01 October, 2001 - 22:02 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Turnabout

Here I was tumbling along thinking to write about what is the fun in fun. Until I fell into a diary in Open Diary by a lady who calls herself Pravda.

A young lady who lived through Sarajevo in recent times, lost her folks and friends and eventually came to the United States

Oh, I do hope that this not another Kaycee episode that I am falling into. Never-the-less go on I will.

The url of Pravda if I copied it right is:

http://www. opendiary.com/entryview.asp? authorcode=A274921

I tried to pull that up but kept getting that old comment, "Open Diary has run into a technical problem," I will try again later to see if I have it right.

Her diary begins as near as I can tell November 7, 2000. It seems to be a very factual account of the events she lived through and of her thoughts and feelings.

I intend to read her diary in its entire length and to follow it. I am in e-mail contact with another person who is from the former Yugoslavia who was living near Dubrovnik when Heather and I were on our anniversary cruise passed near there on our ship while fighting was still going on there, she now lives I think in Australia.

The lady in Australia seems to pretty well have things evened out in her own mind and Pravda seems to be trying to come to some understanding of why some things sould ever be the way they are.

Right away I am transported to my early years, maybe before I could even talk, and staring in wide eyed horror while some child mistreated another child. It was beyond my understanding then, as it is yet today. I make no claim to having higher morals or ethics than anyone else, but I am and always have been repelled by violence of one toward another.

I remember in primary school outrunning a gang of boys my age to get to the house in time to unlock the door, get in, slam and lock it before they could get to me. I didn't understand what the reason for their dislike, hatred or fox after the chickens mentality was, nor do I now.

I saw things in life all my school years that made me want to barf. As 18 year old guys the cry for weekend fun was, "Let's go down town and beat the heck out of some queers."

I had hopes that we as world members of humanity would give that sort of thing up, but all this time World War Two was in the making. I had read about Japan's activities in Asia which had me shaking my head, had seen Il Duce posturing and heard the vociferous, hypnotic voice of Adolf Hitler. I had been given a little understanding of the situation in Europe by my Dad, very unfavorable terms of German surrender in World War One. As a stamp collector I had German postage stamps with the value of millions of Franks. So between what Dad and teachers told me I could see inflation in Germany back then, taking millions to mail a single letter. I read that inflation reached the point that workmen would take wheelbarrows to work to carry away the bundles of next to worthless money they received in a days wages and accompany their wives to the store to spend it before was devalued more.

I have a somewhat general idea of the hero on a white horse wearing a white hat making wild eyed promises of the impossible swaying needy people into going into his group. What I still will never understand is how the man in the street could see any profit in putting all his countries money into soldiers, armaments and brutality and fear.

To this day, if I think deeply enough of the Holocaust I am moved to tears - - - good Lord six million people done in by Hitler's final solution.

Reading Pravda's accounts of conditions and events of her time in former Jugoslavia, in one of her entries she brings out a bit of gallows humor she said that someone said, "At least in Auschwitz they had gas." What remarkable people they are. On TV much of the destruction was quite visible to all of us in our comfortable homes, much of the horrible living conditions. It was shown plainly the sadness and fear the people of both sides existed under.

Now here in our country we have been stricken by the Kamikaze's of the mid-east destroying so very many lives in one fell swoop.

It seems that things were like they were back then, Joe Blow listened to the news on the radio, for the most part barely glanced at the news from foreign parts, figuring I guess that all that stuff was over there and not on our home grounds and some did not even come awake after Pearl Harbor.

Now, here in our country it is demonstrated what has been happening in US Embassys and installations, the mad destruction of life at the sacrifice of one terrorist's life. A pawn on the chessboard of the world.

Now it is here in the US and some of our people are suffering the torments of the damned. An the rest of us are in deep sorrow and rage.

Solutions ? I wonder, what next ? Maybe we should go hit some camels butt. But I doubt very much if it will be accomplished without killing many innocents and destroying our tax money to no avail and to the sorrow of the whole world accomplishing Nada, Zilch.

I started out tonight, old, grinning Grandpa to write about fun, glee, happiness and the beautiful decorations of decent life, but on the way to the keyboard I stopped to read an e-mail, in which entry a link was mentioned as being something worth while to read, suffered a swift Turnabout . . . . . . . .

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