Few Degrees of Separation:Personal Essays of the 20th Century by Those Coming of Age in Early 21st C. America

part one: WAR1: A Sister from Vietnam…………………………………………….Jackson Hance2: War Lost in Translation………………………………………….….Ellie Kahn3: The Miracle in Volodymyr-Volynskyi …………………………..Drew Goldfarb4: On the War Path………………………………………………….….Lauren Leffer5: Link To The Past:…………………………………………………… Brett Perry6: The Dust of War: My Ties to the 20th Century…………………..Katie Posner7: The War That Made Me…………………………………………Mark Rothleitner8: A Long Lasting Effect………………………………………Hambleton Sonnenfeld9: Grandpa Dan: My Connection to the 20th Century…………..Isabel Rickman10: Berlin Calling…………………………………………………………Anna Fried11: Connecting Myself to the 20th Century………………………….…Yi Sun12: We are all Connected……………………………………………….Tara Smith13: Sakins in the Korean War…………………………………………..Noah Sakin

part two: ORIGINS14: Manhattan on the Volga………………………………..…………Nikku Chatha15: Escaping the Tsar…………………………………………………Tess Savage16: Imagining Madagascar…………………………….…….……Nathan Randrianarivelo17: Asian Invasion……………………………………………………Tess Langrill-Miles18: Salvadoran Civil War: Coffee, Land, and Poverty ………………...Henry Villacorta19: The Swedish Model……………………………………………....Ellen Hoehner20: A Legacy of Soviet Ukraine……………………………………..Justin Long21: Family Connection: To the Civil Rights Movement…………Wayne Cottman22: My Generation’s Fight………………………………………..…Maddi Wyda 23: Thinking About Jasha……………………………………….…..Sunny Minhane24: The 20thc. and Me………………………………………………..Miranda Swinnen

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25: Gizzy………………………………………………………………..Nick Halle

Few Degrees of Separation:Personal Essays of the 20th Century

by Those Coming of Age in Early 21st C. America

Introduction: Hirobumi’s Firewall - Jon Acheson

These essays come from an assignment given to Park history students in 2010, but the assignment itself has a history. Several years ago – it was early spring in 10th grade world history – I searched for a way to vary the usual analytical essay on Japan and the second half of the 1800s. I offered the option of trying to use the Meiji documents given students to pursue a rather personal question: “How am I connected to Japan and to this era of Japanese history?” It was a long shot, an experiment and I was interested in what they might come up with. One of the documents was about Ito Hirobumi and the nature of Japanese government. I tried the assignment myself and after a messy start, made a rather startling discovery.

I’d always known that my Dad was in the Navy in the Pacific in 1944 and 45. He served on a couple destroyers – “tin cans” – built in the 1920s and fairly useless 20 years later for combat. He was an eighteen year old grease monkey, living mostly below decks, making sure the engines had enough oil to burn and water to boil. The only moment of danger, he’d said, was when they rolled about 70 degrees and everybody around him thought they fallen off the edge of the world. They were near Sakhalin Island. Word came down that a Japanese submarine had run into them, probably by accident. Their ship righted miraculously, and the damage was sorted out. They never found out the fate of the sub.

In talking with Dad, the conversation began with this story and then drifted away from him and toward his own father who was a Chaplain – an officer – in combat fleet operations. For two years both men, father and son, were in the Pacific. My dad would offer the sobering thought that his own father had to bury thousands of guys in terrifically deadly landings at place like Peleliu in the campaign to take the Marianna Islands; enough death to overwhelm him and push him to an early grave. My grandfather died just a few years after the end of the war.

So I drew my “mind map”, with bubbles and words and arrows and lines, and saw that the decisions made by men and women generations before me shaped my world and who I am. It turns out Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909), dead 52 years by the time I was born, almost prevented my existence. Hirobumi led a committee of Japanese to Europe at the end of the 1880s to discover the best governmental

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and technical practices of the European countries. If Japan was to avoid the fate of China, increasingly preyed upon by western governments and western trading companies, Japan would have to modernize, and do so quickly. Hirobumi was most attracted to the Prussian model for Constitutional Government, and he adopted Kaiserism to the needs of Emperor worship for Japan. The Emperor’s absolutism included the fact that no minister of government was actually required to report to the elected Diet. Additionally the military itself was to make decisions in complete isolation from the parliament. Command of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy was totally in the hands of men accountable only to an Emperor who took little interest in being in command of even his own daily schedule. There was no oversight authority, no checks, no balances. In practice the Emperor let his military officers grow their army and navy nearly as much as they wanted to and their success in defeating China in 1895, Russia in 1906, Korea in 1910 and German colonies in 1916 simply led to greater and greater autonomy from political pressure of any kind.

My father said the scariest element of the war was the kamikaze. If you got close to action, the very idea that the enemy would fly directly into a ship was terrifying to the men. When I returned my father to Truman’s decision to use the bomb, asking him where he was when he heard the news of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how he felt and what he knew about these weapons, it was then that I learned a new and powerful fact: he told me Operation Cornet which was slated for November, 1945 would have involved his ship. Cornet was the code name for the invasion of the Mainland of Japan, i.e. Honshu Island. US military estimates ran as high as 1 million expected casualties for the United States and probably three or four times that for Japan, especially when civilian injuries and deaths were added in.1 He said with finality, “they would have done anything to stop us.”

In other words, though my father never explicitly said it, I may owe my life to the bomb. The total, instantaneous elimination of two city centers and nearly a quarter million lives with just two bombs was news that would get to the ear and eventually the eyes of the Emperor. The use of the bomb twice, one made of uranium and the second of plutonium, it is asserted commonly by many historians, was needed to drive home to the military leaders of Japan that resistance was useless; they simply had to report their defeat to the Emperor Hirohito. The destructive capacity of these new nuclear bombs was irrefutable. And so the military clique that ran the war could no longer hide the reality of destruction from Hirohito. The firewall that Ito Hirobumi had constructed in the late 1880s was breached by those horrific weapons in August, 1945. When Hirohito came on the radio to announce to his people they had been defeated and must cease fighting, it was the first time nearly everyone in Japan had actually heard his voice. A few weeks later in testimony to the Americans, he put it this way:

“At the time of surrender [the day just after the second nuclear bomb was used], there was no prospect of agreement no matter how many discussions they [the military command] had….When Suzuki [Admiral, Chief of the Navy] asked me at the Imperial conference which of the two views should be taken, I was given the 1 Robert James Maddox, “The Biggest Decision…” in Portrait of America, ed. Oates., 8th edition, p. 278.

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opportunity to express my own free will for the first time without violating anybody else’s authority or responsibilities….it was surrender.”2

Essays in this volume answer the simple question: how am I connected to the 20th Century? You will find discoveries by a variety of students – reflections on the mortality and decisions of their forebearers; and, joy and pride in the ways their families have re-sponded to historical pressures and circumstances. The essays are the product of the intersection between the personal and the historical. We hope you enjoy reading and wish for you an insightful backward looking moment of

your own. Of course, objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear….

part one: WAR

1: A Sister from Vietnam

Jackson Hance

Ever since first grade I’ve been fascinated with the Vietnam War. My family had just adopted from Vietnam, and it was an exotic place that I couldn’t even begin to understand. And it was about then that I began to notice any mention of the war. Back then I knew almost nothing about the war except its location. That miniscule detail grabbed my attention, and has held my

interest. I knew the battle had been fought by forces who subscribed to two large, incomprehensible and incompatible political doctrines. Over the years I’ve slowly grown to understand the conflict and the flow of events; as if someone has slowly been bringing the image into focus over the past ten years of my life. By now I could explain the basic differences in ideology that started the war. Although I still don’t have the perfect understanding of the conflict I could certainly explain what the basic ideologies of the two forces were.2 John Tolland, The Rising Sun, The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945, 2003, p. 813.

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The interest was established months before the actual adoption. In preparation, my father had to travel to Ho Chi Minh City to visit the baby in the small orphanage where she lived the first few months of her life. He brought back pictures, stories about a French-speaking local who acted as a tour guide and some odd, chewy, coconut candies he bought at a temple that, according to him, was devoted to some sort of coconut god. Now that I’m older I’ve done some digging. There is no coconut god. The place he visited was the floating pagoda that is home to “The Coconut Monk,” a Buddhist monk who, in 1969, set out on a peace mission to Hanoi by bicycle (He was captured and turned back before he could reach it).

Several years after the adoption, my parents bought me a thin book titled “Vietnam behind the Lines.” This was a collection of hundreds of images related to the many facets of the war. All of the artwork in the book was created by Vietnamese artists living “behind the lines” during the war. They weren’t American propagandists imbedded among the troops. The artwork covers a huge range of topics. A full ten pages is devoted to official propaganda, another section covers the role of women. This book really cemented the idea of the war in my head. It was no longer just a vague international conflict, long in the past; it was all of that superimposed over a real place in the world—one that I had seen through the lenses of tourist’s pictures and native artists.

As I’ve grown, I’ve actively searched for information on the war. I savored the time in ninth grade when, as part of our English curriculum, we read “The Things They Carried.” I can now tell you what the war was, the parties involved and so on. I know that it was a war between Capitalist America, France and South Vietnam and Communist North Vietnam. The war was part of the much broader “Cold War.” The Vietnam War was part of the United States’ broader strategy of containing communism, as they attempted to halt the spread. Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam was where the “Coconut Monk” was trying to bike to in 1969, in the very midst of the war. The North Vietnamese were aided by the guerilla force the Viet Cong. It was one of the first wars television media covered, and it was also a brutal, bloody, and drawn out war against local insurgents. The Vietnam War wasn’t like World War II, where victory was achieved by driving out enemy forces and decapitating their leadership. The United States had to deal with guerilla warfare, a form of war far more fluid and complex than the great clashes of national armies more classically thought of as war. Eventually the North managed to seize the city of Saigon—which they then christened Ho Chi Minh City—decisively ending the war.

In all the digging I’ve done, one event really stood out. A curiosity uncovered by a Google search for “war,” “Vietnam,” and the word intrinsically linked to that place in my mind: “adoption.” From this search I uncovered “Operation Babylift.” This curious event was the evacuation of hundreds of children to the United States. These displaced children were adopted by, and placed in American families. Operation Babylift was plagued with the controversy inherent to haste. Documentation was improper;

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children’s origins were unknown; some had never been meant for adoptions, never abandoned; and the older children struggled with their pasts. The children were met with warm and enthusiastic welcomes from charities and adoptive families, and more than 90% of the families have reported that the children interact successfully. The legacy of the Babylift was positive, and caused a tremendous increase in the number of children adopted from Vietnam.

I’ve always wondered how different or similar the lives of the airlift babies are to that of my little sister. They were removed sloppily, in a rush, from the midst of violent ideological clash. She was adopted from an orphanage in 2001, a time of peace roughly 25 years after the war ended, the paperwork taking months. My parents traveled to Vietnam to meet her, and so that the orphanage workers could meet them. She wasn’t removed in a mass airlift; instead she was carefully brought home by her adoptive parents. Yet they both will have come from the same place, a place they never really knew. That search for understanding, though it is less important to me than her, is what has led to my fascination with the events of a war that I once knew merely the name of.

2: War Lost in Translation Ellie Kahn

I sat with my grandfather on a December afternoon over chilled gazpacho. I waited for him to talk. I realize now that I had waited fifteen years for him to talk and I had never thought anything of it. My mind cut to a scene from a hypothetical black and white war documentary in a bombed out German city with soldiers plastered with mud, running through a dark, milky river as explosions lit up the sky, but all along, the film grain of the scene keeping me in my reality. He interrupted my thoughts.

“Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it,” he said. “Do you know who said that?”

“Churchill?”“No. George Santayana”

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“Oh.”Silence.“I’m here to tell you what I learned and what I failed to learn during my

time in war,” he said.“Why did you choose me? To tell, I mean.”“Because you’ll know what to do with it.” “The information?”“Everything.”So he told me and I listened and tried to understand.My grandfather enrolled in the army’s infantry in 1943 when he was

seventeen and had never seen the world or developed any fears. Infantry, which is taken from the Latin word infantem meaning infant, was really the mindset in which he entered the war. He was raw, young, and inexperienced. But enlisting was what every capable teenage male did at the time. He and his friends, knowing that their Latin teacher was blind, would cheat in every way possible until one day the teacher stood up and said with a pitying smile, “Go ahead and cheat, gentlemen. You will all be leaving school and joining the army anyway.” My grandfather realized he didn’t have a choice, but he couldn’t understand how it could be so bad if all of his peers were so eager to join.

So he forged his father’s signature and was soon called to duty at Fort Meade in June of 1943. There he entered a specialized training program where all men were required to have an IQ of 120 or better, a varsity sport letter, excellent grades, and “good moral character.” He then took his first train ride to infantry school in September at Fort Benning, but was disbanded at the prospect of the Normandy invasion and sent to England and then Normandy in August 1944. The army realized that the invasion would result in a very high mortality rate, so they needed bodies. My grandfather used the word “bodies”, not “people”.

