Meet Ohio Native Judy Rakowsky

Judy Rakowsky is the author of the critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction book Jews in the Garden, which the New York Times reviewer said “reads like a thriller” and which was an editor’s choice of the New York Times book review. She spent decades on deadline as an award-winning investigative reporter and editor at the Boston Globe, People Magazine, the Providence Journal, and other outlets. She was born in Lima, Ohio and after graduating from the University of Michigan she got to know her Polish-born cousin Sam when she was a young reporter at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland. Sam had raised a family in Akron and Canton but had never spoken publicly about his Holocaust experiences surviving the Krakow ghetto and four Nazi concentration camps. She later shared those details in a first-person story in the Sunday Magazine of the Providence Journal. The unlikely duo traveled again and again to Poland and uncovered dark secrets about what happened to many relatives during the war. They pursued a cousin who was the only member of her family to survive a massacre while in hiding. Describing the truth of what happened to these relatives was outlawed in 2018 by the Polish government. Coverage of Jews in the Garden can be found in The New York Times, NPR’s Book of the Day, USA Today, Boston Globe Magazine, The Times of Israel, The Providence Journal, and other outlets. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband Sam.