I stopped watching todays ball game at 1:30 to go over to the main building in our retirement community to see a two and half hour film about a lady resident who survived the Holocaust as a young child. The film was an interview by the Holocaust Museum for their exhibits. She is still living and must be somewhere around my age, mid 90's. I think you may be able to pull it up on the Museum site. Her name is Edith Ross. Believe you me, that slapped me upside the head with a sledge hammer concerning my agony and fitful sleep last night over the loss to Tennessee. Losing ball games are insignificant when compared to the horrible life she lived those few years, or I should say barely lived. Sports are a good entertainment source, but we should always remember where they should rank in the order of things in our lives.
My only other close encounter with an Holocaust surviver was when I entered active duty after graduating. Another Lieutenant in the unit I was in before shipping out to Korea was, along with his father, mother, and sister taken to one of the camps. They separated the mother and sister and he never found out what happened to him. He and father were slave workers in a factory. he had the cereal number was on his left arm. When there were bombing raids they would return to the factory and use sledge hammers to do additional damage, some times more than the bombs. When the Germans discovered this they took everyone out into the yard, lined 50 or so men up and gunned them down. His father was among them. Another time they had a line up he was in the line. As soon as the shooting started he immediately dropped. He had streaks with no hair across the back of head head where bullets had grazed him. When other prisoners were picking them up for burial, they discovered he was still alive the hid him and snd sneaked him out to the underground movement and ultimately to France and the US to an uncle in NJ. He had just finished college, like the rest of us. A very interesting guy and apparently fully recovered, perhaps as much as possible, from such horrible conditions for a young fellow to spend his formative years. remember how fortunate we were and are.