WWI had ended recently and many Americans didn’t want to become involved in the war in Europe. But, as the Germans made their way through Europe and conquered country after country, Americans also feared that the Germans would not stop and they would make their way to America. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not become involved until Japan bombed Navy ships at Pearl Harbor in

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Marching into Germany, April1945

Hawaii on December 7th, 1941. Roosevelt described it as “a date which will live in infamy.” America then went to war with Japan and Germany immediately waged war on America too. The Americans then fought their way through the Pacific and ultimately into Europe. It took less than a year for the Americans, British, French and Soviets to work their way together from every direction and take back the conquered European countries from the Germans. The Soviets, who had been at war since 1941 arguably, took on much of the German army before the Americans arrived three years later to help them out. The Americans made their way up through Italy, but instead attacked the Germans in Normandy, France on June 6th, 1944, which was known as D Day.

My grandfather arrived in Normandy several months after.“What color was Normandy?” I asked.“I will forever be able to picture what war can do to a modern city,”

said my grandfather. “There was no color. No movement. No sound. Just death. We couldn’t recognize anything, even ourselves.”

“And fear?”“Nothing but fear.”“Fear of death?”“Yes. And fear of killing.”“Did you?”No answer.“I’m sorry.”“Don’t be.”Our food was long since gone and so were all of the faces of those

sitting in the restaurant when we arrived. Chairs had been pushed in, pushed out, and my grandfather and I sat with dirty plates, late into the afternoon. I looked deep into his watery, old eyes and tried to discover a war-scarred teenager. I couldn’t. I also tried to look within myself to somehow understand. I couldn’t.

I don’t understand war. How can shooting an M16 at someone you have never met, someone with hopes and fears and brown eyes just like your own, solve your country’s problems? It seems so illogical, so simple, so perfunctory. But it happens over and over. Something about it

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Various versions of the M 16, introduced in the 1960s in the US Army.

works. And despite such a patriotic and united purpose, war is a personal experience, a horror that each soldier endures alone.

I felt like a stranger to my grandfather that chilly December day. After sixteen years of conversation, I’d figured we had talked about nearly everything there was to talk about. He knew me, but I realized I didn’t know him. War, which broke him down and patched him back together in different pieces, was never once mentioned to anyone in my family. We all knew the basic idea like where he went, how old he was, and why he went because my grandmother had told us numerous times, but when it was brought up, my grandfather would sit on the purple couch with a blank stare, heavy thoughts, and no words.

So I asked.“War is about killing people, creating chaos, breaking things, depriving

people of freedom. It is blood and violence and fear and corpses torn apart and endless nights of waiting in the hot and cold.”

“And you weren’t ready to share such painful memories?”“I wasn’t ready to share them with people I love.”“Do you feel like you are placing baggage on me now?”“It will never be your baggage.”“I know.”“You are lucky. Do you know that?”“Yes.”“You live in a changed country.”“But I’m still connected to your experiences.”One story in particular proved this to me. My grandfather was put in

charge of reconnaissance and was told to check a field for landmines. He was freezing cold, tired, a mess. He didn’t complete the task or even begin the task for that matter. He just went back to his platoon and said, “I checked. No landmines. Let’s go.” They crossed the field safely, but what could have been, still haunts my grandfather. If there had been landmines, I wouldn’t have been born.

On May 8th 1945, the Germans surrendered, which was known as Victory in Europe, or V-E Day. So much of western Europe was destroyed. Bodies of Holocaust victims and German soldiers were everywhere. The French, English, and Americans then worked to democratize the West, while the Russians worked to communize and socialize the East. Germany was

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occupied and eventually split up. Roosevelt had died before V-E Day. America’s new president, Harry Truman, got together with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to carve up a new Europe. The west did become democratic while the east became socialist, resulting in later what was known as the Cold War. The world superpowers were America and Russia until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. After months in the infantry with Hurt Locker-like duties (bomb removal, and kill and don’t get killed mentality ), my grandfather returned home in 1946, dirty and changed.

He never saw concentration camps and he didn’t hear about them until returning home. He barely spoke to the Russians and never spoke to any Germans. Fraternization rules were strongly enforced. He then entered college in 1946 at the University of Maryland where he met my grandmother and graduated in 1950. He then enrolled in a reserves program where he was told he would keep his rank as a demolition specialist, so it seemed like a good deal. He was soon told that his participation in the program called for his service in the Korean War that year. War for my grandfather was hell, just like General Sherman put it, so he did all he could to get out of it. He spent days at the Pentagon working hard to avoid Korea, but it was to no avail. A coronel sat down with him one day and said, “Son, you are going to Korea and there is nothing you can do to work around it.” He would later explain his experiences in that war to me.

“What did you learn from it all grandpa?” I asked for Mr. Santayana’s sake.

“I learned how to be smart. The war taught me that much. I would trade my cigarette rations for chocolate bars,” he said with a grin.

I would have done the same.Since that day in the restaurant, I’ve talked more and more about the

war with my grandfather. He’s opened up to my parents and the rest of my family too. I think it took a lot for him to sit down and try to explain the unexplainable, but he can now unbury his past and feel lighter.

It is hard to feel connected to an event that happened before my time, but I realize that every step my grandfather took in the war could or couldn’t have resulted in death, which could have resulted in me never being born. As my grandfather fought his way through broken Europe, fighting in four battles (Normandy, France, Ardennes, and Dusseldorf), he shaped history and shaped my future. I’m connected to every gunshot, every landmine, every ditch, every train ride, and every chocolate bar.

3: The Miracle in Volodymyr-Volynskyi Drew Goldfarb

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March 17, 2003, I walked through my grandparents’ living room a little confused. Why were there so many people here? All of my relatives from my father’s side of the family were crammed into my grandparents’ small living room dressed up. I was only eight and the scene was overwhelming. Of course I knew my grandfather had passed away, but I was still a little too young to fully

understand what was going on. It took me a couple more years to learn that he was a Holocaust survivor. I also learned that being a survivor was unique. Not many people were able to survive the wrath of the Nazis. What the Nazis did to the Jewish population was catastrophic.

Led by Adolf Hitler, the Nazis killed almost 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. Jews from all over Europe were rounded up between 1940-1945 and put into concentration camps. Of those who died, half of those Jews came from Poland. Roughly 10% or 300,000 of the Jewish population of Poland survived the horrific genocide. One of those 300,000 survivors was my grandfather, David Goldfarb.

My grandfather was born on March 17, 1922 in Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Poland. His address was Bango 5. His father, Joseph, worked for the Russian government, while his mother, Malka, took care of the family. He had four siblings, two brothers and two sisters. He was a part of a large, happy family, who used to get together every Sunday until the war broke out.

It was around 1941 when the Germans took over Volodymyr-Volynskyi. . Since he was young he worked in the ghetto digging graves and working on buildings. By 1942 they had surrounded the whole city with barbed wire and was fully turned into a ghetto. My grandfather, at the time 18, had to fight his way to escape from the ghetto in Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Poland to survive the Holocaust. His mother told him that he should be the child to survive because he was the strongest and healthiest. Sadly, his mother and some of his siblings would end up occupying a few of those graves.

Nearly all the people who had to live in the Volodymyr-Volynskyi ghetto died. Around 25,000 people were put into the ghetto and about 35 survived. In fact, he was still in Volodymyr-Volynskyi when they killed about 22,000 of them in a matter of two weeks. Once again, my grandfather miraculously found a way to survive. He was quite the fighter.

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My grandfather escaped from the ghetto and found a bunker to hide in with others in the woods At that point he was separated from all of his family, except his sister and had no idea if the rest had survived the ghetto. There were two bunkers, one was found quickly because it was filled with women and babies and all their crying made it easy to find them. The people in his bunker went twelve days without anything to eat or drink, so one night my grandfather and another man in the bunker went out looking in the garden for tomatoes. While they were making their way back to the hideout they heard gunshots and ran away looking for a safe place to go. Upon their return they discovered that the gunshots had come from their hideout.

My grandfather ended up having to escape from two more ghettos between 1942-1943 with his sister. When he was at his third and final ghetto there were only 300 people left in Volodymyr-Volynskyi. One morning when he woke up he heard a lot of noise and noticed German soldiers surrounding the ghetto. He ran quickly to find his sister and they had to hide in outhouses for the rest of the day until a man who knew there father noticed them and helped them. They eventually found another hideout in the woods, where coincidentally their uncle was hiding out. Once again, he and his sister went out for a bit and when they returned everyone in the hideout was dead. How he continued to dodge death was no coincident. It was a miracle.

In 1944, after a few months seeking refugee back in Poland, my grandfather and sister reunited with their father and they moved to Gozuw, a city near Germany. They did this so they were closer to the American zone in Germany. A few weeks earlier my grandfather, who had a visa, went to the American Embassy in Warsaw seeing if they would help him get to America. However, the lady said she couldn’t help him because Warsaw was under communism and she told him his best shot was going to the American zone. They lived in Gozuw until the war was over in 1945. At that point they had to find their way to the American zone. It took them another year until he was able to make it to America, where his aunt and uncle were waiting for them in New York so they could start their new lives in Hartford, CT.

Ever since my grandfather passed away, my interest for the Holocaust grew. As a Jew, I was eventually going to learn what exactly the Holocaust meant to my culture and religion, but for me to have a direct connection to it made me even more fascinated. I needed to know everything that happened. Any story I could hear always kept me entertained. Unfortunately, the storyteller I wanted to hear from wasn’t around long enough for me to mature, so I could appreciate his stories. On the other hand, my grandfather’s neighbor helped him write out his story in a twelve-page paper, which helped me find out a lot more about his journey. Also, after Schindler’s list, Steven Spielberg offered to interview any Holocaust survivors, so my grandfather took advantage of that and was interviewed.

Had my grandfather not survived the Holocaust, my father wouldn’t have existed and as a result, I wouldn’t be alive. He was fortunate enough to endure what was thrown at him and he fought his way for freedom. His mother was right, he was going to survive and he certainly made her proud. I

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am connected to the twentieth century because my grandfather survived the Holocaust and without him surviving not only would I not be writing this paper I also wouldn’t have the honor of being able to tell his remarkable story. He is why I am here today.

Sources: http://www.heretical.com/miscella/rudolf.htmlhttp://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-statistics.htmhttp://www.pac1944.org/correcting/WW2Stats.htmhttp://www.kawvalley.k12.ks.us/schools/rjh/marneyg/05_holocaust-projects/

05_sobba_causes-statistics.htmhttp://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERhitler.htmMy parents; The document his neighbor helped him write

4: On The War Path Lauren

Leffer

The Plain at the United States Military Academy is sacred ground. It is off limits to civilians, as the amplified recording reminds us, “We ask that you do not step onto The Plain.” The voice then goes on to explain that General Washington himself assembled troops on this very patch of grass; that since the founding of the United States of America, The Plain has served as a place for countless battles and drills, and that therefore, walking onto

the field is a privilege reserved only for those who are a part of the military. It is R-day for the plebes who have just finished BEAST*, and after 9 1/2 weeks of sleep deprivation, physical conditioning, and class placement tests, they are finally considered cadets. The largest entering class West Point has ever seen, is about to perform the traditional R-day drill for their families on The Plain. Being a part of one of those families, I am perched on bleachers in front of the flat rectangle of grass, packed in between my mom on my right and another woman to my left. I couldn’t possibly feel more out

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* R-day = reception day, plebes = freshmen, BEAST = basic training for incoming cadets before their first year

of place. The woman on my left is wearing a pink and white, floral sundress, and a silver cross necklace. I can see the line under her jaw where she stopped applying foundation, and she is carting around a bleach blond head of hair, sprayed and twisted like a mountain on top of her head. Every now and then she leans over to her equally coiffed daughter and whispers something along the lines of “Can you believe all this,” in an accent more southern than the Confederacy. I am wearing jean shorts and an Arcade Fire t-shirt, and am the only girl in the entire stand with hair that doesn’t reach their shoulders. None of that matters though, because, as uncomfortable and underdressed as I am, I couldn’t possibly be happier. For the first time in over two months, I am about to see my brother, and he is about to become part of the history being played over the speaker system.

Sitting there, listening to the recording, I mentally flip through my knowledge of US. history, from the American Revolution to the Middle East, and try to imagine the things that this ground has seen. For some reason though, most of it simply does not seem real. I cannot equate the Civil War or the Revolutionary War with what I know of as war. The world of men in brightly colored, tasseled uniforms standing in straight lines with muskets, is not the same one my brother would be fighting in. The war I know of is fought in trenches with mechanized artillery, or in desserts with I.E.Ds. So, instead of 1775, my mind ends up in 1941, at the beginning of US. involvement in World War II.

During WWII 41% of army officers, and almost 60% of higher ranking officials were graduates of West Point. The need for leaders in the troop force grew so high that in 1942, the Academy decided to graduate classes on a three year cycle. The class of 1943 was forced to graduate 6 months early, and from 1943 through 1947, all cadets graduated in 3 years. Every last one of those men stood on this exact same field and preformed this same exact drill. All officers who graduate during a war time serve in the war somehow (whether it be in the infantry or in intelligence), and at a time when graduating class sizes were in the 300-400 range, almost 500 graduates were killed in the war. Five hundred deaths is staggering to me, but this 500 is only slightly over 1% of the number of US. military deaths which occurred during the Second World War.

