It's true: I am a tired old sports fan

      Stress has become a huge part of my sports life.
      It always was there, and people who know much about me know nervous energy -- not peace and calm -- is part of the explosive package.
      Now it has come to this. I never imagined that some day I would write: I am a tired old sports fan.
      That might surprise some because passion for athletics has defined me. Other than the love for my wife, kids and grandkids -- and, yes, friends -- sports has driven me every day in every year.
      But I'm fed up. I addressed this in a blog almost five years ago -- http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2012/10/stressed-out-dont-like-it.html, and now it's worse.
      In most of my blogs, I try to stay upbeat, although that is difficult when writing about Nazis and the Holocaust. I have taken my shots in some sports blogs -- hello, Jerry Jones, and goodbye forever, George M. Steinbrenner -- but mostly the focus has been positive.
      This blog isn't going to be positive.
      I can hardly stand to watch sports anymore -- in person,  on television or on computer.
---
      Stories are more difficult to read, to digest. I hardly ever look at a newspaper these days, and I can do only so much reading sports news on the screen in front of me right now.
      When I see breaking sports news, I cringe. When I watch games or events, I mostly can't stand the athletes' behavior, and I don't like their looks. I am repulsed -- really -- by most  college and pro coaches.
       I strongly believe there is so much hypocrisy in college athletics. For instance: recruiting. So overdone, overblown; kids' egos far out of control. The media and recruiting services/web sites' obsession with "verbal commitments" is part of the problem.
       Colleges "offering" scholarships before kids even qualify academically for school should be prohibited, nor should kids be allowed to sign before their senior seasons in a sport are completed. Yes, I have some radical ideas.
       College athletes are spoiled, pampered -- and no way like "normal" students. Pay them for playing? My view: A free education is pretty darned good pay.  
       Far too much money involved in all college athletics, and that's even more true in pro sports. It's so out of whack with the rest of society, it's not right.      
       Salaries, for players and coaches, are outrageous. Ticket prices? It galls me to even look at them. Public financing for stadiums, ridiculous (that's you, Arlington, Texas).
       I see people who are excited about the NFL preseason games. People, read this: biggest ripoff in sports today, period.
       For the first time, I am not looking forward to football season. Nope, not even college football.
       I used to count down the weeks until opening kickoff. Not even nervous this year. Maybe next week, I will feel the anxiety of another LSU season, another Louisiana Tech season. 
      Really, I try to avoid anything NFL. The Cowboys are just a soap opera; so many sideshows; so much Jerry Jones in our face. So much boring Jason Garrett. If QB Dakota Prescott -- with his Bossier Parish ties -- wasn't there, it would be a total wash for me. I can root for Dak.
      The violence of the game never has been appealing. And it's a violent game, no way around it. So many people relish the "big hits," but celebrating them -- as if often done -- is a poor message.
      The injuries -- concussions, threat (and reality) of paralysis, multiple surgeries for so many -- are awful. Worse: the more frequent deaths/suicides related to CTE (brain damage).
      If they never played another football game, my life would be OK. Feels strange because the sport has been so important to me for so, so long.
      No longer watch the NBA. Just as in the NFL (and college sports), it would be a lot better if the athletes did not celebrate after almost every good play they make.
      Stopped following tennis years ago, about the same time as boxing (after Ali, I did not care). Do like track and field, especially in OIympic years; same for swimming. Olympics,  as a whole, are far too commercial. 
      Never much of a car-racing fan or horse racing, but I watched and read about those sports when I was working because I needed to know enough to edit stories.
      Still like watching golf, but limit it to the majors and the tournaments I love most, on courses with which I am familiar (Colonial, right here by the apartments, and The Players Championship). And it usually takes one of the great young players on tour now to be in contention and draw my attention.
      First love, soccer, boring as it is. Love it lots more when The Netherlands' men's team is playing well. But that was one World Cup ago.

The Texas Rangers pour it on after a victory (Getty Images photo)

      Bored even by baseball, a sport I have been passionate about for 60-plus years. The games are just too darned long, the players act out too much (but not quite as much as in the NBA or NFL).
      Really can't stand the walkoff victory celebrations -- the team-jumping exercise, the pouring of Gatorade (see this week's Sports Illustrated cover -- the Dodgers), water, powder on the "hero," even if the other team made an error that allows the winning run to score. Especially don't like the pileup and the ripping off of the game shirt.
        Throwing pitches at batters or behind them, on-field skirmishes (as in Yankees-at-Tigers on Thursday): dumb and dangerous. Play the game the right way.  
      So stupid all of it. Young men acting like kids? A whole bunch of spoiled, overpaid brats.
      You really want me to go on a rant, let's go back to college football coaches. Ah, never mind. I don't have enough time or space or energy. But I am so, so tired of them especially -- our great role models.
      Just a sample, consider the scandals. Hugh Freeze and Ole Miss, North Carolina and academics, Art Briles and a rape culture, Bobby Petrino and the motorcycle mistress, (unfortunately) the late Joe Paterno. I could list dozens.
      Our son-in-law, who is host for a radio sports talk show, tweeted this a couple of weeks ago:
      "I'm so over these coaches. Butch [Jones], [Ed] Orgeron, [Brian] Kelly, [Tom] Herman ... all paranoid, self-obsessed dullards."
      I agree totally. Let me add sanctimonious and obsessive (Nick Saban), control freak (Gary Patterson), brash (Jim Harbaugh), whiner (Urban Meyer), cocky (Jim McFlorida), zany (the out-of-work but well-paid Les Miles), slightly berserk (Dabo Swinney) and unintelligible (Orgeron). 
      And at Louisville, angry-man Petrino. It is a scandal double-play when you add basketball -- Rick Pitino (a friend says that when he goes to a restaurant he orders "a table that will hold two") and his staff runs an escort service, but of course he had nothing to do with that.
      I never was much of a sports-talk show fan, be it radio or television. But I know several radio show hosts -- son-in-law and some friends -- who I respect and who know their stuff, and I am glad they're on the air.
      And I am happy for my friends and former co-workers still making a good living in the newspaper or online sportswriting business.
      When I do watch games, I seldom have the sound turned on. I will listen only to a few announcers. Mute is good. I usually can figure out what's going on.
      I have a friend who, went I told him how I'm feeling, said, "There is nothing like walking into a full college football stadium." True, if that's what you like. To me, it's a pain being in a big crowd and waiting out massive traffic jams.
      Millions of fans in all sports do like what they pay big prices to see. Good for them. I'm out.
---    
       But, but, but ... two qualifiers.
       (1) It's not that I do not care about my teams; I am just as intense a fan as ever. When they win, great (but better when they play well). When they lose, it still feels bad. It always will.
       I must remind myself: It's a game; the results are fleeting.
       (2) Because I am addicted to LSU football, and addictions are hard to break, and because I am interested in Louisiana Tech athletics, I will pay attention. I might even watch the games live on TV (when available).  
       Might watch. But I might just follow on computer. Or, as I did with LSU's early kickoff bowl game last season, I will  record the game on U-Verse and watch it later. I did that all last season with the Cowboys' games, and the Super Bowl.
       Cuts down on the stress level, and don't have to sit through the commercials.
       I don't intend to watch games in person, not for the time being. I did attend three college football games and one basketball game last season, more because I enjoyed being with friends who invited me. Hey, I even paid for one ticket.
       So, for my friends, don't even ask. And don't call to talk to me about athletics. I'll let you know when I'm ready. Until then, I am stressed and I am tired of it all.
 

