WHY THIS MEMOIR?
Perspective, principle, and duty. At the age of ninety-eight, though I’ve unhappily discovered the limitations that failing senses impose on one’s mobility and interconnectedness, I maintain both an active mind and a healthy regard for the importance of learning from history, recognizing threats to life and liberty, calling out evil in its many guises, and standing up for human rights.
There was a time when I used to speculate in the rear view mirror of time, both on the personal level and in regard to world events. What if England had not welcomed and made a home for my refugee forebears? What if the British government’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, calling for establishment of a Jewish homeland, actually had been implemented in the aftermath of World War I? What if Hitler, in the early days of his ascendancy, had not been appeased and emboldened at every turn? What if my own upbringing had been different, and my unrecognized, uncorrected vision problems had not stunted my education and limited my socialization? Would I have gone on, eventually, to become self-reliant, learn new trades, fight for my country through years-long campaigns in Africa and the Far East, and return to a nation grappling with societal, political, and cultural flux, on the brink of losing its empire?
Such musings may well be of academic interest, but they are seldom relevant to the choices one must make when in the thick of it, when thrust to the front lines to deal with the ‘facts on the ground’ – with the unrelenting urgencies of the here-and-now.
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