My brother is also attending the academy during a war time, but even something as recent as WWII does not seem to match up with the current circumstances very accurately. WWII was a war people could believe in. The Nazis were perpetrators of a true and visible evil. Though it took the personal attack of Pearl Harbor to actually get the US. involved, it didn’t take much rallying to get people on the war’s side once it was no longer solely a “European conflict.” Today the US. troops who fought in WWII are still referred to as the “greatest generation”, they are seen a heroes, not only

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because of the sacrifices so many of them made, but because of the cause they were made for.

The same cannot be said about the war in Afghanistan (presumably, the war my brother will be graduating into). Everything the US. has done in the Middle East has been surrounded by controversy from the beginning, and I have heard the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam countless times. The reasons for both the Vietnam war and the wars in the Middle East seem equally distant from the US, both bring up the moral questions of when invasion becomes pointless interference, and when bad information becomes lies, and in both situations it has been unclear exactly what is being fought for.

In my mind though, this is where the comparison ends. For my generation’s wars, there were no drafts. My brother’s decision to enter the military was entirely his own, and because of this I am equal parts terrified for, and immensely proud of him. I’m not sure exactly when he told us that he wanted to join the military, but it was never much of a surprise. At the age of 6 he was setting up elaborate battle scenes with the use of his plastic green army men. I remember because I would always end up cleaning them up for him. Although I will leave the military to my brother, it’s not hard for me to understand the allure of joining. There is a sense of purpose that must come with serving your nation in such a straightforward way, and then of course there is the feeling of belonging to something so immense and important. I can only assume he has realized the same things I have: that he is following in the literal footsteps of so many great people, and that he will be given the same opportunities as them.

After an hour of sitting in the sun, staring at an empty field, the cadets begin to march out. They start as small dots in the distance, streaming through the archways of the barracks. Lead by the marching band they slowly but steadily grow larger and more defined. They are organized into their companies, and, dressed in identical white and grey uniforms, moving their legs in the same pattern, they are one being. I search for my brother’s company, and try to pick his face out of the pin straight rows and columns, without any luck, but I know he’s there.

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5: Link To The Past Brett Perry

Nations across the globe make both good and bad decisions on a regular basis, but history tends to highlight those that lean towards the more negative end of the spectrum. These negative aspects have been and continue to be expressed in the form of genocide, slavery, and war. One notable instance is the Vietnam War, one of the most controversial and deadly wars in the history of the United States. With the Vietnam War came the draft process, which was just as controversial as the war itself; however, more importantly, my grandfather's place in this political drama is important to my very existence, as is the red convertible Ford Mustang that he purchased as my mom's first car.

In 1970, at the age of 26, my grandfather, Richard Layton, was drafted into the military as part of the draft's lottery system. The process for the draft's lottery system was simple in that one number for each day of the year was put into a jar, 366 total (because they included leap year), and 195 total were drawn. These 195 days represented the groups of people that would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. If your birthday was on one of the days drawn, then you would be drafted. However, medical students like my grandfather were subjected to a slightly different draft system. My grandfather was part of the Barry Plan, a plan focused on medical students and also involved a lottery system; the lower your number, the more likely you would be drafted. Living and interning in Miami, Florida at the time, my grandfather was unlucky enough to be given a number somewhere between 60 and 80, which was low for the Barry Plan. Unsurprisingly, his low number was called and when he found out, he swore to the man standing next to him that he would find a way out of it, even if he had to run to Canada.

Richard believed that had John F. Kennedy not been shot in 1963, the war would have ended much sooner. One of the main reasons for the

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Vietnam War was to stop the spread of communism, specifically from North Vietnam to the south. The North Vietnamese were Communist and were pushing into South Vietnam, which was allied with France in the 1950's and then the United States. My grandfather did not believe that the US should have been inciting war over something that was not affecting them directly, in his eyes it was a civil war amongst the citizens of Vietnam and thus their problem to solve. He felt that the lives of young American soldiers were more important than putting an end to the spread of communism in Vietnam. He developed his beliefs about the war almost immediately after it began, around 1964, through news articles, television, radio, and word of mouth. Although he had strong feelings against the war, he was unable to participate in anti-war demonstrations because of his immersion in medical studies, which were more important to him at the time. Looking back on this decision, he stated that he would have participated in anti-war demonstrations instead of focusing solely on his medical studies.

By 1970, many Americans shared this anti-war view which could be seen in a wide variety of protests ranging from anti-war songs and concerts to draft card burnings and self-immolation in the name of peace. One notable example of an anti-war song is Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which describes the perspective of those who were not fortunate enough to be the sons of senators, millionaires, or military leaders. The sons of these people were fortunate because their parents could help them to avoid the draft whereas those who did not have powerful family or friends could get drafted. The most significant anti-war concert was the gathering at Woodstock, which consisted of numerous people who were classified as “hippies,” interacting with each other and listening to music; all in the name of ending the war and spreading the message of peace and love.

In April of 1965, the overwhelming rage of the populace over the draft led to the first draft card burning, which took place at the University of California, Berkeley. This protest included a march to the Draft board office while carrying a coffin, a teach-in held by 30,000 people, and the burning of a representation of Lyndon B. Johnson. The anti-war protests did not solely consist of

marches and teach-ins, it also included self-immolation, or the act of lighting oneself on fire in the name of a cause. One such example of this would be the self-immolation of American citizen Norman Morrison, who doused himself in kerosene and set fire to himself under the third-story window of the Pentagon office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as a protest to the war in Vietnam. This act inspired reverence in the eyes of many Vietnamese who viewed him as a hero and even created a postage stamp in his honor.

Had my grandfather run to Canada, he would not have been able to

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return to the United States until at least 1974, when President Gerald Ford established a conditional pardon for draft dodgers and at most 1977, when President Jimmy Carter established an unconditional pardon. So following this line of reasoning, he would not have dated my grandmother until much later, and it could have significantly altered the chain of events leading up to my birth.

My grandfather did not, in fact, run to Canada; but he did find a way into the Army Reserves through a fellow medical student and friend. His friend was part of an Army Reserve Unit (The 92nd Army Medical Reserve Unit) in Baltimore, Maryland and he helped my grandfather in applying for a transfer to that specific Army Reserve Unit. During this time, “draft dodging” was a common occurrence, but most draft dodgers would find a way into the Army Reserves since they were not called upon often to serve in Vietnam. That transfer into the Reserves quite possibly saved my grandfather's life. In recognition of this fact, he nicknamed his unit “The Fighting 92nd,” clearly a joke since the 92nd was a Medical Division. After he moved to Baltimore for military service, my grandmother moved to Baltimore because of her divorce from my other grandfather. When my grandfather's term of duty was completed, he returned to regular life, moved on, and eventually ended up dating my grandmother whom he had met previously in Florida.

One could say that as a medical officer, my grandfather would have been less vulnerable to injury or death in Vietnam; but the facts show that US military bases were raided in Vietnam and many soldiers did die in these attacks. One need not have been necessarily on the battlefield in order to be killed. No matter what, his avoidance of the draft could have saved his life and mine.

The draft process was highly controversial, not only because it was forcing people to fight and risk their lives, but it also forced them to fight for a cause that they might not agree with. Many people, including my grandfather, believed that the war would have ended much sooner had President John F. Kennedy not been shot. Despite the fact that Kennedy supported the war, his only desire was to stop the rise of communism. My grandfather believed Kennedy realized shortly before his death that the war was futile, and that JFK likely would have ended it. However, John F. Kennedy was shot and Lyndon B. Johnson was promoted to President. This resulted in the escalation of the war and the continuation of the draft because Johnson believed in the Domino Theory. Since the Korean War, this theory established the idea that Communism will spread if left unchecked. In essence, the rate of growth is theorized to be a linear progression. Johnson was in favor of the strict containment of a Communist outbreak, and as a result, many would die to accomplish this nearly impossible goal.

On top of the problem of the draft was the fact that thousands of American boys were dying in Vietnam. In the end, nearly 60,000 Americans were killed and over 1,000 were missing. In comparing the Vietnam War to a present war, we see some obvious differences in Iraq. Many are fearful of Iraq because they believe that so many American soldiers have been killed,

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but the fact of the matter is that we have been there for nearly ten years, and only a bit more than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed. Granted that 4,000 is not a small number, but compared to 60,000 it is considerably smaller.

In conclusion, my grandfather happened to be one of the first numbers called for the draft, and had he not found a way into the Army Reserves, he might not be here today and therefore might not have ended up with my grandmother. Had he not ended up with my grandmother, my mom would not have received her first car, a red convertible Ford Mustang, which my grandfather purchased for her. Had my mom not received her first car, she would not have taken it to a body shop. Had she not taken her car to a body shop, she would never have met my dad, who worked at that same body shop and borrowed her car after it was fixed. After following this chain of events, I believe that if my grandfather had gone to Vietnam, I would not have been born.

6: The Dust of War Katie Posner

Samuel Iwry, my great uncle, was not only a direct descendant of Rebbe Israel Baal Shem Tov (the leader of the Jewish Hassidic movement who died in 1760) but an influential figure in himself.  As a child sitting across the Passover table from him I knew none of this;  to me he was only uncle Sam, who led the services with a practiced ease in unfaltering Hebrew.  To the students at Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, and Baltimore Hebrew, however, he was much

more--a mentor, a source of firsthand experience with huge historical events, and a truly inspiring figure.

In 1939, Sam became a leader in the underground resistance against the Nazis in his native Poland.  He himself escaped to Lithuania,  then crossed through Russia and settled in Kobe, Japan in 1941.  Around the same time prime minister of Israel David Ben Gurion appointed Sam to the position of Far East representative for the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and it became his duty to help Jewish refugees in Shanghai escape to Palestine.  This work, however, led to his capture and torture by the Japanese occupying forces.  He was imprisoned and tortured in Shanghai until Nina Rochman,  the administrator of a nearby hospital, talked local authorities into handing him over to the hospital for medical treatment.  Sam credited Nina with his life, and in 1946 she became my great aunt.

Sam and Nina immigrated to Baltimore in 1947.  Having already graduated from Warsaw University, Sam became a grad student at Hopkins. His exceptional skill in Hebrew earned him a job translating the Damascus document, a medieval scroll written in classical Hebrew, when he was in his

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twenties.  It was this task that enabled him to be a part of the decoding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a huge historic find at the time; he was able to verify their age and authenticity through the style of writing.  These ancient scrolls, found in caves in the Dead Sea region, are the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures, and still hold many mysteries to even today's scholars.  Sam wrote the first doctoral dissertation on the Scrolls, and has since been widely regarded as an expert on them.

He became a highly regarded and much loved professor at Hopkins, Baltimore Hebrew and University of Maryland:  over the years we heard many affectionate stories from his students of his unusual teaching style, expansive knowledge and quirky habits, such as calling all of his female students either Debbie or Susan (he attributed this to the fact that he was terrible with names, and "all Jewish girls are either Debbie or Susan anyway").  Today Hopkins hosts a lecture series that bears his name each year.  University of Maryland has a fellowship faculty fund named for him as well.  I have no such large and prestigious honors to offer, but his autobiography, To Wear the Dust of War , has claimed its rightful place on my bookshelf, a reminder of my own ties to a turbulent past.

7: The War That Made Me Mark Rothleitner

The year was 1965. My grandfather on my mother’s side, Bill Garett Crouch, was enlisted in the military at the time. The United States was deeply involved in the Vietnam War during that period, and my mother’s family had to watch as Bill was deployed into the warzone. Emotions ran rampant throughout the Crouch family. Not only was their father going to fight in Vietnam, he was to serve as a ground infantry soldier, whose life expectancy was far from probable. The mental and physical strain of having a loved one perpetually in harm’s way affected the entire family, and his departure was immensely burdensome. In 1965, General William Westmoreland had begun executing his newly-implemented three-step plan for securing victory in the war. The process involved complete utilization of power at hand to eradicate enemy forces and drive them out of highly populated areas, in attempt to gain the upper hand. There was no doubt that Bill would be a pawn is this contrivance. Now set the timeline back 5 more years. In 1960, the Crouch family first moved to South Carolina, where Bill was to be trained. Little did my mother know, her future father-in-law was already working at the Fort Jackson military base. It was in South Carolina that my parents met for the first time in high school.

The war in Vietnam marked the first time in American history that actual combat was filmed and then televised. This put the families of those in the military in a very disturbing predicament. Does one watch as his or her

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possible loved one is shown in a firefight with Vietcong? Or is it best to keep as much distance as possible from the reality of war? My mother tells me that every night her family would gather around the television to watch the horror. None of them wanted to watch it, but they felt as if they had to. Listening to this story made me realize how terrible it must have been to see firsthand the monstrosity that your father had to face.

