A small North Carolina town that ran out of hope. Posted here in 2013. Paul Goldfinger photo. © Click to enlarge.
HARRY NILSSON “Remember” by Irving Berlin
“Remember we found a lonely spot
And after I learned to care a lot
“You promised that you’d forget me not
But you forgot
To remember.”
Wikipedia”. Irving Berlin received numerous honors including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, and a Tony Award. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Gerald R. Ford in 1977. Wikipedia
Irving Berlin was born in Russia of a poor Jewish family. He came to America as a boy, speaking Russian and Yiddish. Yet somehow he learned English, and he began writing music as a teen-ager. His compositions, including lyrics, such as “Remember”—-(“But you forgot to remember” ) became important contributions to the “Great American Songbook”. He wrote “White Christmas.”
I cannot help but recall that he came from an Eastern European Jewish culture mostly in Russia and Poland where most people were poor, but art including music, journalism and poetry were important. That culture lasted about 400 years, but Hitler destroyed it. Irving Berlin was a survivor, but imagine what that culture could have contributed to the world if it only had survived—6 million were destroyed. Yet enough survived to give us great composers, writers, , journalists, academicians, historians, politicians, scientists, architects, Zionists, teachers, doctors, and more.
Ironically, I trained at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York that was founded by immigrant Jews from Germany who needed to establish such institutions when they ran into anti-semitism in the US. At Mt. Sinai, most of the doctors were Jewish when I was there. One, Jim Dove, was not, but he wanted to train there. He took a lot of kidding. Jim went on to become President of the American Heart Association.
I have no momentos of my family’s roots from there. I don’t know what they looked like, what their names were, and what their lives were like. My Mom’s parents were from a city—Lodz in Poland. He was a tailor. They came to America and raised 9 kids; I remember him a bit, but he died when I was 7 years old. I have a few photos of them taken in America. It’s the same for my Dad’s family. On both sides they changed their last names.
Paul Goldfinger, Editor, Blogfinger.