por admin » Sab Jul 03, 2010 8:59 pm
Como no vamos a estar todos agradecidos a este pais, como no vamos a quererlo.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
El dia de la independencia en Siberia
De ser un chofer de camion para el ejercito Ruso, yo aprendi las bendiciones de ser un Americano
Josef Katz fue un preso politico en Siberia, Katz nacio en Ukraine y vivio en una pequenia ciudad hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En 1944 fue puesto en un tren y enviado a un campo de concentracion separado de su familia. Se las arreglo para aguantar hasta el anio siguiente, cuando a la edad de 15 anios fue liberado por los soldados Americanos.
Siendo todavia un chico, cuando los "angeles" como el los llamaba le ofrecieron llevarlo a US, el penso solamente en encontrar a sus padres. Por eso les dijo a los soldados que no. Hambriento y sin un centavo, Katz no podia ni caminar. Como sea llego a su casa donde descubrio que era el el unico sobreviviente.
Un vecino lo reconocio y lo llevo con el. Se demoraron un anio en ponerlo saludable nuevamente, y le tomo dos anios el pagarles el favor. Cuando tuvo mayor edad como para darse cuenta lo que habia perdido al no haberse ido a US. Pero ya era demasiado tarde. El entro en el servicio militar obligatorio en las fuerzas armadas Rusas y fue enviado de regreso a Siberia.
Despues encontro un trabajo como chofer en Achinsk, y fue alli donde el vivio, trabajo y envejecio.
Cuando le pregunto si se arrepiente de la decision que tomo, las lagrimas se le salen de los ojos.
Fue el error mas grande que he cometido en mi vida, me contesta. Muchas veces mi corazon ha llorado por haber perdido esa oportunidad.
Mis ojos no estaban secos tampoco. Pero no puedo decir que solo la compasion por el me conmovio. Tambien fue gratitud.
Mi misma familia vivio en parte de Eastern Europe que despues paso al control de Union Sovietica. Y entonces, tambien sufrimos la fuerza de la tragedia y la falta de oportunidad.
La discriminacion y el mal trato a los judios en la Rusa Czarista causaron que mis abuelos que habian sido llevados ilegalmente a Rusia a la edad de 14 anios antes de que sean enlistados. Ante los programas antiJudios mi tatarabuela vendio su casa y con su esposo y sus 10 ninios llegaron a New York en 1895.
Yo, como su descendiente no habria tenido la superlativa educacion publica y como un estudiante de periodismo pude probar la libertad de expresion. No hubiera ganado mi ingreso a Cornell University y la ayuda financiera para asistir a una de las mejores universidades del pais, eso abrio la puerta para elegir la carrera de mi gusto. Yo no hubiera podido practicar libremente mi religion Judia, el recitar el Passover en voz alta y publicamente en el festival de libertad que nosotros rezamos, libertad para todos.
En el dia de la independencia, estoy puntualmente alerta y consciente de las remarcables bendiciones que he recibido por los riesgos y decisiones que mis antepasados tomaron, riesgos que ellos tomaron porque la conviccion de que America los recibiria bien. Porque ellos pudieron gozar de las oportunidades en este pais en lugar de dejarlas pasar.
Ms. Krieger es la jefa de la oficina del Jerusalem Post.
Independence Day in Siberia
From a former Soviet Army truck driver, I learned the blessings of being an American.
By HILARY KRIEGER
My "there but for the grace of God" moment came on March 30, 2005. On that day, I found myself in the musty, bare apartment of 75-year-old Josef Katz, a former Soviet army truck driver who lived in the industrial wasteland of Achinsk, Siberia.
I had come to learn about the Jewish aid organization that provided him basic necessities each week, but what touched me most wasn't his present poverty. It was the story he told me about his past, of the steps that carried him to a cramped and crumbling apartment with a vista limited to the concrete courtyard separating his warehouse of a building from the others just like it—and how it could have been my own family's.
Like the many political prisoners who made Siberia synonymous with exile, Katz was born elsewhere. In his case, it was Ukraine, where he lived in a small town until World War II. Then, in 1944, he was packed onto a train, sent to a concentration camp and separated from his family. He managed to hang on until the next year when, at the age of 15, he was liberated by American soldiers.
Being just a boy, when the GIs—"angels" he called them—offered to take him to the United States, he thought only of finding his parents. So he turned down the soldiers' offer. Half-starved and penniless, Katz could barely walk. Yet he made it back home, where he discovered that he alone from his family had survived.
There was a neighbor who recognized him and took him in. She spent a year nursing him back to health, and he in turn spent two years after that working to repay her. By then he was old enough to realize what he had lost by not going to America. But it was too late. He entered his mandatory military service in the Soviet army and was sent to a base in Siberia.
After his release Katz found work as a driver in Achinsk, where the grayness of the buildings, streets and perpetual slush penetrates the bones more deeply than the chill. It was in Achinsk that he, as he put it, "lived, worked and grew old."
Katz's decision was long made by the time I met him in his apartment five years ago. But that didn't mean the wound of a life that might have been wasn't fresh. When I asked him whether he regretted his choice, tears welled up.
"It was the biggest mistake I ever made," he answered. "Many times I was crying in my heart that I missed that chance."
My eyes weren't dry, either. But I can't claim it was solely compassion that moved me. It was also deep gratitude.
My own family lived in parts of Eastern Europe that later came under Soviet control. And they, too, were buffeted by historic forces of tragedy and opportunity.
The discrimination and hardship visited on Jews in the Czarist army caused my great-grandfather's parents to have him smuggled out of Russia at the age of 14 before he could be conscripted. Against a backdrop of anti-Jewish pogroms, the prospect of building a better life convinced my great-great-grandmother to sell her home so that she, her husband and their 10 children could join the huddled masses reaching the New York shore in 1895.
Had they wavered, they and their offspring would also have grown up to face the ravages of World War II and—had any survived—a life of stifled hopes under Soviet Communism.
As their descendant, I would not have had the superlative public education where even as a student journalist I was able to test the bounds of free speech. I would not have gained the entrée and financial aid at Cornell, one of the country's finest universities, that opened the door to the career of my choice. I would not have been able to worship freely as a Jew, to recite the Passover declaration loudly and publicly that "on this festival of freedom we pray that liberty will come to all."
On Independence Day, I am acutely aware of the remarkable gifts I have been given because of decisions my forebears made, risks they took because of their conviction that America would receive and favor them. Because they were able to seize opportunity rather than let it slip away.
In a godforsaken apartment in Achinsk, I understood the blessings of being an American.
Ms. Krieger is the Washington bureau chief of the Jerusalem Post.