The Girl With An Apple

The Girl With An Apple

(This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75)
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, and 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 the Buchenwald 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 going to send 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 little 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 the 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 little 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.

But 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 a Bronx 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 of Miami Beach, Florida
This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.

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What's pushing the US into recession?

What's pushing the US into recession?

By - Vivek Kaul
The consumption binge is over

MUMBAI: It was half past one in the night and I was about to go to sleep when the phone rang. "Do you feel like going out for a long drive?" she asked.

"A drive at this hour? No, thanks, I'd rather sleep," I said and hung up.

Ten minutes later, the door bell rang. I knew it was her, but opened the door nonetheless.

"Good to see you awake. Now, tell me about home equity loans," she said. "I have been reading about them, but can't quite understand how they work."

Anyone else and I would have exploded. But, somehow, she always had her way with me.

"Ah, home equity loans. it's when you borrow against the value of home equity," I said yawning.

"And what is home equity?"

"It is the difference between the market value of your house and the portion of the home loan taken to buy it, which is still to be repaid. So let us say the current market value of a house is $400,000 and the home loan to be repaid is $300,000, the home equity works out $100,000. The loan you take against this $100,000 is a home equity loan. Now can I now go to sleep?"

"Hang on, hang on. How are home equity loans linked to the US economy?"

I feel anger welling up, but can't quite scream. "Pest you are," I say. "Interest rates in the US were reduced after the dotcom bubble burst. By mid-2003, they had come down to as low as 1%. And that is where they stayed for the next one year. This made borrowing very easy and people used this as an opportunity to take home loans to buy homes. Since demand far exceeded supply, this ensured that the home prices started to rise. Once home prices started to rise, people realised that they could use their increasing home equity to borrow more. And that is precisely what they did. The money borrowed against home equity could be used for all kinds of things. It could be used for home improvements, going on a luxurious holiday, financing your children's education or just going on a sho pping binge. The bottom line was that the money was being spent and once money was spent, consumption increased and the economy kept growing at a good pace," I explained.

"Hmmm, that's terribly interesting. What happened after that?" she asked. "As interest rates kept coming down, people realised that they could get a greater home equity loan and continue paying the same equated monthly instalment to repay the loan. So they kept refinancing their home equity loans. At the same time, the home prices kept going up and that meant home equity kept going up and hence more home equity loans could be taken on. And that's what precisely happened. A large amount of consumption binge in the US was financed through home equity loans. This is what helped the US companies to keep growing. At the same time, countries like China and Japan also benefited. An estimate made by Martin Feldstein, an economist at the Harvard University suggests that home equity worth $9 trillion has been withdrawn. The banks and other financial institutions which were lending the money also kept playing along because interest rates were low and hence money was cheap. And when money is cheap, there is an incentive to keep lending until the last borrower has been exhausted."

"But from what I hear, the American economy is in a lot of debt. How did they get to borrow so much money?"

"All that consumption benefited countries like China, Japan and Russia, etc. These countries earned US dollars. The dollars made their way back into the US as these countries bought financial securities issued by the US government. The US dollar is the international reserve currency and most countries till very recently liked to hold their reserves in US dollars. So, they could either let the US dollars lie in their vaults and not earn any interest, or invest in US government financial securities and hope to earn some interest. Since the demand for US government securities was very s trong, the interest rates offered on US government securities were very low. So, in effect, these countries lent to the US government at an extremely low interest rate. The government, in turn, lent to banks and the banks to consumers at lower rates. That's how the chain worked - the US consumed, other countries earned dollars and the dollars came back into the US economy."

"So is that chain about to break now?"

"Home prices in the US have been falling since the beginning of 2007. Thus, there is no more home equity to encash. So, consumers have moved on to using their credit cards to consume. Now, credit cards also cannot be used for eternity. This means, the consumption binge in the US has more or less ended. So, the consumption-based US economy is headed towards a recession. Once that happens, countries like China and Japan, which export a lot of stuff to the US, will be hit hard. Also, the US dollar's status as the international reserve currency is a little shaky these days. And a lot of countries have been quietly moving their reserves into other international currencies such as the euro. What this means is that the other countries will not be ready to lend to the US at lower interest rates as they were in the past. And that will also have an impact on US consumption."

She was nodding in agreement. The smile was loud and clear.

k_vivek@dnaindia.net

Small story on management lesson

A new vacuum cleaner salesman knocked on the door on the first house of the street. A tall lady answered the door.

Before she could speak, the enthusiastic salesman barged into the living room and opened a big black plastic bag and poured all the cow droppings onto the carpet.
"Madam, if I cannot clean this up with the use of this new powerful Vacuum cleaner, I will EAT all this dung!" exclaimed the eager salesman.
"Do you need chilly sauce or ketchup with that" asked the lady.
The bewildered salesman asked, "Why, madam?"

"There's no electricity in the house..." said the lady.

MORAL: Gather all requirements and resources before working on any project and committing to the client...!!!

HOW GREEN IS YOUR COMPUTER?

Reducing carbon emissions is the order of the day.

From spiralling fuel prices to global warming, almost everything seems to be forcing us to quit our energy-intensive, pollution-causing habits. As we blame gas guzzling SUVs and electricity-thirsty plasma screens, we don’t even notice the little power consuming gadgets that quietly contribute to the growing menace. But there is a way of retaining computing power while cutting electricity bills and reducing our carbon footprint: 1 The next time you buy a computer or laptop, check if it is Energy Star rated. Most electric and electronic devices, from household devices to nifty netbooks—are usually Energy Star compliant. This means that they use about 20-30% less energy than their non-rated brethren.

2 Also check if the device is RoHS (restriction of hazardous substances directive) compliant. This is usually mentioned both on the box and the body of the device. Although RoHS isn’t related directly to electricity use, what it means is that your device carries very little of toxic substances. This ensures that when you dispose of an electronic device, it doesn’t leak harmful toxins into the soil.

3 Once your computer is ready for use, make sure you plug it in only when you want to use it. Even if your device is switched off, there is always some power leakage if it’s plugged into the power supply.

4 Don’t leave your computer on 24 hours a day, and don’t leave it connected to the charger when the battery is already fully charged. While the former ensures that power isn’t needlessly wasted, the latter will help the batteries last longer while giving optimum power. This is especially important as batteries contain toxic chemicals that are notoriously difficult to dispose of.

5 All computers and laptops have various energy settings. These can be accessed through the little battery icon present on the right hand corner of the window’s bar. You can use this setting to minimize the amount of power your computer uses. Switching off the screen when it’s idle for more than 5 minutes or switching off hard disks when not in use for more than 15 minutes ensures that less power is consumed without compromising on productivity.

6 Download any of the many energy-saving tools available on the Internet. These tools, usually free, help you keep track of where your computer’s energy is being wasted.

7 Check your computer’s brightness. Reducing a monitor’s brightness can significantly reduce the amount of electricity it uses.

8 Screen savers are a complete waste of energy. In stead, change your power settings so that every time your computer is idle for too long, it goes into “hibernation” or “sleep mode”.

9 It is very important to dispose of your computer responsibly. In the case of old computers, check if any of your friends or family can use some components. Companies such as Dell and HP now take your old computers if you buy a new one from them. This way you can ensure that your computer won’t make it straight into a landfill.

10 Contact e-Parisaraa (www.ewasteindia.in/ obj.asp), a Bangalore-based e-waste disposal company and send them your old computer.

ARJUN JASSAL For previous Toolkit columns, log on to www.livemint.com/toolkit www.livemint.com