My father had a criminal record for indecent exposure. The story goes that early in their courtship my father hit upon the highly romantic notion of taking my mother boating. It appealed to both of them tremendously; they both loved water, and had, in fact, met on a boat trip.
My parents were World War II Holocaust victims. Not the gnarled, diminished survivors of concentration camps, nor the mythical heroic figures who overcame years of inconceivable horror through resistance and fortitude, yet they were still survivors in their own right. As young teens they had both been lucky to have had parents who were savvy enough to get them out of Europe in time. When he was thirteen, my father was put in charge of his eleven-year-old brothers when they boarded a Kindertransport train bound from Vienna to England. He left, not knowing if he’d ever see his parents again. My mother was eleven years old when she left Germany. After Kristallnacht, my wily grandfather sensed an opportunity and managed to slip his children through the cracks before they were fatally sealed in. He booked passage for them to the United States where they were met by strangers who introduced themselves to the lost children as their new families.
After the war, my parents led unremarkable lives, my father in the Bronx, my mother in Brooklyn. They proved that the human spirit is strong, and hope springs eternal, when they met, one magical summer afternoon on a Mizrachi-sponsored excursion, the purpose of which was to...
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