Some feel good stories to start your spring week off with a smile.
Judge Kentaji Brown Jackson appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. If she drank a lot of beer in high school and raised a bunch of heck and if one of her classmates accused her of cheating on his Organic Chem final, do you think she would be confirmed? Or are the rules different for... supreme court candidates who went to high school in Miami? (What did you think we were going to say?).
PAYING IT BACK
Fania Rosenfeld Bass was a teenager in the Ukranian town of Rafalowka when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in WWII. As the Germans would enter captured cities, they would identify the Jews and kill the ones who could not work and send the rest to concentration camps for slave labor and the final solution. Fanis's parents and five siblings, including her six-year-old sister were rounded up, shot and their bodies dumped in a mass grave in a forest outside of the town. Fania survived because a non-Jewish Ukranian family led by Maria Blyshchik hid her for two years.
After the war Fania moved to Israel where she married and had children and grandchildren and told the story about the family who rescued her over and over. In the 1990s, with the advent of Facebook, the two families connected and remained in touch.
You see where this is going.
Sharon Bass, Fania's granddaughter, located Lesia Orshoko and Alona Chugai, who are cousins, and whose grandmother was Maria Blyshchik- the woman who saved Fania.
Last week Lesia and Alona landed in Israel courtesy of the efforts of Sharon Bass, Israel, and people from around the world captivated by this moving story. In 1995 Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Israel honored Maria Blyshchik and her extended family as Righteous Among the Nations, the exceptionally high honor bestowed by Israel to people who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazis.
As John Kennedy once said, we all share this small blue planet. We all breathe the same air.
War does not have to be the natural state of the human race. We are facing a gobal catastrophe with the planet warming and climate change. We have dozens of challenges facing our species. We do not have to waste time, and money, and precious innocent human lives on the folly of a few deranged men.
The stories of Maria Blyshchik and her granddaughters Lesia Orshoko and Alona Chugai, and Fania Rosenfeld Bass and her granddaughter Sharon Bass, affirm the goodness and humanity of our species. These women are the reason we are hopeful about our future on this planet.
They used to say in the 1960s what if they started a war and no one showed up?
What a great idea.
Ketanji*
ReplyDeleteI recognize the Covid experience has made some things difficult and many organizations are struggling. But what in the ever-loving fuck is going on at the SAO?
ReplyDeleteYou call 305-547-0100 and many times there is not even an answer. This is during 9-5, M-F. You can email ASAs ten times, over 3 weeks, and not get a single response. This is not one or two lazy or stuck-in-trial prosecutors. This is nearly all of them.
I can only make conjectures: without seeing defense attorneys in line, is there that much less a reminder to ASAs to deal with cases? Without that many trials happening, are there no worries, because cases will always be def-continued anyway? Have that many lawyers left the office that their caseloads are now tripled? Is morale so bad, suddenly, somehow, that no one gives a fuck?
I could, but would never, name ten or fifteen Miami ASAs who have not responded a single time to my calls or emails, since I filed an NOA on a case they prosecute. Just silence.
It is no longer a personal annoyance; it is a threat to the justice system.
1017 is exactly right. It's beyond absurd with many, probably most, prosecutors.
ReplyDelete