On December 9, 1916, Issur Danielovitch was born to two immigrant parents who did not speak English in Amsterdam NY. His older brother had used the last name Demsky, and he grew up as Izzy Demsky
Few Americans know him by that name. Most Americans recognize him by the name he adopted before he entered the US Navy during the 2nd World War, and with which he received three Oscar nominations, a lifetime achievement Oscar, and wrote a best-selling autobiography called The Ragman’s Son, Kirk Douglas.
As he approaches both his 100th birthday and the forthcoming election, Douglas has for Huffington Post offered us a piece titled/subtitled The Road Ahead: I have always been deeply proud to b an American. In the time I have left, I pray that will never change.
It is well worth your time to read.
Douglas talks about his parents leaving what was then Russia (and is now Belarus) for a better a life in place where the streets were paved with gold. They were among 2 million Jews who came here, including two of my four grandparents. They also found that in the eyes of many, the words of Emma Lazarus about the Statue of Liberty
did not apply equally to all new Americans. Russians, Poles, Italians, Irish and, particularly Catholics and Jews, felt the stigma of being treated as aliens, as foreigners who would never become “real Americans.”
He has been amazed, and and generally pleased, by the changes he has seen during his lifetime
In my lifetime, American women won the right to vote, and one is finally the candidate of a major political party. An Irish-American Catholic became president. Perhaps, most incredibly, an African-American is our president today.
Yet he has also lived through darker times:
Yet, I’ve also lived through the horrors of a Great Depression and two World Wars, the second of which was started by a man who promised that he would restore his country it to its former greatness.
Douglas reminds us that some did not take Hitler seriously, and comments about those to whom he appealed. He then writes
The “experts” dismissed him as a joke. They were wrong.
A few weeks ago we heard words spoken in Arizona that my wife, Anne, who grew up in Germany, said chilled her to the bone. They could also have been spoken in 1933
followed by those obnoxious and chilling words spoken by Donald Trump almost immediately after his “presidential” appearance with the Mexican President. To those words he responds simply:
These are not the American values that we fought in World War II to protect.
He describes those words as a kind of fear-mongering that he had never before witnessed from a major Presidential candidate. He then writes
I have lived a long, good life. I will not be here to see the consequences if this evil takes root in our country. But your children and mine will be. And their children. And their children’s children.
He expresses his hope that his pride in being an American will not change in the time he has left, and warns us that the decision to maintain freedom is ours to make.
He then closes with a paragraph of his own, and a quote from a dear friend.
But I won’t share those with you.
There is no fire wall.
If you have not already done so, follow this link and read the entire piece, including those final words.
You will be glad you did.
Peace.