MEMORIAL DAY

This coming Tuesday is the official Memorial Day holiday (despite it being celebrated next Monday). Let us never forget this day of remembrance and give thanks to those who fought and those who died for our freedom.

I have surfed the Internet and read chilling books on the Croatian Holocaust during World War II and the Holocaust of the Jews during that hapless period. The horror of those two Holocausts will make your skin crawl. The Orthodox Serbs and the Jews were killed solely because of their religion. What possesses a person to slaughter innocent human beings because of their religion is beyond me. Truly a person must be evil.

As a person of Jewish ancestry, I am grateful I was born in the United States. I remember my maternal grandfather telling me what it was like to live in Poland. After Poland got its independence in 1918-1919, the Jews were promised they would live in a society where everybody would be equal. A year later, my grandparents found that to be a lie. Their town of Zarem was the focus of virulent anti-Semitic prejudice (Don't bother looking for the town on a map. The Germans literally wiped it off the face of the earth during WWII.). My grandparents got angry at the persecution and fled with their two sons (They had three sons. One of them died a few days after birth and was buried there. My mother was born in the United States.) to Hungary. The next thing they encountered was a one-hundred day Communist takeover by Bela Kun. So they fled and took a boat to the United States.

When my grandparents told me all this, I said "I sure am lucky to have been born in the United States." My grandfather yelled, "YOU'RE LUCKY? YOU'RE LUCKY???? At least I had a country to escape to!!"

We must never forget this nation, the United States of America, is the last best hope for freedom and liberty on this earth. Let us remember those who fought and died for us on Memorial Day and pray for those who are fighting for us today.