Alarming saber rattling,
rockets and bombs! This region is spreading horrendous dread.
We do not need another
calamity. I still remember World War II and the suffering it set off across
Europe—it claimed so many lives; it caused such devastation!
Can we steer clear of
Nostradamus’ sinister words and the biblical prophecies regarding Armageddon? If
we put our minds to it, I’m sure we’ll find wiser solutions.
Of course the price is high: keeping
the peace would dent much human ego and pride to which we still tenaciously cling.
It would violate our ancient beliefs that land belongs solely to one people and
no one else. It would restrain our desire to hate those who are different. It
would reign in our emotions. It would prohibit us from killing those we do not
like, and deny our age-old desire to prove that we’re better and stronger than
others.
How clearly I remember one
particular day after the war. My young aunt together with the entire staff of
the local hospital had been taken hostage and shipped off to Russia; and so was
the hospital— dismantled and shipped East, its patients left in the street, and
the staff never heard from again. That same day, father watched helplessly
while Communists took away his best friend. Moments later they were looking for
him. He sped home and within seconds we were in the car, leaving our home—never
to see it again:
“…A mile or two before the
train station, we ran out of gasoline. We abandoned the car and continued on
foot, mother and my little brother a few steps ahead, father and I behind, as
if we were strangers. The streets were deserted. Devastation everywhere. The
ruins rose into the gloomy sky like eerie phantoms. Some buildings were sheared
off as with a razor blade, baring the bowels of deserted offices and homes.
Paintings still dangled from the walls. Unmade beds were quiet witnesses that
someone had slept in them before a shell knocked off the other half of the
room. A boot balanced precariously on a ledge.
Here and there in the rubble
yellow sheets hid unburied bodies, an official precaution to warn those who
were still alive of typhoid. Somewhere a dog wailed, forsaken, hungry and
scared. Just like us.
At last, the station came into
view, but our hope was short-lived. The platform was packed with hundreds of
other pitiful refugees and fugitives, some sleeping, some crying, most of them
numb with misery—waiting. No one knew if trains were still running. It was
rumored that the tracks had been blown up. Hitler had given Albert Speer, his
architect and minister of armament, instructions to destroy everything and burn
it to the ground before the enemy approached. …” *
The war-years had been pure
terror, but the years that followed, years of devastation, hunger and need were
even worse and lasted much longer.
Those years made us understand the
futility of war. Mankind, it seems to me, has become more tolerant and more
willing to cooperate with one another. May we succeed in steering clear of
letting our baser instincts carry anyone away. The final price of war is higher
than the price of keeping the peace.
Have a happy and peaceful
Thanksgiving,
Rosi
* taken from my memoirs, “The
Madman and His Mistress”
