This has happened close to me, very close. This is the  same train my husband and I took to the airport two weeks ago.  It's simply awful, pray for the victims that are still alive and critical in the hospitals.

Have a history teacher explain this----- if they can.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird...

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat...

Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called ' Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'

Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here's the kicker...

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Creepy huh?

 
      A Girl with an Apple

August 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had  been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.

 
"Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen". I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age. "Sixteen," I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.

 
My mother was motioned to the right with the other  women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, "Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her. "No," she said sternly. "Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your  brothers." She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved  me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

 
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at theBuchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. "Don't call me Herman anymore." I said to my brothers. "Call me 94983."

 
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel. Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

 
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me.  I called to her softly in German.
<> "Do you have something to eat?" She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated question in Polish.  She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit  and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."
<> I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her just a kind farm girl except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.
<> Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.. "Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving." I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
<>
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
<> At 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too.
<>
Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
<> Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S.Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
<> One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. "I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date." A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at aBronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
<> The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
<> We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, "Where were you," she asked softly, "during the war?" "The camps," I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
<> She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin," she told me. "My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers." I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world.
<> "There was a camp next to the farm." Roma continued. "I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day."
<> What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. "What did he look like? I asked. He was tall, Skinny, and Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months." My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. "Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?" Roma looked at me in amazement "Yes," That was me! " I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel.
<>
"I'm not letting you go." I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait. "You're crazy!" she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go.
<> That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren I have never let her go.
<>
Herman Rosenblat Miami Beach, Florida

Love story

Have you ever thought about your life and what you wanted it to be and what it actually turned out to be? I do that all the time lately.

I'm married and have two boys.  My oldest son is married and living in another state and soon will graduate from medical school. My younger son is living at home, but preparing to move out. I need to go back to work after a three year hiatus, but I don't know what I want to do, or what I'm qualified to do. ~sigh~ I have actually had thoughts of running away for awhile, just to be by myself to think things out. Don't get me wrong, I love my family, but I have begun to feel lost. Misplaced. Unsure of my life.

It's like an awakening. Almost like I've been in a cocoon and I'm breaking out, but I'm not sure where to go or what to do.  Has anyone else had these feelings? Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have to go back to work and I'm scared. That's probably it. . I've been enjoying taking care of my home, cooking and not feeling stressed everyday. Financially though, I need to work.   We still have a mortgage to pay off.

Geez, smack me. Really. I need to do my share. I can get a job, I know that.

What do you do for fun when you're broke? 
Submitted by Kim. 

  I  like to go to a public place, for instance, a park, shopping mall, etc and  "People watch."  I could do that for hours! It's very interesting to watch people go about their everyday lives and see how different we all are.