My father’s family was the exact same way. Max Rothleitner had deployed a year before Bill in September, shortly after the alleged attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. The two of them had heard of each other but apparently never met until after my parents started dating. The Rothleitner family had the same take on watching the war. My dad said that his mom wouldn’t be able to go to sleep until she watched the war on TV. I suppose it was a sort of a peace-of-mind thing. Maybe seeing the casualty report each day reassured her that her husband was still safe.

The broadcasting of the war put America closer than ever to the real action. It would have been easy before the days of television to disconnect oneself from conflicts like that. People relied on newspapers, radio broadcasts, and carefully edited newsreels in cinemas to find out what was going on, but they had no real way of experiencing the intensity of war. As long as the fighting was away from the mainland, one would have no trouble blocking it out of his mind entirely. I think that film from the Vietnam War would have come as a massive shock to the system. The image of war was no longer confined by words or still photos. Now people could watch, sometimes as if they were standing there in the middle of the fighting. That was how my parents and their families felt.

Today, the extent to which we feel connected to the Iraq War is greater than ever. It’s talked about on the news every day, on the radio, and people even post video clips from it on the internet. I personally don’t like hearing about it or watching it. While I can’t deny its happening, I am like my grandparents in that unless I have a reason to watch, I won’t.

Shortly after their terms of duty, Bill and Max met for the first time back in South Carolina where my parents had both ended up in college. My parents had gone to high school together, but they didn’t really know one another at the time. It wasn’t until college that they met again, surprisingly, and began their relationship. To some extent, my parents’ families shared a stronger bond under the common tie of military history. I can’t say it was enough to affect anything, but it certainly provided for an abundance of stories at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

This is a tale of a family being brought together serendipitously by an atypical event in time. I suppose I’m somehow obligated to be grateful of such an occurrence, seeing as how the Vietnam War was a direct factor in my existence. It does seem wrong to be thankful for a war, but it’s not necessarily the war that emphasis should be put on. What I’m saying is that a long series of developments had to occur in a very specific way for me to end up here right now. Had Bill Crouch not been sent to Fort Jackson for training, the paths of Mark Rothleitner and Patricia Crouch would never have

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crossed. Needless to say, I wouldn’t have been born. The Vietnam War just happened to be a major component to my history, but it could have been anything.

8: A Long Lasting Effect Ham Sonnenfeld

August 1944, Brest, France, Post D-Day: Ambushed. Returning from a mission to investigate a German airfield after learning that the airfield was still Nazi-occupied, three officers are fired upon by a German patrol. The driver is shot in the abdomen. The jeep crashes at 50 mph. The jeep is fired upon once more. One man is shot in the thigh and doesn’t make it through the night; one man walks away (and is sent to a POW camp) with nothing but a scratch. The wounded driver is taken to a POW hospital where he would die a few days later on August 17th, 1944. The driver’s family was told that he was “missing in action;” his death unbeknownst to his family for over a year.

The driver was Lt. Frank Hambleton Symington and he is my namesake.

Obviously, I did not know him, nor did my mom (his niece). My grandfather, however, was extremely close to Frank Hambleton (Ham). It is for this reason that I believe my parents chose to name me Frank Hambleton Sonnenfeld – because my grandfather never got a chance to say goodbye to his older brother. Consequently, my name means a great deal to me.

I never liked being called Ham, at least not until my teenage years. I hated having to say, “My name is Ham Sonnenfeld,” when I would meet new people – especially people my age. Saying my name to adults wasn’t terrible because after I repeated it once or twice and they understood me, they would seem genuinely interested in it. Saying it to people my age, however, was incredibly annoying. Not only would I have to repeat it, they would usually laugh, followed by a joke that I had undoubtedly heard before. This was extremely off-putting to me. It was not until recently, though, that I started to appreciate my name and even take pride in it. As I got older, I heard stories about my great uncle Ham and I was able understand how devastating his death was for my grandfather and the rest of my family for

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years to follow. Before, I had never thought of how it must feel for my grandfather to call me Hambleton. Now, the fact that he does makes me proud because, to him, I am worthy of his beloved brother’s name.

I often look at a picture of my great uncle Ham – one that is sitting on my desk from his childhood or one in my grandparent’s house of him in uniform – and wonder what he was like and if I am like him. I also try to determine whether or not I look like him. It is moments like these when I wish I had gotten a chance to meet him. But then it hits me; what if he hadn’t died in the war? Would I still have the same name? By no means am I glad my great uncle died in the war, but because my name is such a big part of who I am, I wonder if I would be the same person had he not been killed.

It is an eerie thought and it brings me back to why he was killed. The Battle for Brest was the battle between the Germans and the Allied Forces over the control of the city of Brest and surrounding Breton countryside. This was an invasion long planned by the US (from before they got involved in the war as a precaution if/when they did get involved) and long expected by the Germans. This resulted in a very strong, well-supplied Allied Force, led by the Americans, and a fortified German defense. As a result, it lasted from August 7th 1944 to September 19th and was not an easy victory for the Allied Forces. My uncle’s mission took place in mid-July, during the battle, in a conflict zone.

He and his two comrades were sent to investigate the Guipavas Airfield that had been under German control. When they left their base at Rennes, France, they were under impression that allied forces had gained control over the outlying areas of Brest (where the airfield was located). However, this took place in mid August before the Allied Forces had taken control over Brest. Thus, the Germans continued to battle the allied forces to regain control over the area. Unfortunately, as my great uncle learned before they completed the mission, Brest was no longer fully controlled by allied forces anymore and was therefore unsafe – leading to my great uncle’s jeep being ambushed. I can’t help but think how things would be different if the technology of the time had allowed for better intelligence. Word would have reached the base in Rennes of Nazi control of the air base. My uncle would never have been sent on that mission, he could have survived the war and I would be a completely different person.

War, while sometime proving itself horrific and without warrant, has also proven itself to be a necessary course of action in times of crisis. World War II was brutal and devastating; but before one forms an opinion of the war, one must stop and think about whether the ends justify the means. Although the ends included a death toll of over 48 million people and cities and towns and country sides left in ruin, also included is the end of Nazi Germany, the end of the persecution and mass murder of Jews, and the prevention of world-domination by Hitler. These, however, were only the immediate results of the war. The war also has the ability to influence

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people and places in generations to come. One man’s death in 1944 affected and helped shape another’s life in 2010.

9: Grandpa Dan: My Connection to the 20 th C. Isabel Rickman

I remember I used to sit on the top of my basement stairs waiting for my grandfather, Dan, to come upstairs for the day. He would always wake up before me and we would hang out, have breakfast and then sometime during late morning we would both have to go get dressed and brush our teeth. I always finished before him because I was little and did everything quickly and very haphazardly. I was around four and no one cared about my appearance. He would take much longer and so I wouldn’t bug him but I would sit on the very top step and wait for him to emerge, I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs. He took forever, or so it seemed to me. Finally, when we emerged, we would get my brothers and go play in the backyard, usually baseball. This is one of the few memories I have of him and of my childhood.

My grandfather, Daniel Fitzgibbon, my mother’s father, was a drill sergeant in the Korean War. He was a tall man with dark brown hair but I only ever knew him with white hair. He was “black Irish”, but not first generation, and lived in New York. He was outspoken but never loud and always seemed to be happy. I never remember anything he said just his face and how it always had a smile. Some of my favorite memories are of him coming down from New York to visit us. It seemed that all he wanted to do was play with us in the backyard and I rarely ever heard about his past. I remember being surprised, the first time, to hear that he was a drill sergeant. Being a drill sergeant meant that he taught the “newbies” how to handle their weapons before they were sent out to war. He trained in North Carolina but never actually went to war himself.

The Korean War took place from 1950 to 1953. It was a Cold War, a war after World War II that had to do with political, economic, military, and many other types of conflict. It was a military conflict between the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, supported by and the People’s Republic of China and the USSR. It’s slightly ironic that we were fighting China for power since today China practically owns us.

Americans and Russians had divided the Korean Peninsula, ruled by Japan until after World War II, Americans occupied the south and Soviet troops occupied the north. It was a temporary political border, but when there was no success in holding free elections, the two sides became even more divided. North Korea suffered multiple bombings by South Korea during the war and continued to try and capture more and more territory in the South and hold on to it. President Eisenhower went to Korea to try and end

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things in 1953 and the UN eventually agreed to the Indian’s idea of an armistice in 1954.

Dan joined the military because he wanted to leave home. According to his daughter, it was the only way for him to get out of his Irish family’s house in Arlington, Massachusetts. He served for two years and then he went to college, the Army wasn’t really a career for Dan as much as an escape plan.

My younger brother, Nick, recently decided that he wants to join the military when he graduates high school. Nick plans to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point. Hopefully the war in Afghanistan, which has lasted for eight years already, will be over by then, especially with Obama’s plan to pull out troops.

Nick got into all the war stuff because of Dan and my dad’s grandfather, Allen. Allen got drafted into the military for he too, in 1953 narrowly missing the Vietnam War. He was originally drafted in 1952 but was deferred because he was a college student. When he joined he went through basic military training, guns and warfare, but he became a Counter Intelligence agent. He interviewed people who wanted to join the government and had to discern whether they were true to America.

I suppose that you could also say this connects me to the twentieth century military because if Allen had been drafted in 1952 I might not be here today, but in reality Dan plays a much bigger role in this because of Nick’s fixation. My younger brother is trying to learn as much as he can about the military and what Dan did. In the process I’m learning tidbits of information too. Even though I didn’t really know Dan and only remember a little bit about him Nick makes Dan’s military experience much more real in my eyes, not some past event.

10: Berlin Calling Anna Fried

When I was thirteen I lived in Berlin. I got up in the morning at six, rode the bus to school, ate lunch with my friends, did homework at night and used the weekend to have fun in the city. All in all, day to day life wasn't much different than in Baltimore, I do the same things here. The only obvious difference between the two places being that the spoken language on the streets was German. As a thirteen year old

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trying to get used to a strange new place I didn't think about much of my environment. But looking back, there is a clear sense of a city and a country trying to preserve and come to terms with its not so glamorous history.

Almost everywhere there are remnants of the war: bullet scarred walls, uniform concrete houses built for the American soldiers, bits of the Wall still standing, war museums and memorials and a metallic line running through the Mitte, the downtown, indicating where the Wall was. Nobody was patriotic; the only time I ever saw a German flag was when my school (itself a relic of the war - the "JFK School" in the American sector of West Berlin) was hosting an MUN conference

and while Germany was in the Euro Cup. The sense that the country is trying to prove that it will never become a source of world terror and is attempting to repent for the crimes of its ancestors is overwhelming.

The city itself is rather jarring. There are old bullet scarred buildings right next to blatantly modern (and rather ugly) ones. The former West Berlin is in much better shape than the East - fewer dilapidated and/or abandoned buildings, newer looking busses and U- and S-Bahn trains as well as fewer memorials. Streetcar cables are also strung up in East Berlin. Just three stops on the S-Bahn from where we were living in West Berlin was Potsdam. There was a clear line of transition from capitalist to communist, easily seen out the window of the train car. "A western island in a Soviet sea" as my German teacher said many times.

Being in Germany was an interesting experience, not in the least because of how my family was affected by both World Wars. My grandfather and his generation fought in the First World War. My parents lived through the Second World War and the aftermath. My father wasn’t affected strongly by the war; the biggest change in his early life was America joining the war and the country coming out of the Great Depression. My mom's early childhood is different story. Born in Scotland, she was born the day before Hitler invaded Poland; Britain declared war three days after that. She lived through the Blitz and post war rationing, seeing directly the horrors of war.

While in Berlin my mother liked to ask people their opinions about the war. Being a historian of Freud and the concepts of guilt and shame the answers were interesting to her. The conversation that I remember the most was a very frank conversation with the wife of a friend. She said that “Germany had to hit the absolute bottom so that it could rebuild.”

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11: Connecting Myself to the 20 th Century? Yi Sun

The 20 century is quite long and a lot of things had happened in China from 1900 to 2000. The country lived under the Manchu dynasty when the century began and passed through the storms of revolution, invasion, civil war, and more cultural and social revolution. Even today the pace of change in industrial China is dramatic. My country is probably undergoing more change than any other on earth.

In 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek started the civil war by purging communists from his political party in Shang Hai. He wanted to make the Kuomintang be the only legitimate party of China. In 1931, Japan invaded China. The high speed development of Japanese technology required resources which the small island could not gratify. They needed coal and steel and rather than trade for them, they simply decided to take over Manchuria to develop their modern industrial economy and provide an outlet for their military leaders’ ambitions. China had just come through the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, and was a very weak country. So, the Japanese made the September 18th Incident as a way to cover their aggression from the eyes of the world and began to invade Manchuria.

In 1937, Japan took another step toward grabbing East Asian Empire by invading the heartland of China. My country was faced with a crisis; Chiang Kai-Shek was still wanting to finish the civil war first. He believed the Communist party (CCP) in China was a greater threat to his rule. They were a “disease of the heart,” he said. He asked the Northeast Army to avoid engaging the Japanese, until he could finish off the war on the communist brigades. For him, the Japanese were a “disease of the skin.”

