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Showing posts from June, 2011
Lest we Forget It was a quiet dinner party, a few friends, some family, even people I had never met before. It was a comfortable evening in a small Belgian suburb of Brussels where ideas were exchanged, experiences shared and discussions coming and going with no particular direction. It was a nice time, good food, impeccable wines bred from good taste, solid dependable upbringing, good breeding and decent schools. Into this quiet and tranquil pond suddenly a large rock hit the surface and rippled out, and continues to ripple in my mind, three years later and an ocean and continent away. As I recall, the conversation went from what does an American do when he returns to Belgium with his children, in my case I always took my daughter and son to Fort Breendonk between Antwerp, where I was brought up, and Brussels, the new capital of Europe. Breendonk was where the Germans assembled the Jewish population of Belgium before sending them east to Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen and other extermi