Some people are born on days coterminous with holidays like the 4th of July, Christmas and even New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Others are born on Mother’s Day or Thanksgiving that are Sundays and Thursday with no precise date. And then there is February 29. Some are born in the “terror of history,” a phrase recently associated with the Black Death. A December 7th or Friday the 13th birthday would give some pause.
I used to get sort of inexplicably grumpy on my birthday. I now have a plausible explanation. My birthday has a slightly depressing aspect, it is wedged in between Kristalnacht 1938 and Armistice Day 1918, 80 and 100 years ago this time around. Events that are more thoughtful and mournful and cerebral than celebratory. I tracked the disappearance of Spanish-American War and WWI veterans. The next cohort in jeopardy are WWII veterans. But we are still here to enjoy the fruits of life and honor those who are not.
1918 and 1938 have lives of their own. The Night of Broken Glass in hindsight is the precursor to the Holocaust. The massacre in Pittsburgh is very recent evidence of the continued existence of anti-Semitism. The statement, “It can’t happen here” is no longer operative. However deep the depths of demonic hatred may be, they are aberrant, and do not appear to be widespread in America.
The Great War, ”the war to end all wars,” morphed into the Second World War and the Holocaust. It uprooted my parents in Austria and Germany. I was born to refugee parents in Blitzed London in November 1943.
Food rationing and austere conditions in England led us to emigrate to America where my mother and father had family. We arrived in a cold blustery New York in November 1952.
My standard English short pants were soon exchanged for jeans. We celebrated Thanksgiving with my father’s sisters and I swear on my best memory, the pressure cooker exploded and sent food to the ceiling.
Eisenhower had just been elected President but was not yet inaugurated. He was a war hero.
We were Democratic loyalists. Julius and Ethel Rosenburg would be executed in June 1953. I was too young to process that, but it disturbed my parents.
America was the land of opportunity. Our family rebuilt their lives, and soon prospered. We settled in Los Angeles, my parents learned how to drive. The bought a used Chevrolet. It had an automatic transmission, A.M. radio, tire with tubes, but no power steering, air conditioning of power windows. My father worked long hours, and with the blessing of overtime purchased a house. My mother went to school and became a nurse.
My sister and I went to college. She studied to be a grade school teacher and went into banking. I thought about library school and law school and succumbed to the path of least resistance as a Social Studies major and went to graduate school at UCLA and earned a doctorate in History. My German and English tendrils led me to English and Empire History. The Vietnam war, or as the Vietnamese call it, “The American War,” put Southeast Asia and Burma in my sites and on my academic menu. Eleven books and 700 articles later, on Burma, Southern African History, Jewish history, and higher education, I developed an affection for the personal essay. I wrote thoughts about turning 65 but it never left the lap top. But the perspective of turning 75 in 2018 is too rare, sweet and sour to miss the epochal opportunity.
With fires burning in Butte County, Ventura and Malibu, the preciousness and fragility of life and property are amplified. Hard work, emigration and America have given us much. Awesome nature is an unpredictable leveler. The pall of smoke and political discord are uncomfortable realities, but in the long run, and a Democratic majority in the House, I have regained a modicum of confidence in our system of government.
We live history. Change, taxes and death are a constant. History mimics investment advice, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
Republished from San Diego Jewish World.