In fact, we cannot say if that is true or not. From the Kupmingtang perspective the CCP did represent a more serious threat. But many in China and even in Chiang’s own military government believed the parties should join hands in defeating the Japanese. The Kuomintang was the internationally recognized leader of China in the 1930s – 1940s. Thinking on the side of Chiang Kai-Shek, if he had started the war to defeat Japan, then the Kuomintang would deserve support but have had the most of casualties. Maybe this is what caused Chiang Kai-Shek to finally fail. However, thinking on the side of townspeople, everyone wanted to start the war and stop the Japanese. So when Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, the Kuomintang generals influenced by the Chinese Communist Party's policy of an anti-Japanese national united front, imprisoned Chiang Kai-shek and demanded that he cease the civil war and unite with the Communist Party to fight the Japanese invaders, many were happy. To observers outside China, the idea

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that their own leader could be kidnapped by fellow generals was confusing. In the end Chiang did agree to an armistice by meeting with Zhou En lai, and other CCP officials. For nearly two years the KMT and the CCP both attacked the Japanese instead of each other.

In 1943, my natural grandfather participated in the WWII during the truce between the CCP and the KMT. At that time, some provinces such as Hubei, Hunan, were already occupied by the Japanese. Many people lived under the war felt pain; a lot of people could not endure the Japanese army who terrorized them. Resistance to the Japanese encouraged a lot of people to join in the CCP or Kuomintang.

My grandfather joined the Communist party at that time as a commissioned officer responsible for logistics.

In 1943, he was a soldier in the Xu Xiangqian’s army. They climbed over the Dabie Mountain, and did the bush fighting with Japanese in the mountains.

One time, when he transported the salts for his army with a team; they met the Japanese armies. They disguised themselves as ordinary workers. Townspeople also helped them to disguise the war materials they were

carrying. Finally they escaped and made the materials arrive. I can imagine my grandfather, heart-beating fast, desperate to avoid begin discovered by the Japanese Army as an enemy soldier.

After the war against Japan finished, the civil war continued. Because 80 percent are the lower class, poorer people in China at that time, there were more people who participated in the Communist party. After the war against Japan, the Kuomintang lost a lot of soldiers. There were more militarists who graduated at the Huangpu [Whampoa] Military Academy in Kuomintang, but they were disunited. High-ranking officials were also corrupt.

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The Communist party gained unprecedented public approval, and produced even more soldiers than the Kuomintang. Beijing came into the hands of the communist party by October, 1949

When chairman Mao said that “中 华人民共和国中央人民政府 现在成立啦！(the people's republic of China and the (Chinese) people's central government are founded today!!)” people were very enthusiastic. My grandfather and my whole family was very excited for the peace and prosperity which the party was expected to bring. The victory in 1949 came after decades of struggle. One can imagine how powerful a moment that must have been, and how disappointing some of the mistakes made after that were for someone like my grandfather.

My grandfather received the designation of “battalion commander” during the war. After the end of the war against Japanese, he was still fighting in civil war. But he got a bad sickness during the war. In 1986 my natural grandfather died because of the sickness.

Near Wuhan, where I lived as a boy in the 1990s, is where the revolution against the Qing began back in 1911. And near where I lived in central China the Japanese army invaded in 1937 to 1944. Despite my family’s connection to the Party, in 1966, my family had an experience of the Cultural Revolution which lasted 10 years. It was a hard time. People could not study or count on past connections to the state or the party. Young people were encouraged to criticize elders and to struggle to find out who did not like Chairman Mao. Some members of my family do not want to remember this era.

After the Cultural Revolution, there was a period known as three years of natural disasters. Finally after 1979, things became normal; life became more tolerable. Deng Xiaoping returned to power as head of the CCP and the economy was liberalized somewhat. Foreign investment and trade began along our coastal cities and China began to open up to the rest of the world again. And then, I was born in 1993, when I study the 20 century history, I can see, through stories of my family, I am connected to the 20 century.

12: We are all Connected Tara Smith

My grandfather was born in 1921, and by the time he was sixteen he was serving in the U.S. military. To serve in the military, one was supposed to be at least eighteen years old, but back then they were in desperate need of volunteers, so they would turn the other cheek and ignore the fact that you may be too young. Even though he chose to serve in the military and was not drafted, back then it was the only choice that some people had. For

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my grandfather that was the case, his mother died when he was two years old and his father was never really in his life, so he grew up mostly in an orphanage. Obviously, he did not have much money so after high school he would not have many options. College was not what it is now; many people did not attended college. Back then dropping out of high school was not uncommon; graduating then continuing on to college was more uncommon. His choice to go into the military was a good one for his situation; through the military he was able to take the required tests to get a high school degree and also start working. Although having the military as choice to go was to most people considered it an honor, because they would be serving their home country in war, and World War II was a big one. World War II was majorly between sixteen different counties, but fifty-one countries total allied in the war; only four major countries were able to stay neutral throughout the entire war, Switzerland, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain. The war was long and brutal, it lasted over six years, many called it the bloodiest war yet. Some say the world wars were the wars that effected life, as it is today the strongest, and I would have to agree.

When the war began in 1939 the United States was decaled neutral, but by December 8th, 1941 the United States had decaled war. By that time my grandfather was eighteen and had been serving in the military for two years already so he was ready to be shipped out. Even though the war was over in 1945, he continued to serve until 1961. After the war was over he spent most of his time serving in Europe. Although he continued serving in the war mostly because as most men his age did, he wanted to serve twenty years in order to get benefits when he left; he still must have had a lot of strength and courage continue after a brutal war like World War II. But knowing what he and his fellow soldiers were doing for the United States of America made things easier to handle. What they were doing was helping the Jews escape the Nazis, and that was just one example, so many people were helped by the work the soldiers put in. Although his life was never truly in any direct danger, the danger was all around him and was always on the mind of a soldier. Soldiers always fight with the thought that they may not come out of it alive. Even though they are trained to understand that, it is still difficult for anyone to go into something knowing that they may die. Me, being the granddaughter of a World War II veteran am connected to the safety of all the people endangered in the war.

13: Sakins in the Korean War Noah Sakin

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The Korean War lasted from 1950-1953, and from 1950-1952, my grandfather was working in the finance office in the state of Indiana for the U.S. Army. His job was managing the payroll for the troops stationed at Camp Atterbury. My father doesn’t know whether or not he was drafted, enlisted, or was a civilian. He and my grandmother were married and lived in Columbus, Indiana in an apartment that they rented for $52/month. My grandmother had a non military job there and occasionally would take the train back home to Baltimore because she missed her family. My grandparents had a very strong marriage during this time and my grandmother took many extra classes during college so she could finish one year early. Their marriage was so special to them that one of my uncles was born as soon as my grandparents returned to Baltimore.

My grandfather was lucky in the sense that he didn’t have to travel to Korea. The Korean War was started over political division between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The United Nations was supporting the Republic of Korea. Once the war had started, the Korean Peninsula was divided in two parts. United States troops were deployed to the southern part of the peninsula, while Soviet troops occupied the north.

I found this connection to be interesting because it was something that I didn’t know about until it was something I needed to know. It seems my grandfather is still actively interested in the military and the rights of veterans. Last May, he attended the AARP’s kick off for their Salute to Veterans’ Initiative. This program is designed to help veterans gain access to their rights and benefits as a result of their service, especially those returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. My grandfather was quoted by the AARP as commenting, “Our work will fill an important void for the men and women who have fought for this country.”

While having a conversation about my grandfather’s jobs with my father, we also started talking about some of my crazy relatives who owned stores. Uncle Billy was one of these relatives. Uncle Billy owned a variety of stores, most selling general items. These stores were located in Nevada. They could be compared to a Rite Aid or CVS today. He also owned a popular fishing store and was very knowledgeable when it came to fishing. He was also a very good businessman. In his general stores, he would stock all of the shelves with the exact same merchandise. However, his secret was that he would put all the merchandise in different spots in each aisle. The reasoning behind this method was that the customers would think that they were seeing different merchandise even though it was the exact same.

One thing that separated Uncle Billy from a typical business owner was the fact that he also served in the Korean War. However, Uncle Billy, unlike my grandfather, was in combat. One morning, everyone went out on a mission. Neither my father or grandfather know the specific details of the mission, all that is remembered is that no one came back from the mission alive. However, Uncle Billy remained alive. He had woken up with a 104

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degree fever earlier that day and was not allowed to go on the mission. Knowing that everyone else in his unit had died had awful affects on Billy and we believe today that this incident, combined with his military training made him do some things he normally wouldn’t have done.

One of those things happened late one night as Uncle Billy was closing one of his general stores. Uncle Billy owned and managed all of his businesses. This also included handling the funds from each day at closing time. When he was locking the door, he felt the cold, metal tip of a gun against his temple. The robber demanded the bag of money. Uncle Billy handed it over and watched the thief run away. The thief didn’t count on Uncle Billy’s military training. Uncle Billy took out his own gun and fired at the thief, killing him instantly.

I learned all of this about my grandfather and Uncle Billy while doing a little bit of family research for this project. After acquiring all of this information, I look at who my grandfather is in a much different way. Not because he was in the army or anything like that, but I actually know a lot about his life and how he was actually living in the same way that I will be living. It also made me think about all of the connections he must have from that time period. Many people he worked with may have passed away by this time, but it is very possible that he worked with another Park student’s grandfather. Uncle Billy is a different situation because I never met him before he passed away a year after I was born. From learning all of these interesting stories about Uncle Billy, I wish I had been older so that I could have met him before he passed away. While I was talking to my father about Uncle Billy, my mother seemed to be disturbed when we discussed the shooting that occurred outside of his store. I think that his act was completely justified because when someone puts a gun to your head, they are demonstrating their willingness to take away another human life. Uncle Billy may have shot an average robber, he could have shot the grandfather of my next door neighbor, or he could have shot someone who was planning to kill the President. We will never know, but one thing I do know is that I’m glad I learned just a little bit more about my family and the connections I have with everyone else in the world today.

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part two…………ORIGINS………………

14: Manhattan on the Volga: The Story of Me and My Babushka Nikku Chatha

Truthfully, I can’t remember very much from my first five years. I lived in New York City in the neighborhood of Washington Heights. Aside from two memories concerning each of my mother’s parents, everything happened in between Central Park and Marble Hill—basically, northern Manhattan. There were as few people in my life as there were places: a first name here, a blur of a face there. I’d be hard-pressed to remember anyone outside my

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immediate family, with one exception: Dr. Taisiya Vaystub, or as I knew her, Taiya. Both of my parents worked all day, so whenever I wasn’t at preschool, I was with a nanny. Taiya was the first babysitter of whom I have any memories. She was older than my parents; she would be in her 70’s now. She had very dark hair, but it was short and in a pile on her head. Taiya had a kind face, one you would expect to see on a Russian grandmother. Because, as I knew at the time, Taiya was originally from Russia.

Well, that is not completely accurate. Taiya and her husband Misha spent most of their lives living in what is now Ukraine, but back then was the USSR. Russian was their first language, though, which reflects how truly muddled the state of affairs in the Soviet Republics were. Three generations of Vaystubs fled from Ukraine and moved to the one city in the one country that would welcome them all with open arms: New York,

New York.

It is through my Russian babysitter that I became part of a New York immigrant community. Taiya and Misha had a circle of Russian friends all living in the same neighborhood as I did. So five days a week I would go to Taiya’s house. Conveniently, her friends all had grandchildren about my age (Taiya’s own grandchildren were old enough to be in school). As the old people sat on benches in the park talking, I would be playing with the kids. If my mother is to be believed, I spoke decent Russian when I was around these people. What a shame I lost it all just months after moving to Baltimore.

Many years after I left, I asked my parents what Taiya and Misha did before they moved to America. Taiya was a chemistry professor and Misha ran a power plant for the Soviet State. But I wondered. If the Vaystubs were so smart and had such good jobs, why did they have to work babysitting me? It didn’t seem fair. I was sympathetic to the problems of foreigners—my father is one, after all. When I asked this question, it was the height of the Bush Administration. Observations like this, compounded with my liberal upbringing convinced me that America was not a fair place.

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Looking out onto the Hudson River from a park near my house

It was later that I began to read more about the USSR. The atrocities of Stalin, like the Holodomor 3 and the gulags. The more I read about the Soviet Union, the less I liked it. Taiya was born in the 30’s. One of her earliest memories was the Nazi invasion. The Germans overran her home. World War II is a bad memory for all Russians, but worse for Taiya. She and Misha are Jewish. I am surprised that they survived the mass execution of Soviet Jews that happened on the Eastern Front.

