I was so touched by Steve’s father’s poetic essay that I decided to reblog it. What his father said about the Soviet dictatorship that his family could escape from can be equally applied to the Nazi regime. The world is still amazed how it was possible that Germany, which produced Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Bach, Schweitzer etc. etc., could turn into such a monstrous country. ‘Lilacs’ is a beautiful piece of writing. I read it to my wife, who was also deeply touched by it.
In 1912 my father, Jack (Jacob) Schwartzman, was born in Vinnytsia, a town then under Russian control in the part of eastern Europe that is now Ukraine. In the 1920s his family escaped from the tyranny of the Soviet Union and came to America to be free. Upon his arrival here he spoke Russian but not a word of English. He learned quickly and soon became a craftsman of his new language.
The tyranny now engulfing Ukraine makes this a right moment for a poetic essay that my father published in the spring of 1966, when we weren’t even half-way through the original Cold War. Now that we’ve entered a second one, the essay is as timely as it was 56 years ago. Feel free to repost this in a spirit of solidarity.
Solomon and Anna Schwartzman in eastern Europe in 1923
with their younger son Isidore and older…
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The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 