On the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, I thought I would share a story. I grew up in an English Suburb of Montreal where there was a healthy mix of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish families. I recall when I was about 12 years old, there was a big fire about a half mile from my home. I commented to my Father the fire must be either at the Protestant School (Public School) or the Synagogue (they were next to each other), and I hoped it was the Synagogue, and not the school. You see the neighbor was a very divided neighborhood...the Jewish kids tended to hang by themselves and the child hate towards the Jews was pretty common. The second my father, the devote Catholic, heard the words from me, he intervened immediately and spoke words to me which so clearly shone light on the evil I was being pulled into in the neighborhood. That conversation changed my life. My Father opened my mind to the need for acceptance of differences in people. This was one of the most profound lessons I learned from my Father. But to be clear, it was one of many many lessons in morality I learned from my Father...if you wanted to set your moral compass, all you needed to do to watch my Father. What made this story truly beautiful to me some 35 years later was I learned my Father, who was adopted, was actually born in Minsk, Belarus, a hot spot in the Nazi Holocaust. To this day, I dont believe my Father knew this fact. [I found this fact on the immigration papers for my Grandparents and their 2 sons move to Canada in 1929.]
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:38:15 +0000
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