My father was only a kid when he was sent to Auschwitz. The things he had to endure and tolerate to survive, were so painfully etched in his memory, he shook in his sleep most of his life. It was as “normal” to him as it is for me to snore- and I snore.
As children, we were warned not to ask him about those times and we did not until he was much older and we feared we would never truly understand who our father was, before he was gone.
My sister was the first to broach the topic with him and what followed was a relief and release inside him that sustained him for many more years. Out of honor for my father’s memory, I will not share the personal choices and horrors he endured in his own private battle simply to survive. Suffice to say, you cannot imagine.
As I have written in the past few weeks, I have been in Israel and then in London for part of the Olympics. At Yad Vashem, I visited the Hall of Remembrance where I found the only memorial for my grandparents, my uncles and aunt. It was a stunning, personal moment and I stood there thanking G*d for these people who had imprinted my Dad with nothing more than a will to live.
Leaving there, we traveled to London to see one of my father’s direct decedents win a medal for the United States of America. In the interests of privacy, I leave it at that.
The central theme in my father’s memories of those days was simple. Sometimes you are forced to do anything to make it through another night with the hope that the next day might be better.
My Dad loved this country and he instilled in his children that same passion. We have subsequently passed that love to our children and now my grandchildren.
I respect whatever decisions you all make about who you will vote for and who you support. That is each man’s choice.
However, my fear is that this country that I love, that saved my Dad and gave our family a chance to rebuild, will not survive another four years with the current President in office. Romney was not my first choice. Not even remotely.
But like my Dad, we don’t always get the things we want and sometimes we have to do the best we can with what we have to make it through a night and hope for another day. I would respectfully suggest that those of you who are not voting for Romney because he’s not exactly what you want, have not ever been through periods of true starvation where you will do anything to fill the pain and agony caused by emptiness and G*d bless you for it. Men should not have to endure those things.
All I know for certain? Had my Dad not made the choices he made to survive, I would not have seen his great-grandchild achieve something that young boys mind could not have dreamed about not all that long ago.
Do what your conscience dictates- but don’t let personal feelings stand in the way for what may be the country’s last chance to make it through this night and live for a better day.
As far as “Mormons”..... I have known all my life the results of being hated for my religion and like most others- I am what I am because I was born who I was born. I will not judge the religion of others I do not know, unless they use their religion as a weapon. I do not believe Mormons have done such.
Thank you Jim for the right to speak and G*d guide us all and save this great nation.
“I have known all my life the results of being hated for my religion and like most others- I am what I am because I was born who I was born”
Touching post. You will, judging from where this is going, have plenty of company on the thread. Those blinded by their own purity and piety will never rest until everyone “not like them” is marginalized, and they and everyone “like them” are ascendant.
They’ll invoke God, they’ll claim a Constitutional basis for their opinions, but mostly they’ll claim they are doing Gods work.
This tribalism is disgusting. I defend any Americans free-expression of their chosen religion. Those attacking Mormons for having beliefs of their own would be equally comfortable in a different time, shoving your father in a gas-chamber, stoning those less pious than them to death, hosting an Auto da fe, drowning witches or whatever other period context you wish to choose to showcase the lowest order of humanity from which few of us have historical exception through the march of mankind. Such is the insanity of the crowd.
These people sully the purpose of noble causes from which they derive their supposed legitimacy. In this case it’s Conservatism, or Constitutionalism. I reject anyone who uses the tool of denigrating another religion as a means of gaining political advantage - It’s a short stroll to your fathers Auschwitz experience.
Those that find this behavior repugnant should say so, so the weak-minded religious manipulators will be forced (through numbers against them alone) to crawl back under the rocks where they store their moral compasses.
This thread is wrong. It is unAmerican. It’s juvenile.
Politics aside, I am absolutely appalled at the comments of Rep. Cohen. While he may be Jewish, I can assure you he does not share a history like so many of us. Though she was proud to be a survivor, she could not speak of the horrors she lived through as a young girl. We only know the stories as she was able to write what was too painful to speak. Had ANYONE that Rep. Cohen loved or even knew lived through such horror, he would never be stupid enough to make such an asinine comparison. Best I can tell, the Republicans who oppose Obamacare are not planning on exterminating an entire race.
Unless genocide is being planned, as a REAL Jew, it is reprehensible to use ANY comparison of the Holocaust to any political banter.
This thread is the first time that you mentioned that your father was in the camps, although you have described your grandmother as a camp internee in multiple posts.