Thank you

I was in a check out line in the supermarket. There was an elderly man in the line checking out what he had bought. He had a baseball type cap on with veterans things on it one of which was a WWII Vet patch.

Did you ever kick yourself for not doing what your impulse said you should to do? I wanted to walk over to him and thank him for his service in, perhaps, the only "good and moral war" this nation has waged in the 20th century and in this century in my memory.

I was born after 1945 but WWII is remembered often by me perhaps because I am Jewish but also because of the tenor of unity this nation felt at that time.  It is something I love about that era and wish that unity were here now.

I did not thank him as I became shy but now I wish I had. I will never get the chance to do that now but at least on social media I can make a public statement to those vets of WWII -- THANK YOU SO MUCH. This nation saved my grandparents and some aunts from certain Nazi annihilation in the Poland and the Ukraine if they remained there. I thought that episode of anti Semitism was over but it is not over as it rises again because the immoral president Trump makes room for right wing Nazis, KKK and Jew hating extremists. In Europe nationalism and its accompanying antisemitism hovers over that continent like the plague of death. Poland recently had a nationalist parade of thousands in the street accompanied by what else Jew hating extremists which were so much a part of Polish and Eastern European culture. They hated the Nazis in Poland but many loved when Jews were taken from their midst saying "Bye Jews, bye Jews."

So I thank in spirit that elderly man whom I wish now I thanked in person while he and I are alive. Thank you, sir, for your service!