this is so sad.... but thank God for the healing. But that librarian....oh brother... but I'm not surprised. I grew up in a Chicago suburb in the 50's and 60's, the suburb we lived in was about 80% (on the conservative side) Jewish. I remember the grandmother's of my friends having the tattoos on their arms, but because of how young …
this is so sad.... but thank God for the healing. But that librarian....oh brother... but I'm not surprised. I grew up in a Chicago suburb in the 50's and 60's, the suburb we lived in was about 80% (on the conservative side) Jewish. I remember the grandmother's of my friends having the tattoos on their arms, but because of how young I was, my parents resisted answering my questions or offering much of an explanation. When I went to high school in a Catholic all-girls high school in Chicago, we were shown movies of the death camps and bulldozers scooping hundreds of people into mass graves. I was frozen in horror! It wasn't until perhaps my junior or senior year that I even became aware of the Japanese camps! I felt personally betrayed...In my mind, I couldn't separate the Concentration camps from the Japanese Internment caps. Why had this been kept a secret!? Nobody spoke of it..I was shocked and sickened and the cognitive dissonance kept my rage boiling inside. Regardless of how much I was reassured that these were not the same, it was a deep cut in my trust of everyone...all the 'grown-ups': parents, teachers, friends' parents.... more layers of the onion were peeled back and I wondered who, if anyone was telling the truth!? It is still true for me today.... who is really telling the truth? I'm inclined to believe few.... and heartbroken daily at the thought of man's inhumanity to man. Sorry for the rambling.... but your letters always bring so much to the surface for me, TC... you and all those who show up here at 'Cheers at least once a day... so glad I have some place safe to go...
this is so sad.... but thank God for the healing. But that librarian....oh brother... but I'm not surprised. I grew up in a Chicago suburb in the 50's and 60's, the suburb we lived in was about 80% (on the conservative side) Jewish. I remember the grandmother's of my friends having the tattoos on their arms, but because of how young I was, my parents resisted answering my questions or offering much of an explanation. When I went to high school in a Catholic all-girls high school in Chicago, we were shown movies of the death camps and bulldozers scooping hundreds of people into mass graves. I was frozen in horror! It wasn't until perhaps my junior or senior year that I even became aware of the Japanese camps! I felt personally betrayed...In my mind, I couldn't separate the Concentration camps from the Japanese Internment caps. Why had this been kept a secret!? Nobody spoke of it..I was shocked and sickened and the cognitive dissonance kept my rage boiling inside. Regardless of how much I was reassured that these were not the same, it was a deep cut in my trust of everyone...all the 'grown-ups': parents, teachers, friends' parents.... more layers of the onion were peeled back and I wondered who, if anyone was telling the truth!? It is still true for me today.... who is really telling the truth? I'm inclined to believe few.... and heartbroken daily at the thought of man's inhumanity to man. Sorry for the rambling.... but your letters always bring so much to the surface for me, TC... you and all those who show up here at 'Cheers at least once a day... so glad I have some place safe to go...