We have a good life...

The past week or so I have been doing some in depth reading and study on the Holocaust.  The reason is because I am working on a short story about my friend Zina.  She was a Holocaust survivor and a good friend of mine who I met when I was in the hospital at Cedar Sinai in Beverly Hills in 2005.  She was an older Jewish woman who was one of the most amazing people I have ever met.   She had told me how she rode in a cattle car to Siberia during the war and she gave birth in a run down building and the baby died.  (lots of stories!)  But the main thing is that in my research and reading personal stories of Holocaust survivors I am like so blessed and thankful that I have an easy life in comparison.  We have so much to be thankful for here in the United States.  I can go to church on Sunday, I can study any religion, and I don't really have to worry about being shipped out and gassed in a GASVAGEN.  (retro fitted ambulances that were used to gas people in German-horror.)   I once dated a man who was an older Jewish guy in Beverly Hills.  We used to talk about hell and heaven and religion.  One time in the conversation, he said, hell is here on earth.  It is here. At that time, I was young and I had not experienced hell on earth.  Maybe he had in his lifetime.   After reading the personal stories about the Holocaust - and seeing the photos of the emaciated bodies of the dead stacked up like firewood, I have to admit..hell is on earth.   I don't know how it could get any more hellish than what the people went through during the concentration camps.  I mean can you imagine getting in a line and being send to the right or left.  One side was the women, children and elderly, sent to be gassed and the rest where sent to a labor camp to be starved, beaten and killed anyway eventually.   Horror.  

So this blog is not about fashion, but I just want to be thankful for what I have today.  So what if I did not get a big order from a company or I am struggling fashion company...I don't live in hell on earth, only in my mind.  I have seen and read enough about it to have nightmares.  Really horrific..sometimes we need to be exposed to horror to really understand the blessing that our own lives are.   Yes, we have hard time, and yes I have struggled, but I don't have to face the horrors of the past in my life.   At least I hope not.

Thank you Zina for coming into my life.  I will never forget the day we met, there was something beautiful about your soul that made me want to talk to you and get your phone number.   You had no teeth, hardly any hair and your legs were swollen twice their size, but you were the most beautiful woman I have ever been friends with.  R.I.P.  I miss and love you always.  Shalom.