Witness to Mass Incarceration
At the age of three, Evie Litwok used to watch her father pray. Every day, she would stick her arm out and he would put the leather strap around both their arms. Her parents were Holocaust survivors, and during the war her father had looked up to G-d and said, “If you allow me to live, I will honor you every day.” He kept his promise, davening daily, always with a smile. When Evie grew up, she was not particularly religious, attending temple only on the High Holidays. Yet the day she went to prison, she knew she wanted a siddur. She needed to pray.
In 1995, Litwok was arrested for tax evasion and mail fraud. It took 12 years for her case to go to trial. She ended up in prison twice (2009–2011 and 2013–2014) as two counts of her charge were vacated and then retried. She had never imagined herself incarcerated, much less—for seven weeks in 2014—in solitary confinement.
3 comments on “Witness to Mass Incarceration”
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Powerful and important interview!
Was Litwok guilty in the first place? The article does not flow and seems disjointed. Then all of a sudden LGBT comes into it?—–poorly written.
“A former East End investment adviser with a history of legal actions against her by clients – such as comedian Lily Tomlin – and financial regulators is “a master of deceit” who supported “an extravagant lifestyle” through fraud and failure to pay taxes, a federal prosecutor charged yesterday.”——what gives?