About the Authors
Photo by Rose Eichenbaum
Aron Hirt-Manheimer
Aron Hirt-Manheimer was born in the Feldafing D.P. Camp, U.S. Zone, Occupied Germany. His family immigrated to the U.S. when he was three, residing in Cleveland, Ohio before moving to Los Angeles in 1960. He received a BA in psychology from UCLA (1970) and an MA in Jewish education (1976) from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He founded Davka magazine (1970), a West Coast Jewish quarterly credited by the Encyclopedia Judaica for its role in “fostering a Jewish cultural renaissance.”
Aron served as editor of Reform Judaism magazine (Union for Reform Judaism) from 1976 to 2014 and as URJ editor-at-large until 2021. He co-edited with Irving Abrahamson Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel (Holocaust Library, 1985.) Wiesel described Aron as “a writer possessed of a rare blend of integrity, persuasiveness, and good literary sense.”
Aron co-authored Jagendorf’s Foundry: Memoir of the Romanian Holocaust, 1941-1944 (HarperCollins,1991), described by Publishers Weekly as an “extraordinary, riveting, heartrending story of a genuine hero…” (translations published in German and Romanian). He is also coauthor with Arthur Hertzberg of Jews: The Essence and Character of a People (HarperCollins, 1998, published in nine languages: Hebrew, Italian, Czech, Slovak, Spanish, French, Polish, Dutch, and German).
Aron lives with his wife of more than 50 years, Judy, in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
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Marty Yura
Marty Yura was conceived in the Feldafing D.P. camp and born after his family arrived in New York. He grew up in the Bronx before relocating at age sixteen with his family to Los Angeles. He graduated from UCLA with a BA in psychology (1970), immigrated to Israel, and was inducted into the Israel Defense Forces. He became an officer and served as a field psychologist in an infantry brigade at the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Upon completion of his military service, Marty returned to the U.S. and completed his MA in psychology at California State University – Los Angeles (1976).
Marty has worked as a management consultant, founded and headed a computer-based learning company, and supervised more than 50 registered representatives in the financial services industry. In 2009, he and his wife co-founded Vista Yoga, where he teaches yoga and meditation. He also teaches yoga at a program for veterans with PTSD at Emory Healthcare, one of four such programs in the U.S. Marty lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife of over forty years, Marti.
