Onions is the stories of definitive periods in the lives of five members of the Foulkeways’ community, a CCRC in Gwynedd, PA. The Following are excerpts from their experiences. George Sakheim, A Witness to History, at the age of 22 was an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials. “By the end of the war I had acquired enough points, for having served for almost a year in a combat zone, to go home immediately. It was when I was transferred to a camp outside Paris, ready for evacuation, that I saw a poster asking for interpreters for the upcoming Nuremberg Trials. The decision was difficult; should I go back to Columbia and finish my first year or should I apply to the Nuremberg Trials as an interpreter? Believing that I would be A Witness to History, I chose the latter. Towards the end of the war, the allies were at odds as to what to do with the high ranking Nazis. Stalin and Churchill believed they should be summarily executed while President Roosevelt thought a trial was in order. Stalin and Churchill acquiesced and the Nuremberg Trials were born and history was made. The Nuremberg Trials represented the first time in history that the international community demanded that the atrocities committed by the Nazis must be addressed in a court of law as a crime against humanity. In his opening statement, the moving words of Justice Robert H Jackson, President Truman’s appointee to conduct the American prosecution of the Trials, summarize why the Trials were necessary.
Among the most notable defendants for whom I interpreted were Field Marshall Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second in command and chief of the German Air force and, Rudolph Höss, Commander of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from 1940-1943 and Inspectorate-General of all concentration camps from 1943-45.”
Donald Moon, From Night to Day, founded Friends Life Care at Home. “On November 1, 2015 I was honored to be admitted into the National CCRC Hall of Fame. Its mission, “To recognize and honor individuals that have made significant and innovative contributions to the development of Continuing Care Retirement Communities and Continuing Care at Home Programs.” The current president of the now named Friends Life Care at Home, Carol A. Barbour wrote, “I don’t think that any of us realized the extent of your vision or would have guessed that the entire long term care industry would be so focused on home and community-based services today. You were indeed way ahead of your time.”
Peter Randall, Smile, developed avant garde surgery of the cleft pallet and the harelip allowing children to lead a normal life. “One of the cruelest afflictions that Mother Nature can inflict upon a child is a “harelip” or cleft palate and lip deformity. A cleft palate is a split in the roof of the mouth. It involves the hard palate (the bony front portion of the roof of the mouth), and/or the soft palate (the soft back portion of the roof of the mouth). Clefting occurs when there is not enough tissue in the mouth to join together properly It was Dr Charles W. Tennison, practicing at the Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, TX, who coined the term Triangular Flap, a procedure used in the repair of the cleft lip, when he began this new innovative surgery in 1956. I became enamored of this technique and began using it at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and at it’s affiliate, Children’s Hospital in 1959. The more I worked with this new technique, the more I realized that, although it was a vast improvement over previous methods, it lacked consistency. The repair of the patient’s cleft lip side left the affected side looking different from the unaffected side. After much experimentation I devised a system that took the guess work out of the procedure and guaranteed that both sides would look nearly the same. I did it by introducing a mathematical equation. By making precise measurements on the unaffected side of the cleft lip patient and then using those measurements on the affected side, it was guaranteed both would then look more similar. It would line up the vermilion, the cupids bow, and the white line (adjacent to the vermilion, the red area at the lip’s lower border).”
Marianne Kalman, Journey, was born in Hungary and barely survived WWII and the Holocaust. Although we attended Hebrew School once a week, our formal secular education began in 1937 in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood school. A year after our entrance we learned that being labeled “Jewish” was a hindrance to our very existence. It happened in 1938 while we were waiting for Kincsi to pick us up from school. Because of an emergency fire drill, Dolly and I were detained for a few hours in the school play yard with the rest of the school children. We were waiting to be released when some older children began taunting us with anti-Semitic remarks such as “Your Grandparents killed Jesus” and “You use Christian blood as an ingredient to make your matzo.” Stickers were pinned on our backs reading, “Dirty Jew” and “Death to the Jews.” I was perplexed; I always thought it was a good thing to be Jewish. These accusations were particularly hurtful to me since I knew that my Grandfather was the nicest man on earth and he was Jewish.”
Joel Sartorius, Sartorius: Joel’s Personal Story, a member of the LGBT community. “When I was eighteen I came out of the closet and told my parents that I was a homosexual. I was a senior in High School. My Father’s reaction; “I knew it all the time.” My Mother’s reaction was quite different; she put on “sackcloth and ashes.” Her comment, “Where did I go wrong?” I always assumed by that comment that somehow she felt it was her fault that I was gay. Even so, although she never accepted my homosexuality, she didn’t completely reject me.”
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