Still, Taiya and Misha had the luck to outlive Stalin and took advantage of the USSR’s first-rate science program and became well-paid professionals. During the 50’s, a smart girl could become a chemist in the Soviet Union. In the United States, it was possible, but very difficult to overcome the gender barrier. But it was the USSR that let women fight against Hitler’s armies, and that sent a woman into orbit in 1963. I’ll never know the details, but I imagine that they had a good life during this time. That all ended soon.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and Ukraine declared its independence two years later. During the Soviet regime, there was always some level of discrimination against Jews, but they were still tolerated. After the end of the communist state, however, Anti-Semitism bloomed. The Vaystubs realized that their grandchildren would not be allowed to go the same universities as their parents. It was for their children’s sake that Taiya and Misha came to America.

The interesting thing about the Vaystub’s story is that it could have happened a hundred years earlier. Imagine a family of Russian Jews living in the Old Country back in the late 1800’s. (picture everything in black-and-white, if possible). Racism is one the rise, and the oppressive government is decaying. Two elders, Misha and Taiya, are worried for the future of their grandchildren. They decide that the best thing for the family to do is to give up its land and heritage and to head to the distant shores of America. The first thing they see is a shimmering copper giant, and soon after, the smoke from a massive city. This is of course, the Statue of Liberty—the symbol of what they came for. After passing through the ordeal of Ellis Island, they settle down in an immigrant neighborhood and begin their new life. It is hard, sometimes brutal living. But they still have hope.

There is a poem written on the pedestal of the statue that invites the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to come to America. The poem was there when the Russian Jews came in 1891, and was there when the 3 The Holodomor is the Ukrainian name for the mass famine of 1932-33, caused primarily by the policies of Josef Stalin.

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The Lower East Side, way back when.

Russian Jews came in 1991. Let us hope it stays. I like to think that what makes America great is that historically, we have accepted almost anyone to our country, no matter what language they spoke or where they came from. America is great because of what is written on the Statue of Liberty—and right now, more than ever, we need to keep this in mind. I’m sure the Vaystubs would agree.

I am certain that my relationship with Taiya and her community formed an essential part of me. I grew up speaking two languages and being part of two separated cultures. This shaped me into a more open-minded person than I might have been otherwise. But most significantly, it is because my fond memories of Taiya and Misha that I am part of some of the most terrible things in history.

On a side note, I hear that Taiya and Misha are still living in New York, and doing quite well. I plan to visit them soon.

I am standing on a metal bridge overlooking the Hudson River. It is a foggy, cold day. I am throwing large stones into the water below and watching the ripples. Taiya is standing next to me, watching.

“Don’t throw the stones in there, Nikku. You’ll upset the spirits in the river.”

I spend the next few nights having nightmares about the whale from Pinocchio coming out of the Hudson to exact its revenge on the child who hit him with a rock.

15: Escaping the Tsar Tess Savage

Born at the turn of the century in Latvia, my great great grandfather, Jacob Klivans, was one of three boys. He had a twin brother, Isadore, and an older brother, Abraham. The boys grew up in a tsarist Russia, a time when men were conscripted to serve in the army and Jews were taken to pogroms.

From the 1547 until 1917 Russia was a country living under Tsars (powerful Orthodox Christian Kings). Tsarism was influential for so long, and no doubt gave order to Russia. But most Tsars were also extremely oppressive towards non-orthodox religions, Judaism being high on the list. The Klivans (originally Klivansky) family was a Jewish one, and also one raising three young men who were eligible to fight in a war. During this time Russia was coming into conflict with Japan and beginning to conscript a new army, meaning they would be take as many people as they could get. For

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these reasons, staying in Russia at the time put their family in quite a bit of danger.

While Russia, at the time, contained one of the biggest Jewish populations, they were still faced with prejudice and racism because of their religion. Jews were banned from many jobs and locations, and often weren’t treated very well. They were the victims of many hate crimes and violent riots, such as pogroms (a form of organized persecution directed against a particular ethnic group, like the Jews). So for parents, immigration increasingly felt like the right move for their children. Because of all the anti-Semitism, many Jews were attempting to leave Russia for places such as Palestine, the US, France, and even Germany in hopes of getting a chance at being accepted no matter what their beliefs an opinions may be. From the years of 1880-1928, around 240,000 Jews emigrated from Russia to Europe and 1,749,000 went to the United States, among these were the three Klivans boys.

Jacob’s parents, Joseph and Pearl, like most, wanted a better life for their sons. They wanted their children to have the lives they deserved, not one where they were discriminated against because of their views, or forced to fight in a war they did not believe in. They were a fairly poor family, but eventually they figured out a way to save up enough money and send their eldest, Abraham, out of the country in the late 1890s. Abraham made it to the United States where he found a job and worked for a few years until he saved up enough money to send back home. It was only enough money for one person, however, so Isadore, being the elder of the twins by six minutes, was able to join Abraham in Toledo, Ohio.

After a few more years the two brothers were able to save up enough money to send home for the final son. Like his brothers, it was a long journey for Jacob, but eventually he made it to the US with nothing but the clothes on his back and no knowledge of any English. He arrived and didn’t quite know where to find his brothers, so Jacob roamed the towns looking for them and was surprised to be greeted by townspeople who acted like they already knew him. At last he found his siblings who had been steadily making lives for themselves working at a clothing store, and was told that people had been so friendly because they had thought he was his twin, Isadore. After all these years though, Jacob was finally able flee the army and the persecution against Jews, join his brothers, and, like them, had to recreate his new life in America, free from the tsar. In 1906 the boys were able to settle down together and eventually establish a clothing store of their own in an attempt to make enough money so that they could happily live their new lives.

This story is one that connects me to the 20th century because it is the story of how my family came to America. If the Klivans family had not wished to escape the tsarist rule, who knows what could’ve happened, but it’s

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possible that I may not have been here today. Through the parent’s choice to create a better life for their sons, they were able to come to America, start afresh, and give them the opportunity to do something with their lives.

16: Imagining Madagascar Nathan Randrianarivelo

The five of us sit at the dinner table. My siblings are arguing about something petty and unimportant. I begin with a very open-ended prompt: How was life for you in the 20th century in Madagascar? My dad begins, describing to us his teenage life. Madagascar had just won its independence from France a few years before his birth, in 1960. His parents owned a small convenience store in Antananarivo, the capital city. His life, like most Malagasy boys, consisted mostly of school and

sports. In this school system, here was more than a hint of French influence.

“Everything was French.” The entire math system was copied from the French, notations in science were in French, all the classes were in French, etc. French was the official language of the government. Malagasy people spoke a mix of French and Malagasy. France still had a grip on the country. “Ratsiraka was sort of the puppet of France. He was in charge, yeah, but really he was acting for them.” “Didn’t everything switch out of nowhere?” my mom asks. “Yea, all of a sudden, everything switched to Malagasy. I guess they got tired of the French system. I was about six grader when this happened. We didn’t know how to do anything.” “But you were Malagasy. You couldn’t do school in Malagasy?” I ask. “Yea, but to read and write? And the grammars? Not everyone knew that because they were used to the French way. They never learned to read and write in Malagasy.”

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The educational system as a whole was designed for students to fail, according to my parents. Once one reached the end of 12th grade, you would have to take a test known as the Bachelorette exam. It was a grueling test, many times worse than its American counterpart, the SAT. You had two opportunities during senior year to pass this test, otherwise you repeated 12th grade again. My mom asks, “Didn’t you do the surgery when you took the Bachelorette? The tooth?” I find out that a family friend’s mother had a sister who was my dad’s “pediatric dentist”. She pulled a tooth with no painkillers on a Friday, and he took the exam that Monday. He failed the first time because of the pain. “You don’t know real tooth pain. You’re lucky here in America…I passed the second try that year.”

My mom points out that the government started to shun Western culture as a whole, and looked to Russia as an influential country. “There are still many Malagasy people today who are fluent in Russian.” The NASA center was shut down, and about a hundred people were out of jobs. The Americans working and living in Madagascar were forced to leave within a week. My cousins’ babysitter’s husband was one of these employees who had to quickly return to America.

“Life was good for your father back then,” my mom says. My dad asks her not to bring that up in front of the kids. “There was always the back room of his convenience store. And maids. In some countries that’s like an initiation process. That’s why our housekeepers will always be over the age of 60.”

“Not in front of the kids,” he says again.“I’m not the one who traveled all over the world.”

At this point I felt the conversation was losing its purpose, and it was getting late. I had to call it a night.

17: Asian Invasion Tess A. Langrill-Miles

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As an Asian-American young woman who was adopted from Vietnam into an American family with Judeo-Christian origins, I can connect many 20th

century historical events to my family’s personal history. From the time when my paternal grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge, to the time of my birth in 1993 and my adoption in 1994, members of my family can be linked to history.

The Battle of the Bulge was fought from December, 1944 – February, 1945. My paternal grandfather was one of the 600,000 American troops who fought in the battle; he was also part of the 81,000 men who lost their lives in this battle. Battle of the Bulge was the largest battle fought by the Americans during World War II, as well as the last big battle.

When World War II ended, The Soviet Union and the United States were the last remaining superpowers. This caused the United States to fear communism and to want to prevent its spread. The United State’s excuse for intervening in Vietnam was because the United States didn’t want Vietnam to become a communist country; in addition, all throughout the 1960s and 70s, the US had already been a support to South Vietnam as they tried to fight off the communist North Vietnamese. The US’s support wasn’t strong enough to prevent communist North Vietnam from taking over. As South Vietnam began to collapse and the North Vietnamese took over in 1975, many Vietnamese citizens made the decision to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States. Because many Vietnamese people were killed in the war, a lot of Vietnamese babies were orphaned and needed homes, and southern Vietnamese officials asked the US for help. One solution President Ford proposed was called “Operation Babylift,” through which he used military planes to fly orphans to the United States, Europe, Australia, and Canada. He also allotted $2 million to help support the babies entering these countries.

All throughout the time of the US-Vietnam war, US reporters broadcast its events on TV, so people (from the United States) would see both the fights going on and the Babylift planes flying off with all of the babies. This aroused the consciousness (and conscience) of American adoption agencies that there we tons of children who needed homes. Also, when the Soviet Union fell on December 25, 1991, Vietnam lost financial support, which led them to warm up their relationships with other countries so that adoptions could happen. Another result of the Vietnam War was the creation of greater poverty. This led to adoption agencies wanting to place more babies in homes because the agencies couldn’t afford to shelter and care for so many of them. In addition, adoptions were another form of needed income.

During the US-Vietnam War, Cherie Clark had been involved in Operation Babylift. Approximately 23 years after the war ended, she traveled to Vietnam to start, or to restart, adoptions. In 1994, Clark worked on my adoption case for me to come to the United States. My adoption was still close enough to the end of the US-Vietnam War that the Vietnamese wouldn’t allow any Americans to enter the country because there had been

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no diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam since before the war had begun, (diplomatic relations were not re-established until 1995). Also, it was incredibly difficult and inconvenient to get a visa, because there were no US embassies in Vietnam to issue visas.

So, on October 23, 1994, I left an airport in Vietnam and was passed from plane-to-plane and person-to-person, until I finally arrived in the BWI airport where my mom was expectantly and excitedly waiting for me.

In my family and in the United States, I continued the pattern of immigration that has made a huge impact on the population in this country. My paternal great grandparents immigrated from Russia in the late 1800s, my maternal grandparents immigrated from Ireland in the early 1900s, and I immigrated from Vietnam in 1994. This reflects the trend away from European adoptions and towards Asian and developing nation adoptions. If World War II or the US-Vietnam War hadn’t happened, and if my mom hadn’t been looking to adopt a child at the time she was looking, I would never have ended up here or possibly even have existed. The same is true for many Vietnamese children; from 1994 to 2002 the number of Vietnamese babies adopted per year increased from 220 to 776.

18: Salvadoran Civil War: Coffee, Land, and Poverty Henry Villacorta

Being a teenager living in the 21st century, it’s hard to believe that I’d have any strong connection with the 20th century. I was born in the early 1990’s, near the end of the century; few memories have remained vivid in my mind. But taking a look back at the history of my family, I have found that I am strongly connected to events that happened in the 20 th century. My parents came to the United States in 1992, making me a first-generation American. The event I feel most connected to in the 20th century is the Salvadoran Civil War. My father, as many other Salvadorans, came to the United States because of the repression and violence that came about as a result of the civil war.

The history leading up to the civil war in El Salvador begins even before the 20th century. The information I got from my parents only gave me insight into their daily lives during the civil war, therefore I had to online research the history of the war. I found that the roots of the conflict begin in the 19th century; three centuries after the Spanish conquered El Salvador. Before the Spanish, the territory of El Salvador was home to many indigenous groups. By the 11th century, the most predominant tribe, the Pipil, had created a flourishing civilization. In the 16th Century, when the Spanish came to El Salvador and conquered their people, they saw no possibility of

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gold or silver in the land, so they turned to El Salvador’s only exploitable resource – land.

