Monday, June 09, 2008
Now I have a little more time to do a Yarzheit post for dad. Better type fast. Tornado watch west of here. If you are at Cedar Point, get off that roller coaster!
Dad was a lot older than me, 40 years older. He worked unloading boxcars until he hurt his back, then got to work selling building materials.
Actually, he was a lot older in the historic sense than just 40 chronological years. His family almost starved in WWI when his dad was wounded in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was put up in a Budapest hospital. He came from a different world. I just couldn't understand what he was getting at when I was in school, or why he got so mad when I cut up in Hebrew School, which was always. All that interwar Eastern European (euphemism for raving Jew hatred) shit was gone and I was living the life in the land of Dinah Shore and Howdy Doody. By the time I was 15 I knew all and was convinced he was hopeless. Yes, I was a teenage dumbass.
Only later, when I was in college did he open up about what happened to him in WWII. He was in the Polish Army from the beginning (1939) through the Siege of Breslau, where he was a Noncom in a replacement unit. At that fight the SS held out even after the German surrender because they knew what was coming and deserved all of it. If you have read Maus the story is similar, except he was poorer than Speigelman and had the luck to be handed over to the Russians after being captured by the Germans. Then followed slave labor in Siberia, trying to rejoin a reconstituted Polish Army (Anders), malaria, Central Asia, rejection by said Anders Army, joining the one in the east and a return to Poland. Then a lot of postwar misery until he came to the USA.
I admire the man for shaking off that misery and coming here and building a life. Best of all, me. It was hard to get close to him. Our interests, sports, ages, friends were all very different. I did get an appreciation of Professional Wrestling and The Three Stooges from him. I still don't get Soccer.
He made a narrative video about his life over there about 20 years ago. It bothers me that people shy away from seeing videos like this. I don't mean the general public, but at Temple. Who the fuck are they afraid of pissing off? It's too bad run away from our own history for fear of offending those that would kill us, defend those that would kill us, or cheer those that would kill us. That goes for sleazy politicians too.
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Dad was a lot older than me, 40 years older. He worked unloading boxcars until he hurt his back, then got to work selling building materials.
Actually, he was a lot older in the historic sense than just 40 chronological years. His family almost starved in WWI when his dad was wounded in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was put up in a Budapest hospital. He came from a different world. I just couldn't understand what he was getting at when I was in school, or why he got so mad when I cut up in Hebrew School, which was always. All that interwar Eastern European (euphemism for raving Jew hatred) shit was gone and I was living the life in the land of Dinah Shore and Howdy Doody. By the time I was 15 I knew all and was convinced he was hopeless. Yes, I was a teenage dumbass.
Only later, when I was in college did he open up about what happened to him in WWII. He was in the Polish Army from the beginning (1939) through the Siege of Breslau, where he was a Noncom in a replacement unit. At that fight the SS held out even after the German surrender because they knew what was coming and deserved all of it. If you have read Maus the story is similar, except he was poorer than Speigelman and had the luck to be handed over to the Russians after being captured by the Germans. Then followed slave labor in Siberia, trying to rejoin a reconstituted Polish Army (Anders), malaria, Central Asia, rejection by said Anders Army, joining the one in the east and a return to Poland. Then a lot of postwar misery until he came to the USA.
I admire the man for shaking off that misery and coming here and building a life. Best of all, me. It was hard to get close to him. Our interests, sports, ages, friends were all very different. I did get an appreciation of Professional Wrestling and The Three Stooges from him. I still don't get Soccer.
He made a narrative video about his life over there about 20 years ago. It bothers me that people shy away from seeing videos like this. I don't mean the general public, but at Temple. Who the fuck are they afraid of pissing off? It's too bad run away from our own history for fear of offending those that would kill us, defend those that would kill us, or cheer those that would kill us. That goes for sleazy politicians too.
Labels: Kumbiyah
