My mother was a starving child in the Austrian hill country near Hitler’s birthplace during WW2. Her father lost an arm working in unsafe conditions in a coal mine because the Nazis needed massive amounts of coal to make synthetic fuel for the war. He begged the mine manager to let him work at reduced salary so his family wouldn’t starve, and she grew up with a crippling scoliosis of the back basically from a lack of calcium and a lack of food. They ate housecats more than once. In her village half the children died due to one illness or another but the real reason was starvation. The first time she saw a chocolate bar was when GIs liberated her town and she determined to go to America, she thought it was a magical place, and she would make sure her parents never again went hungry. So she went to school and trained as a nurse under some very coldhearted instructors that had seen it all during the war. She got high honors, qualified as an RN and an anesthesiologist and worked doubleshifts to pay for school and never had one day of her life without pain.
When she became a US citizen she was so happy she bought a car in New York and determined to see all 48 states. She wrecked the car in California but was offered a job in a small hospital nearby where she met my dad.
I don’t think a day went by that she didn’t communicate to we kids how we should appreciate being in this country. Her health is crumbling now, her frail bones are basically collapsing, and mentally she’s not the will-driven survivor she once was. She on massive pain meds most of the time, she knows she can’t survive surgery. She’ll never understand that Hillary Clinton considers her a Nazi.
Nowadays I don't recognize this country anymore.
Welcome to Free Republic!
Well said.