The main export by the 18th century was coffee beans, followed by indigo. The cultivation of indigo made El Salvador a prized possession for Spain. But in 1808, when Napoleon conquered Spain, El Salvador moved towards independence from the weakening Spanish Empire. By 1821, El Salvador gained independence and coffee cultivation and exportation became essential for Salvadoran economy in the 19th century. This is where the history leading to the civil war really begins. Coffee growers began to acquire larger lands to cultivate coffee, inevitably displacing many indigenous groups. This created a large gap between the rich and the poor. During this time, you were either “landed” or “landless”. The workers during this period received no consideration of working conditions of wages. In the 1930’s, during the global Depression, more and more workers were laid off and the wages dropped even further as demand for coffee suddenly declined. It was then that the farmers and the poor, who worried for their survival, in the economical depression and began to organize themselves under leaders such as Augustín Farabundo Martí. This is the first time opposing political parties arose in El Salvador.

In 1932, Martí led an insurrection with the rural poor. His party sought to redistribute property ownership. The government at that time was powered by the military, and they responded to the insurrection by killing 30,000

people, targeting those who looked indigenous and spoke the indigenous languages. For the next 50 years, the government continued to be ruled by the military, and the majority of people continued to live in poverty. The struggle between social/economic classes continued as well.

The war was encouraged by the United States and that’s why it managed to last so long. The war “officially” start in 1980, but the military and the guerrillas had been fighting for well over 50 years. The country exhausted it resources during the civil war, especially in the 1980s, but the

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United States under Reagan supported the government with financial and military aid. The war led to many cruel injustices but in 1992, the war ended with the signing of the Peace Accords, when both sides of the conflict in El Salvador went to the United Nations for help in negotiating a settlement. Peace did not come immediately. Poverty and violence still existed in El Salvador after the war and many Salvadorans came to the United States

seeking refuge and better opportunities.

The life that I am living now is a result of my parents leaving El Salvador and coming to the United States. I could not imagine how different life would be if my parents had stayed in El Salvador. This is why I believe that the Salvadoran Civil War is an event that I am closely connected to.

19: The Swedish Model Ellen Hoehner

My ancestors went through the Great Depression starting around 1929, lasting until the late 1930s. My mother’s family lived in Sweden for centuries—“I’m a child of the Vikings” she likes to say. I’m first generation to be born here. Sweden came out of the depression slightly better than countries such as Germany and the United States. The year of 1932 was a breaking point in Swedish economic and political history.

The Second World War was followed by an economic boom. Sweden, having managed once again to stay out of the war, had a better starting position than most of its competitors. During the great wars, the country took a substantial step from being a poor country to becoming one of the world’s wealthiest.

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The first step towards “the Swedish model” had been taken. The central feature of the so-called “Swedish model” was the compromise between unlimited private capitalism and socialist planned economy. Health care and education are cradle to grave human rights provided by the state. The flip side to the government’s ambitious social welfare and redistribution policy is the very heavy tax burden. Even today Sweden has the highest taxes in the world, with a tax burden equivalent to fifty percent of GDP. If you’re super rich in Sweden you’d be tempted to leave, and some very wealthy Swedes do abandon their native country for tax sheltering ex-patriot life.

My grandparents were born in the early 1920s, so they both were able to witness Sweden’s economic restoration firsthand. They both came from very poor standards of living, my grandfather in the west; my grandmother in the north. Before “the Swedish model” existed, it was unusual for women to attend school. But the new system allowed for education to be offered to the masses, regardless of income.

Originally, my grandfather dreamed of being a carpenter, and my grandmother planned to stay at home. But after schooling, my grandfather obtained a government job as the lieutenant governor of Sweden—my grandmother then became a psychologist. This allowed for the later generations of my family to be educated. If this system had not been enforced, my mother would have been born into the same working-class type of family that her parents were born into. Education fostered a greater chance for their children to attend school.

I think this is a key reason for my family being so well educated and successful today. Because the education system was funded by taxes, the cost of schooling wasn’t a burden. Under normal circumstances, children were destined to stay home and provide their fraction of income to the family. Because of “the Swedish model”, my mother could attend school and receive the education she needed to start a life in the United States. From the days of the Vikings to now, it seems like the Swedish always found new ways to govern.

20: A Legacy of Soviet Ukraine Justin Long

Around 7 o’clock, as the sun sat heavy in the sky, I agreed to accompany a close friend Daniil Lyalko, a young man who, born and raised in the infancy of ‘The New Ukraine,’ who

441921 Soviet military recruiting poster. It reads (in Ukrainian): “Son! Enroll in the school of Red commanders and the defense of Soviet Ukraine will be ensured.”

This graph of ‘gini’ values shows Sweden has one of the lowest income inequality gaps of

immigrated to Baltimore with his family at the age of 4. Now 16, Daniil was giving another friend haphazard directions to the immigrant dominated apartment complex in the fading sunlight. Stranded at a nearby house without a car, we walked until we found the apartment, long since the surrounded buildings all started to look the same.

The entranceway and the ground floor were mostly carpeted, but nothing but cold, tile paved the way to two basement apartments. The ceramic squares and the plaster walls were the same cheap off-white. Daniil knocked on the door on the left, where we were greeted by a tall, blonde, Ukrainian. “Privet,” she said, smiling. The apartment consisted of three white-walled rooms, a kitchen/living area with a green corduroy couch and the kitchen wholly unimpressive, a small bathroom, and a bedroom, which somewhat snugly, fit four very plain single beds.

The girls, all in their early twenties, who had immigrated three weeks prior, talked amongst themselves in Russian, and sometimes Daniil would translate or one of the girls would speak some broken English. I sported a University of Auckland shirt so I could lie when someone asked how old I was. “Someone geeve you the shirt so you can say ‘I’m een college,’ right?” The blonde that had answered the door said to me. “Yeah, that’s exactly right.”

Despite Daniil’s assurances that the party was mostly Ukrainian, harsh and rigid, though beautiful and romantic Russian filled the small basement apartment. Young men, a few in soccer jerseys, laughed, women giggled, one even told me about her home in Nizhny Novgorod, and an enormous Russian-born Navy S.E.A.L. kept calling me Mick.

Russia’s roots in Ukraine are long established. In 1654, following the Cossack Uprisings, the once strong, flourishing nation of Ukraine was officially made part of Russia. Following the Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik government of the U.S.S.R. in an effort to rebuild the fragile nation allowed nationalism to flourish in its borders once again. Ukraine enjoyed a brief period of ‘Ukrainization’ until 1932, during which time Ukrainian was taught in schools, used in local media, and freely spoken without fear of suppression. In late 1932 government policy toward nationalism changed drastically and a period of ‘Russification’ started. This meant and end to Ukrainian and other local languages and an emphasis on Russian in all aspects of life almost uninterrupted until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Naturally the shift from speaking Russian to Ukrainian took some time, especially considering people were still scared of the Soviet giant even after its fall. This, in combination with the fact that at the time over half of the schools in Ukraine were not using Ukrainian as the primary language of instruction, it’s no surprise that Daniil grew up in an exclusively Russian-speaking household. This is why, despite his strongest assertions that he is

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not Russian, he is Ukrainian, he, his mother, and his sister Dacha all speak Russian at home. This is why the young lady’s tears took refuge in my arms in the small, three-room apartment that night. She had experienced the nationalist rebirth of Ukraine, she had been proud of her people, and although she spoke Russian as her first language, she considered Ukrainian her native language. After three weeks in Baltimore she was ashamed to find that she was forgetting her mother tongue. “I talked to my mother on the telephone yesterday, and I realized I was forgetting Ukrainian. It is my language. It’s like I’ve let my family down. How can you forget your native language?”

The strong sense of nationalism that is embedded in us is due in large part to the language we speak and our shared experiences as a nation. Even the nation of dreamers of Moresnet enjoyed a nation-state where the linguistic dream of an international language came for fruition for six short years. Language defines the way we interact with each other, and as such, the way we think about and perceive the world around us. The truth that many Ukrainians will never learn to speak the language of their people, but will go their entire lives speaking the language of their oppressors, is a sad one that has its roots so embedded that it seems unlikely that it will ever be done away with.

It’s easy to argue that Russification is over and Ukrainians are free to be Ukrainian again, but the legacy of oppression is alive in the words Daniil’s family speaks to each other, and the homesick tears that stained my shirt on that warm summer night.

21: Family Connection: The Civil Rights Movement Wayne Cottman

Growing up in the United States during the 1950’s and 1960’s was a tough time especially for those who were African American. This was a time of prejudice, racism, and discrimination. This simply was the era of the Civil Rights Movement which began around the mid 1950’s and ended in the late 1960’s. The Civil Rights Movement was a movement that intended to overpower racial discrimination against African Americans and get suffrage for the Southern States. There are many things that triggered the Civil Rights Movement such as; inequality and discrimination against African Americans for so long, mistreatment, and suffrage. One of many events that sparked the Civil Rights Movement was the slaughter of an African American boy Emmett Till. He was taken in the middle of the night from a family member’s home and

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was taken to a shed. This is where he was brutally beaten, pistol whipped, lynched with a 70 pound cotton gin fan with barbed wire, shot, and then dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a Caucasian woman. He was killed by two Caucasian men that even admitted to killing him in an interview and they didn’t have any consequences for killing a fourteen year old child like that. So many African Americans was outraged by this and began to express their anger. This was a crazy time and my great grandmother lived through this chaotic era with some experiences and controversies of discrimination of race.

My great grandmother Jean Lecato was born on November 12, 1942 in Baltimore, MD. She was raised by her parents Magnolia Hamlin and James V Hamlin who are from Virginia. Her mother was a farmer that owned land and Jean’s grandfather was a farmer as well. Jean had one brother and three sisters; her being the youngest of the four children. She grew up on a farm in Virginia with her parents and three older siblings. When she was coming up on the farm as a young girl her parents taught her to respect others and be careful because they were very aware of what was going on such as kidnappings, harassment, discrimination, frames, and lynching against African Americans no matter what age. There was no remorse for these crimes either so Magnolia and James made sure she stayed away from trouble and tried to make sure she wouldn’t experience any of these things of discrimination. But trouble would soon find its way.

One day around Jean’s parents let her catch the bus when she was eight or nine which was around 1951 and this day she’ll never forget. So she got on the bus and sat down in the front, a couple stops later a Caucasian couple got on the bus and the bus driver began making a fuss and telling Jean to go to the back of the bus. The couple then interrupted and asked, “Why does she have to go to the back of the bus? She’s not bothering anyone.” So Jean got to sit in the front after being told to sit in the back. This was her first but not her last time experiencing racial discrimination.

Years later my great grandmother worked at Maryland General Hospital at the age of seventeen as a dietary aid and nursing assistant after having her first child Rachelle born in 1959. She liked her job and everything was going well at the job. Only one thing was wrong with the job and that was segregation. The Caucasians could get

lunch and eat in the lunch room but the African Americans were forced to exit the room and eat in another part of the building.

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This segregation at her job brought back memories of segregation in school when she was younger. There were a lot of places and activities that were segregated outside of her job. For instance, department stores were segregated because in the early 1950’s. According to Jean there were two stores, Hochschild-Kohn, a ladies clothing store, and Hutzlers a male clothing store in Baltimore, that discriminated against African Americans. African Americans could window shop but were not welcome to come in and try on the merchandise. (Later, these city shops changed their policies, but by then they were losing out to suburban shops.) Another segregated aspect of Baltimore was the movies and cultural events. African Americans weren’t allowed in some movie theaters or performing events because Caucasians were reserved there. The Royal opened around early 1959 on Pennsylvania Avenue and this place was for African Americans. The Royal was placed so all African Americans wouldn’t have to face being rejected from seeing performing events because of their skin. It was for African American performances such as: Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, James Brown, and other great African American performers during this time.

After my great grandmother worked at the Maryland General Hospital for about seven or eight she worked at fast food restaurants and restaurants. That’s where she met my great grandfather, Jimmy, in 1973. At this point Jean had three more children Victor born in 1961, Dwayne born in 1966, and Jeffrey born in 1969. Jimmy and Jean got married on July 3, 1976.

Sounds like a happy ending for Jean four beautiful children and married to a wonderful hard working husband. But the end is yet to come. Granted she had good kids and a good husband, but this time of racism and discrimination still was happening around them. Just as her parents did, Jean raised her kids to respect others being aware of what’s going on and trying to prevent them from experiencing racial discrimination but letting them know it exist. Although she tried to prevent them from experiencing racial discrimination, this endeavor failed because no matter where they went it existed. For example Rachel, Victor, Dwayne, and Jeffrey went to the movies in the weekends with friends and the African Americans had to sit on the balcony while the Caucasians got to sit on the first floor wherever they wanted. Then school had racial discrimination because Jeffry and Dwayne went to a majority Caucasian school and they had to catch the bus there but the school forced them to walk home when school was over. Where as though the Caucasian kids parents could arrange to get them picked up.

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Then the African American schools had lack of resources, no air conditioning, or a real clean school. But the Caucasian kids had better resources, a cleaner environment, and air conditioning. So racial discrimination existed everywhere they went during the week days in school and on the weekends of just hanging out with friends.

