A Few Minutes with the Mayor – June 2019

Ah! Summer! That long-awaited season of warm sun, balmy winds, and blue skies. Just as Mr. Gershwin wrote:

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Let those who enjoy skiing, ice skating, and generally frigid weather retreat into their winter quarters. It’s time for beaches with sand and surf, picnics at the lake, and rafting on the river. If I wax lyrical about the water, it’s because I recall one such summer when as one of four teenagers, we spent an afternoon floating around Jamaica Bay in a rented rowboat. The location was approximately where the future JFK Airport would be built. It was a thirty-mile trip from where we lived in Manhattan and we were definitely venturing into the unknown.

In every sense of the word, it was one of those carefree days. No work, no responsibilities, just floating around for hours in a world far removed from the tenements and the grime of the city. Consequently, we overstayed our time on the water and paid the price with blisters across our shoulders from the sun and its reflection upon the waters. But for a short while, we felt free. We were young and “the livin’ was easy.”

Alas, like caterpillars shedding their cocoons and turning into butterflies, teenagers grow into adults which in-turn brings responsibilities. Responsibilities bring a sense of foregoing a waste of time such as drifting aimlessly around enjoying doing nothing. No, many adults engage in prescribed vacations when taking time from their otherwise busy schedules. That’s OK too but can bring its own stress where there was none on that boat.

For those seeking something different in a vacation, there is the looming 75th anniversary of D-Day with major celebrations in remembrance of the sacrifice made on those beaches. A trip to Normandy will offer a visitor an experience unlike any other. I recommend such a trip for those who look at America’s past, seeing only its faults and none of its virtues.

There is another destination for those seeking not only an enjoyable vacation but a chance to visit the site of a magnificent memorial to the spirit of man’s valor in the face of death. I refer to the Jewish uprising in Warsaw, Poland where the remaining Jews living in a ghetto fought back and held the Nazi forces at bay for thirty days. It was in the middle of the war, one year before D-Day. The Nazis had been removing men, women and children in small groups, sending them to the concentration camp at Treblinka and then killing them. Word got back to the inhabitants of the ghetto and they made the decision to fight and die where they were. Desperately short of guns, they were supplied a small number by the Polish underground. The supposedly invincible Nazi occupiers suffered 300 casualties. In the end there were tens of thousands of Jews killed, but they had made their stand. Today there is a monument to their resistance. It is truly magnificent.

There is also a photograph showing the last Jewish victims surrendering to the Nazis. In it is a boy about ten with his arms raised in the air. He has never been identified but the image is one of the most iconic photographs of the Holocaust, and the boy came to represent children in the Holocaust, as well as all Jewish victims.

Remember this photograph the next time Democrat representative Ilhan Olmar condemns Israel with her anti-Semitism. And remember those who would disarm us by calling for more gun control, a call that does nothing to take the guns out of criminal hands.

In the film CASABLANCA, Rick tells Major Strasser, “Well, there are certain sections of New York Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to invade.” He was talking about civilian resistance, not military. If you make that trip to Warsaw, you’ll see what that really means.