From Where I Sit HONOR THY GRANDFATHER
	JULY/AUGUST 2005

by Richard Koscher, Publisher

The Fourth of July is one of the great holidays on our national calendar and this year, for the first time, I’m able to celebrate it as an American citizen. I was born in Austria, emigrated to the U.S. four years ago, started 110° Magazine two years ago, and just this month completed my citizenship requirements. I’m proud of my Austrian heritage, and even more proud to now be a citizen of the greatest country in the world.

The Fourth of July, of course, is the day we set apart to honor the men and women who fought, suffered, and died to keep America free and, from a more global viewpoint, to preserve freedom throughout Western civilization. All Europeans are aware that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany following a conflict in which more than 400,000 American soldiers gave their lives so that we all might be free. The losses scarred an entire generation of wives, parents, and children, some of whom still carry a load of grief that they have been unable to lay down even six decades after the end of the conflict. Of course, the toll of European grief was immense. The Soviet Union, all by itself, lost 27 million people.

The war changed forever the lives of many survivors. One of them was my grandfather. He was a Yugoslavian who spent time incarcerated in a Yugoslavian prisoner-of-war camp. Grandfather never told his grandchildren about his experiences in the Camp, not even telling us in which camp he had been interred. The only impression he left about that time was that he often would wake up in the middle of the night — even 40 years after his release — screaming, with his body covered with sweat. I can imagine that he was haunted by memories, because I visited one of the concentration camps and even as I write this, my eyes are burning with tears from the memories of the gas chambers and huge stone tables where Nazis ripped old teeth out of live prisoners without pain medication and shaved their heads for hair to use for making soap. I can’t escape the memories of that awful place — and I only visited it as a shrine.

In spite of my grandfather’s seemingly unbounded mental agonies, we are grateful that he escaped. The story of his escape, which came to me from my grandmother, reads like a Hollywood script. The prisoners walked out free after their Nazis guards fled the approaching Ally forces. The road back to their homes was difficult and dangerous, since Axis guards continued to maintain checkpoints on the road back to his home. My grandfather and his friend walked every foot of the thousands of kilometers to their home. One checkpoint would only pass people who had their hand stamped with a particular symbol. Grandpa and his friend carved the required shape out of a raw potato, dipped it into ink, stamped their own hands, and got through the checkpoint.

My grandpa died in 1984, when I was just nine years old. It was a sad day for all of us. I still miss my grandfather and have wonderful memories of him. I remember the big Cherry tree in the backyard, which we climbed as kids despite our parents warning us not to climb on it. Grandpa taught me important lessons, like how to catch my own shadow. He had a trick of clapping his hands while driving the car and making me believe that he could make the car drive itself, like Herbie. He spoiled me with chocolate bars and comic books.

The Christmas following grandpa’s death was a bad time for our family. It was difficult to see my grandma with eyes red from weeping. Grandpa turned out to be an irreplaceable part of the family — the glue that kept us together. His passing took the heart out of our family reunions. My grandmother went to join her beloved husband two years ago and I miss her terribly. When I see her old rocker sitting empty, it seems me that the chair feels as lonely and bereft as I do.

Now that grandma is gone it seems to be up to me to keep my grandfather’s story alive. He deserves to be remembered. We should keep alive the suffering that he had to endure. It’s a story worth telling because, after all, own existence depended upon the courage and intelligence that enabled him to survive the war. This Fourth of July let us all recall our own personal war heroes, fallen and living. Let’s remember what a terrible price some of our friends and family members paid, and honor their lives and their memories.