In the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s African Americans began to get more rights and equality as Caucasians due to the Civil Rights Movement and courageous leadership of African Americans such as: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, etc. So slowly but surely racism or at least segregation has died down. Racism and segregation has become more subtle. A lot has changed since the Civil Rights Movement. I have a lot of privileges that my grandparents and great grandparents didn’t even have. I am blessed in the situation I am in now. The situation I’m in now is really good and I’m grateful because I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have handled the experiences my great grandmother or any other African-Americans endured through racial discrimination in the Civil Rights era. So I’m proud to say as a great grandson of Jean Lecato, who was raised in an era of racism and chaos during the Civil Rights Movement, that I’m grateful for my family and our roots that got us here.

22: My Generation’s Fight Maddi Wyda

Each and every one of us is who we are because of our parents. Our parents’ lives and views have shaped who we are today. My father grew up in Baltimore, Dunbar to be specific. His current views, and even his career choice and life style, were influenced by his childhood. Those influences have also changed my lifestyle and me.

My father is a federal public defender. His job is to defend ‘criminals’ who can’t pay for their own legal counsel. The environment he grew up in helped him to choose this path. All four of his grandparents were immigrants, his father’s parents from the Ukraine, and his mother’s parents were from Finland. His neighborhood was lower middle class people fighting for their chance at the American dream. And as a young boy he saw race riots consume Baltimore.

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(http://monumentcity.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/baltimore-riots-1968-maryland-fire-truck.jpg)

After the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Junior in April of 1968, riots filled the poor, black neighborhoods of Baltimore. 5,300 people were arrested and six people died as a result of the unrest. Vengeful and distraught rioters devastated city blocks, looting, vandalizing, and burning almost everything in their path. Commercial blocks with stores owned mostly by whites, many of them with family residences above, were looted and burned. After the riots, business that had been thriving and comfortably housing shopkeepers and their families now boasted empty shelves and demolished living quarters.

By the time the riots were burning out, more than 5,500 armed troops patrolled the city. National Guardsmen wouldn’t even let people go to their jobs without proof of their employment. Because of restrictions such as this, their efforts humiliated and angered the cities mistreated blacks. Their anger didn’t end with the riots, many blacks, even children and teens, believed that people had deserved every bit of what they got.

My father grew up in those conditions, and I grew up hearing about all my father’s clients at the dinner table. I went to more than one anti death penalty rally before I even reached seventh grade. My parents’ views are pretty far left, but mine are farther even than theirs. The topic of my eighth grade speech was the death penalty, and a close second choice was abortion rights. I intend to raise my children with pro-choice lullabies and dinner table conversations about abolishing the death penalty.

Many people don’t realize that the civil rights movement isn’t over, and may never be. The fight for equality is a fight that I have committed myself to. Although my work is different than that of what my father saw as a child and than what he does now, it is just as important. He strives to give all peoples equal representation in our court system no matter who they are.

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My fight is different than his. I work more with students, doing my best to educate people and inspire them to take up the cause. My father saw the most visible stages of the civil rights movement, and he and I both continue that fight today in our own ways.

I feel more connected to the past through the fight in America that my father and I and many more share than I ever have before. I can’t imagine what it would be like to experience those violent riots as a kid. What I do know is that they helped to shape my father into the person he is today. And he has helped to create the person I have become. I don’t know if I have taken up this fight because my father saw race riots in Baltimore as a child, or because he has raised me to believe in fairness for all. Some combination of the two has helped me become a part of today’s fight for civil rights and thus connected me to the past.

12: Thinking about Jasha……………………………………Sunny Minihane

At the start of seventh grade, just as the wind was beginning to blow away the sweltering summer heat and replace it with the nippy chill of fall that spurred the leaves to swap their emerald colors for crisp autumn reds, golds, and browns, my family and I flew down to Texas to celebrate my cousin, Darah’s, bat mitzvah. I wasn’t too thrilled about the whole idea. Sure, it would be nice to see all my relatives again, and going to Texas would be exiting, like a mini-vacation that would offer a pleasant little break from the monotony of everyday life and an escape from the clutches of school, chores, and homework for a few days, but I couldn’t bring myself to get keyed up for the celebration. In a family of Jews and on the younger side of my generation, I had attended my fair share of bar and bat mitzvahs in the past, and frankly I despised them. I loathed sitting for hours in a stuffy synagogue listening to hymns and prayers in a language that, after being forced to study it for about seven years of after school programs, I could understand less than a handful of words. I detested trying to follow along with the chants led by ancient, shriveled up rabbis, like raisins in robes, singing at the congregation in warbly voices that would put old, western yodelers to shame. The whole experience made me feel like I was in a cult. The festivities also reminded me that my own bat mitzvah was less than a year away, and I was dreadfully unprepared for it. No, I wasn’t looking forward to this shindig one bit.

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I somehow survived the three hour long service but my torments were far from over, for in front of me stretched the mandatory family luncheon filled with kosher bagels and dull chitchat. I was planted at the kid’s table, attempting to mingle with cousins ranging from manic five year olds to listless high schoolers and getting nowhere. We had slipped into an awkward silence, all endeavoring to finish our food with as little interaction as possible, when the doors burst open and in waltzed a scruffy hooligan who, after exchanging hugs, kisses, and other obligatory family greetings with the crowd, parked himself in the seat next to mine. He flaunted a wild mane of bushy sideburns popping out from the shadow of a snazzy fedora that had obviously seen better days with a bounce in his step and a twinkle in his eye. His suit was a wee bit too big, and his narrow form occasionally seemed to get lost in a vast sea of faded pinstripes. I soon learned that this chipper bum was my cousin, Jasha, who had dropped out of college after about a year to become a hobo. He had given up juggling papers and classes for juggling knickknacks on the side of the street to scrounge up enough change for a meal, and rather than spend his days studying, he chose to travel the country and ride the rails like the drifters of the Great Depression.

Unlike my cousin, many homeless wanderers of the past had no choice but to roam the country searching for work. From 1929 to 1939 the Great Depression walloped our market and sent America into a severe economic slump. Businesses flopped and schools shut down, making job opportunities scarce and advanced education virtually impossible. Over two hundred fifty thousand folks, most of who ranged in age from sixteen to twenty five, were forced to abandon their homes to seek their luck rambling from town to town.

To survive, many looked for ways to earn money, some becoming temporary labor for farmers, trailing the harvest seasons across the country, while others found brief jobs with the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Corps, which was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, was a government relief project that provided employment, in particular for young men in their twenties, building new

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roads, string telephone wires, constructing fire towers, and planting trees. Those who couldn’t find work lived off stolen or begged food, occasionally finding a free meal and bed at a church or mission. “If you were so inclined to listen to a short prayer you would be rewarded with a bowl of soup,” recalls Donald Wagner, one of the fourteen million unemployed American workers.4

To venture from place to place, hobos had to either amble for days down long, meandering roads, hitchhike, or learn to ride the rails. In the early 1900s, railroads spread across the entire country, connecting the east coast to the west, and everything in between. They linked America together, and provided mail, newspapers, freight, and transportation for daring vagrants. People new to the wayfaring life learned techniques from veteran vagabonds, who taught them skills such as how to tell which locomotives were ready to hitch up to boxcars and the way to catch a train “on the fly”, or jumping on while the engine was in motion. Luther S. Head, a former drifter remembers, "To be a hobo, you had to know how to get on a train while it is moving. Some hoboes got killed by trying to get on trains that were moving too fast."5 Sometimes trains offered no open cars. Individuals looking for a ride would have to climb up on top of the freights and continue their journey on the roof of the engine.

While most hobos of the early twentieth century were forced to abandon their homes in order to escape poverty and destitution, perhaps some, like my cousin Jasha, discarded their mundane lives to seek excitement and adventure. According to Sarah White, the director of sponsored research at Rice University, “By most serious study, the hobo was an unskilled migratory laborer.”6 However, those penniless rovers represent far more than that, embodying the free pioneer spirit of America, strolling wherever the winds of opportunity guide them.

24: The 20 th c. and Me Miranda Swinnen

When thinking of all that has happened in the 20th century –World War II (1939-45) for example, along with Pearl Harbor, the war in Afghanistan and many others. While there is a plethora of events that one could list on and on, most of them do not relate back to me personally. However, the Belgian Congo (1886-1908), does.

4 http://www.monh.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4055 http://www.monh.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4066 http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/white/hobo/intro.html

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The Congo Free State was a private project that Leopold I undertook in 1885. In the Congo, forced labor was extorted from the natives, and they suffered horrible abuses. These occurred in the rubber industry, as well as in many other situations, such as enslavement and the mutilation of the native population. This resulted in millions of innocent deaths.

There were many military and political positions associated with the Congo. My grandfather, Marcel Swinnen (1919-2010), was the first consul general in the newly independent Congo in July of 1960. As Consul general, he represented the government of Belgium, while being in Africa. His job was to help and protect the citizens of Belgium, as well as facilitating trade and creating a friendship between his country, and that of the Congo’s.

My grandpa accepted an assignment in the diplomatic core, which involved going into the Congo, which many people had already turned down. Turning down an assignment was no small matter either, if one turned down an assignment they were forced to resign from the diplomatic core. People we terrified of venturing to the Congo, as it was extremely dangerous, but my grandfather thought that he could go in, and come out with a resolution. He left on this mission that was to last a few weeks, but didn’t return for nine months. He struck a deal in the Congo, with Lumumba, within the first week or so of his time in the Congo. But, then a civil war broke out, and the Congo broke into chaos. Quite a few of the things my grandfather did in the Congo, resulted in the UN peace keeping troops coming to the Congo after the outbreak of the civil war. Neither side of the civil war wanted the peace keeping troops there, and therefore targeted my grandpa, as he had a hand in their being there. This civil war was the reason my grandfather did not return for over 9 months. He had been given up for as dead, but then, miraculously escaped, and made his way back home. Throughout all of this, my grandmother not only had thought her husband was dead, but also suffered a miscarriage simultaneously. It was truly incredible that he not only survived his time in the Congo, and escaped, but also that he succeeded in acquiring the deal he had sought after.

The Congo is still very present in the news today. Just a couple weeks ago there were dozens of articles reporting the recent killings and mass rape happening in the Congo. When I see an article such as this, about the Congo, I am probably more interested in it than the average person would be. While I don’t feel a great connection to the Congo, I know that there is one, and that my grandfather would have

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dealt with many of the issues still talked about today. Having this connection made me more aware of the Congo in the news and just more interested in the subject in general. It also gave me a unique perspective, having heard stories from someone who witnessed them first hand.

25: Gizzy Nick Halle

When beginning to write my essay about how I am connected to the twentieth century, I first thought it was logical to explore the accomplishments of my predecessors in the Halle family lineage. After considering this for a minute, it became apparent that the easy selection for my foothold in the last century would be my grandfather, The Gizzard. (My family just always had weird names)

Gizzy enlisted in the military in 1941, when the United States became involved in World War II. He served primarily in the European theater, fighting in some of nastier engagements of 1944. During this time, he noted that making the medical process more efficient could save many lives.

After the war, he pursued this idea, getting a job at Johns Hopkins Hospital in east Baltimore. He had no medical training at all; instead he applied himself in the administrative field of the Hospital, eventually ascending to the position of President of the Hospital. He instituted protocols and procedures for care and movement of patients, among many other simple, but important advances in hospital operating technique.

In the summer of 2005, my grandfather suffered a massive stroke, most likely a result of his practice of the Atkins diet. He demanded, of course, to be taken to Johns Hopkins for treatment. This is where the terrible irony of his death lies. The hospital didn’t have a modern and up-to-date stroke

protocol. My grandfather’s demise lay in his own oversight. Soon after, I have learned, Hopkins instituted a new stroke protocol and is now renowned nationwide as incredibly successful at treating a stroke.

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In his memory, the hospital named a wing after The Gizzard, The Edward A. Halle pavilion. If I leave not a trace on the twentieth century, surely he has.

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1: A Sister from Vietnam…….Jackson Hance2: War Lost in Translation…….Ellie Kahn3: The Miracle in Volodymyr-Volynskyi …..Drew Goldfarb4: On the War Path…….Lauren Leffer5: Link To The Past:………… Brett Perry6: The Dust of War: ……..Katie Posner7: The War That Made Me………Mark Rothleitner8: A Long Lasting Effect……Hambleton Sonnenfeld9: Grandpa Dan: My Connection

to the 20th Century…………..Isabel Rickman10: Berlin Calling…………Anna Fried11: Connecting Myself to the 20th Century…………………Yi Sun12: We are all Connected…….Tara Smith13: Sakins in the Korean War…….. …Noah Sakin

origins14: Manhattan on the Volga……… …….…Nikku Chatha15: Escaping the Tsar………Tess Savage16: Imagining Madagascar…….

…Nathan Randrianarivelo

17: Asian Invasion……………… …Tess Langrill-Miles18: Salvadoran Civil War: Coffee, Land, and Poverty ……...Henry Villacorta19: The Swedish Model…....Ellen Hoehner20: A Legacy of Soviet Ukraine…. …..Justin Long21: Family Connection: To the Civil Rights Movement…………Wayne Cottman