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Today is a day when I feel compelled to write about a subject I fully realize is likely to be little of relevance to anyone else, and yet the need to do so is there, nonetheless. Today, April 23rd, 2004 is my Uncle Ernst's 95th birthday.
Uncle Ernst is a retired physician, born to a family of secularized Jews in a modest, provincial town in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains of Poland. Educated and trained as a physician at both the Sorbonne and Heidelberg University, he returned to his hometown to establish a surgical practice. Because of his skills, and despite the handicap of his religion, his practice quickly grew, referrals and requests for consultations from both Christian and non-Christian colleagues becoming the norm.
Only 30 years old in September of 1939, Ernst refused frantic entreaties from both friends and colleagues to flee the advancing Nazi armies and chose to remain at the local hospital with his patients. With full knowledge of the likely consequences of his own decision, he simultaneously understood the even more critical need for his skills in the coming days as the Nazi war machine relentlessly advanced into Poland, crushing all who dared oppose it.
Ernst remained at that hospital for 19 days, during which tens of thousands fled his hometown, most of his own family among them. On the evening of the 19th day, catching a few moments of rest on a gurney in the casualty ward, he was quietly awakened by a nursing sister; expecting news of yet another patient, he was surprised to note a small canvas rucksack, heavy winter coat and a pair of sturdy boots in her hands. Apparently, his puzzled expression prompted her to speak, and she did so plainly, but with great kindness: "Doctor, the time has come for you leave us. I have gathered some food, a bit of money, and identity documents belonging to one who no longer has need of them. Go now, Doctor. Go east, toward the Russians, and may God go with you. There is no more you can do here, and you must now save yourself, while you can." The quiet urgency of her request, the kindness of it, and his own knowledge that she spoke the plain truth decided for him that he would do as she asked.
It would require more time and space than is reasonable to detail the 17 months that covered his journey eastward across the Soviet Union to Vladivostok, thence by ship to Mexico and by bus to America, his journey finally ending in Chicago at the Alexian Brothers' Hospital. There he met and later married my grandfather's sister, a nurse there. Though childless himself, there are thousands of children who came to love 'Doc', not the least of whom are his many nieces and nephews. Though his own family virtually disappeared in the horror that was the Holocaust, he never became embittered toward mankind, recalling that his own life was spared through the kindness of Christians, agnostics and atheists of several nationalities and races. It was from him that I first heard, and later came to believe, that mercy and forgiveness are the greatest attainments of mankind, and that those 2 qualities, more than anything else, separate us from non-sentient animals. "Forgiveness is an act of self-preservation", he says, because "attempting to wound another, or revenge yourself on them by hating them, is as illogical as swallowing poison and expecting someone else to die as a result."
Happy birthday, Uncle Ernst! Live long, and know that you are loved!
:D
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