A Professor and his Dead Uncle

A few days back I wrote The Explainer: Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust detailing the horrors of the evil German leader's anti-Semitic policies, which killed over six million Jews. 



A couple of days back, I read a piece, actually more of a story, on the New Yorker website. My Teacher's Shadow, written by Caleb Crain, details the life and times of Prof. Peter Kussi, a Czech-born American Jew. The brilliantly written story reveals that the Jewish professor has a tragic background and that his outlook on life is heavily influenced by his dead uncle, who was killed at a Nazi concentration camp. 



Here's an excerpt:



"... between 1939 and 1942, the Nazis stripped Jews in Prague of civil rights, slowly but inexorably isolating them from the rest of Czech society. “It was, in the beginning, more a sort of chicane than a real danger,” Eisenstein writes. (When I first read this sentence, I had a vivid memory of Kussi using the word “chicane” in conversation and of my having to ask what it meant.) At first, Eisenstein reports, there were just a few restrictions on bank withdrawals. Everyone knew war was on its way, though, and “everybody was feeling then that a terrible thunderstorm was coming up—the air had become so sultry that all decisions and attempts bore a note of casualness and uselessness.



"Confiscations and arrests followed, but the early ones were intermittent and seemed to take place at random. A turning point came in the summer of 1939, when new regulations were posted that divided Jews from Gentiles in cafés and restaurants. Soon they were divided in movie theatres, swimming pools, and parks. A little while later, the Nazis took away radios. Eisenstein lost his job. The family lost its home in the country. Bit by bit, their freedoms were taken from them."



I do not want take away the joy of reading the complete piece. I strongly recommend that you read this lucid piece; ts inspiring and humbling. Click here to read My Teacher's Shadow.