And They Say, "In The Name of Freedom"

One of our neighbors is moving. I´ve been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn´t really know them very well at all - just waves andnods, mostly.

So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor(he´s old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, "Back to Germany." I inquired if he was going back because he ! missed it.

"No," he answered me. "I´m going back because I´ve seen this before." He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler´s government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority" as if they were starved for it" (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in frontof his eyes again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his family back to Europe onThursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.

I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk, and the whole time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really hard,until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked me in the eyes, hard, and said, "I will pray for your family and your country."

He let go of myhand and hobbled away.