​(RNS) — For most people April 19 is just another springtime day on the calendar: the baseball season is well underway, it’s often the date for the Boston Marathon, and the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., are usually just past their peak.

But April 19 is deeply embedded within my personal memory bank.

On that date 75 years ago, in 1943, I was a youngster traveling with my family from Alexandria, Va., to Pittsburgh to participate in a Passover seder at my grandparents’ home located in what was then rightly called “The Steel City.”

It was the midst of World War II, and my father, a U.S. Army major, was stationed at Fort Belvoir. He had carefully accumulated enough rationing coupons to provide sufficient gasoline for the round trip in our 1940 Chrysler.

For many people, “Key West” conjures up a menagerie of Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall films, home of Ernest Hemmingway, quirky residents and visitors, set in a hurricane-prone resort town adorned with beautiful sunsets.

Arlo Haskell’s The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries (Sand Paper Press) shows us another dimension of America’s southernmost island city in his skillful portrayal of its 195-year-old Jewish community.
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The author, executive director of the Key West Literary Seminar, introduces us to a robust gallery of Jewish “conchs” (the affectionate name for Key West denizens), including sailors, religious leaders, smugglers, cigar makers, tavern owners, Cuban independence supporters, and activists who helped smuggle European Jewish refugees into the United States from nearby Cuba during the 1920s and 1930s.