I want to tell the story

Times were hard. There were no jobs. People living in great mansions found themselves closing off all but a few rooms and trying to subsist there when their grandparents had had chauffeurs and maids and vaults filled with jewels. Now it took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.

And then a savior came. A man who promised to restore the good life, to make things better. He spoke to the frightened and frustrated hearts of the wealthy and once wealthy. He spoke to those who were afraid and hungry. He spoke to the angry and he gave them a solution.

He gave them a scapegoat. He united them in hatred.

 I was born in November of 1949, the second world war was still vivid in the memories of the people around me. I had nightmares of running through brick tunnels trying to escape the Nazis at a very young age. The people who ran our local grocery store, The Grunewalds, were survivors. My fifth grade teacher painted vivid pictures of how inconsequential Jewish children were during that war. My music teacher described how her students ran, dodging the buzz bombs, not knowing where they would land as houses exploded around them and later how they wore Mickey Mouse gas masks when they were put on trains and sent from London into the country where people prayed they would be safer. I met one of Mengele's twins after she spoke to a group one night.

Tonight I am remembering all the dismembered hopes and dreams and people who were the casualties of that time.