March 26, 2011

  • Feel grateful that we were not born in more exciting times

    'The Japanese were bad, but they did some good things too. They saved twenty thousand of us. If not for the Japanese I would have been dead.'

    Today I met an old gentleman, who sells second-hand books and leather products in the Greenwich Market. He was once an Austrian Jew. He moved to Shanghai with his family, as the Japanese accepted Jewish refugees from Europe and settled them in Shanghai. Then he stayed/was trapped there from 1939 to 1948.

    He recommended Adeline Yen Mah's "Falling Leaves" to Christine earnestly. 'I know her when I was in Shanghai. I mean, we still met up a few years ago. Hers is indeed a good book'.

    'Oh you are from Hong Kong! I had been there, for one day, on my way to England, in 1948. You know, Mao Zedong was coming. And the Jews scattered again. They went to America, England, Israel, and basically all around the World.'

    History has never been so vivid. For us the World War is distant history, for him a part of his life that changed forever the rest of it.

    Let us, whenever in sorrow or disappointment, remember that things could have been much worse, and we are already very fortunate for not being born in more exciting times.

    Comment on the Facebook photo with him here