American was always at the forefront and many mainstream journalists turned to his expertise when covering groups such as the Aryan Nations.
Quotations:
"It's agonizing, frustrating, comfort while my fellow Jews were being murdered by Hitler." - about his service at the Army's Yank magazine where Herb Brin spent the rest of the war interviewing generals and celebrities.
Personality
Herb Brin is described as a courageous journalist and publisher, fearless man.
Quotes from others about the person
"The very last of the old-time FrontPage newspapermen, absolutely committed to every cause he felt just, from civil rights to the Santa Monica Mountains park." - Daniel J. Brin.
“How a journalist, how an editor could also be a brilliant poet is a source of astonishment and of gratitude.” - Elie Wiesel.
“His verses are the cry, the laughter, the little sorrows, and the eternal triumphs of a man and of a people.” - Tom Tugend.
Connections
Brin was married and divorced three times. He is survived by three sons: Stan, David, and Daniel. Brin is also survived by six grandchildren: Miriam, Sarah, Nathan, Benjamin, Ariana, and Terren.
