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As a naturalized citizen and a refugee from the Siege at Stalingrad, I have a deeply personal feeling about this topic. One can only imagine the feelings and thoughts that filled the inmates’ minds in the death camps (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, etc.) when their eyes first saw a liberating American G.I. coming toward them, arms extended, a sympathetic look on their face, and reassuring words, “ Its all right now, you’re safe now, we’re here to take you home…….we’re Americans.”
At the end of the War my father took advantage of the temporarily porous “Iron Curtain”, left Russia and settled in Austria. There, he immediately placed our names on a deportation list for emigration to America…..two World Wars were enough for him. Being granted refugee status meant we would be allowed to leave, but it also meant we wouldn’t be able to take anything with us..nothing, zero. If the requirement was that we had to go naked, on our hands and knees; we were going to America.
How vividly I remember, during the years waiting for our number to come up, our teacher saying to us, “children, we have a surprise for you. We’ll be going outside, up on the hill, into the big open meadow, where some friends of our want to say “ hello.” Our hearts a-flutter with anticipation, we marched out into the meadow and didn’t have to wait long for our surprise. First the sound of bombers (everyone there knew that sound all too well,) then the sight of a formation of planes coming toward us at a very low altitude, bombay doors open. We squinted nervously, trying to catch a glimpse of the insignias on the wings. Just about the time we were able to see the beautiful sight of American flag decals on the wings and body of the planes, hundreds of tiny parachutes, each carrying a payload of Hershey bars, were dispatched and came floating down above us. My love affair with America, at that moment, became irreversible.
From the thousands of anecdotal and subliminal pieces of information we had gotten about America, we knew our prayers would be answered there. Heaven would have to wait in line.
What I’m trying to say by this personal snippet is………America is different. The country that Washington, Jefferson, Adams, etc. gave us is different than any that came before, or since. The axioms laid down by our founders; equality for all, nation of laws, not men, one man one vote may be throw-a-way thoughts to many of us today, but not to me. We’ve seen the sickening degradation of our country when these ideals were jettisoned and prostituded during the past few decades of Republican control.
At Nuremberg, the charge was “crimes against humanity.” If a new Democratic Administration doesn’t bring to justice those who committed “crimes against the constitution,” then we will have voluntarily ended the Great Democratic Experiment………………….and a Hershey bar will never taste the same.
