Erna Blitzer Gorman - July 12, 1989
Reasons for Telling Story
Um, before we finish for today, you've told me a few reasons you think it is important for you to tell the story. You want to tell me again a couple of those reasons?
Boy, I don't remember, I'm sor.....
For example, are you worried these days?
Oh, absolutely, I didn't know what you were referring to. You know, recently, about three months ago, I think that I saw on television a skinhead and you know they make me feel like snakes and so I had said, I sometimes mix up and say snakeskins, but its the skinhead, a very young man, and you know, on television there must have been hundreds of thousands of people who saw this young man and he said, "I'm here to finish Hitler's work."Can you imagine that? Now, in the United States, where you think you might feel you are sheltered for life? You are going to be forever and ever protected? You know, total freedom, you see this young person telling you that you don't have the right to live? In effect that is what he was saying, he is going to finish Hitler's work he said, so who gives him the right to say that to millions of hundreds of thousands of people and deny my children to live in the future or my grandchildren? That's petrifying. It's starting all over again, and I don't quite know what to do about it except for maybe speak out. I would like to face this young man and ask him if he loves his grandmother, his mother, his uncles, his aunts and his cousins? If he loves them, would he like to trade places with me? I don't know who he is. I wouldn't be afraid to go and face this young man. This misguided, silly, inadequate in their own life human beings they are manipulated by somebody because of their own unhappiness. I wanna know if his mother is alive, if he buried his mother with his own hands, shouldn't I be afraid after I lived all of this?
And this you have told your children?
Yes.
You have talked to them about this?
Yes. I did too good of a job, they cannot hate. [Weeps]
Well, um, I hope we have helped a little bit today.
I am sorry if I am crying this is going to come out terrible for you.
Um, thanks for telling this story here today. We can stop here.
Okay.
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