What to Do About Trump? The Same Thing My Grandfather Did in 1930s Vienna
My grandfather Siegfried was not a sophisticated man. When he bought a car—always the same car, a blue Peugeot 305, replaced every few years with a newer model of the same exact make—he kept the seats covered in plastic to keep them eternally clean. When you asked him for an apple, he’d hold the fruit in his hand and rotate it like a tiny globe, peeling it with his pocketknife and making sure to remove only the skin and none of the flesh. When I ran away, as a child of 6 or 7, to explore a park nearby, he dashed out the door, wearing nothing but his underwear, and ran until he found me and hugged me tight. He didn’t even hear the passersby who pointed and laughed. Nothing mattered to him but his family.
He died when I was very young, so I know his life’s story only as a broad outline: Educated in a conservatory in Vienna, he was a promising young violinist and composer when he was spooked by the goosesteps of Hitler’s goons. He convinced two of his sisters to trade in a continental future for one less tender on the shores of Palestine. Some of his friends, maybe even members of his family, pointed and laughed then, too, telling him he was hysterical, that he was getting it all wrong, that it couldn’t possibly be that bad. But grandpa Siegfried wouldn’t listen: His simple heart advised him to take the thugs at their word and leave. At least that’s how I imagine it—he never spoke of those early days, and his family and friends were all soon seized, deported, and murdered.
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