Blog reactions and this: "Some very fine people on both sides"

      Don't often follow a blog piece with reactions to a previous one. This will be an exception.
      One reason: I failed to include President Trump's "some very fine people on both sides" remark regarding the white supremacists vs. anti-protesters aftermath of Charlottesville last week.
      Please. I have never seen "fine people" among the present-day Nazis, KKK, white supremacists, alt-right.
      If you watched the behind-the-scenes VICE News video of the Friday night march in Charlottesville -- the torch-bearing, chanting and, frankly, Jew-baiting crowd -- and heard the rhetoric from David Duke and all his pathetic buddies, there is nothing and no one "fine" about it.
      Every interview we have seen with "leaders" of these groups ... and they are disgustingly racist/anti-Semitic, and darned happy about it -- and the President's statements.
      No "both sides" to it, period.   
      Sure, one side has some who could be violent, and might be ready for physical attack. The other side is totally prepared for violence. All you have to do is listen to the trash talk.      
      Cannot defend the President, and Vice-President, and our U.S. representative, Kay Granger of Fort Worth, Texas, and others who give these people an "out" or put them on an equal basis. That is an unforgivable error.
      It is, as I said previously, above politics. It is about decency and morality. (Not trying to preach; I have my faults.)
      No way to blame this on the "alt left" or the media. Too much of a throwback to Nazi Germany and the hooded, KKK night riders.
---
      Now, about the reactions ...
      One is from the daughter of a man I regarded as one of the top two sportswriters ever to work in Louisiana. The other is from a superior athlete of his time. I thought both reactions were strong enough and detailed enough to share.
        John Walter "Jack" Fiser was sports editor/lead sports columnist for The Shreveport Times for a decade (1951-61); I described him in a blog a couple of years as a "erudite, brilliant writer." He was years ahead of his time, and my opinion, the only one in Louisiana in his sportswriting class was Peter Finney (in New Orleans). Ego and self-promotion were not part of their personalities.
      Fiser's columns and game stories -- especially on LSU football and the Shreveport Sports, but really on any subject he chose -- were gems, pieces of craftwork. He made a reader think; he could be critical, yes, but with a deft touch.
      Jack Fiser's column was a "must-read" in a time when The Times circulation was wide, through north and central Louisiana, into east Texas and southern Arkansas.
      Too young for the Fiser writing era, the hours I spent researching sports history of those years were made much longer because I always stopped to read, and appreciate,  what he wrote.
      Full disclosure: Mr. Fiser was sports information director at Louisiana Tech in 1966-67; I was his student assistant, my sophomore year at Tech. He moved to Baton Rouge after that year and wound up at LSU's Alumni House as a writer/researcher (my sister, as a student, worked for him there).

Mr. and Mrs. Fiser

        He was calm and soft-spoken, measured, highly intelligent, well-read, respected and respectful. In so many ways, he was like Tech legendary athletic director-football coach Joe Aillet; he and Mrs. Fiser were close friends with the Aillets. He also was very friendly with Pete Dosher -- his predecessor as Tech SID and my first mentor there -- and Mary Dosher.
      Mr. Fiser's daughter Joan, who in 1966-67 was a cute high school junior (Byrd, in Shreveport), now lives in the San Jose/Silicon Valley area, married and a mother -- and a Facebook friend.
      Here is the note she sent me after the previous blog:
      "What's been happening in our country is alarming and those of us who are appalled by it must speak out. This year I've often thought of my dad, who as you were probably aware, Nico, was politically conservative. I doubt seriously that he ever considered voting for a Democrat, but I know he would not have liked or voted for our current president because of Trump's ignorance, ineptitude, dishonesty, boastfulness and so many other qualities that Jack Fiser abhorred.
      "As a former Marine who dropped out of LSU to fight fascism (later returning to graduate), he would have been upset by the current rise of anti-Semitism and white nationalism. My father would have found Trump's admiration for Putin unthinkable.
      "What we are witnessing is shocking and, at times, frightening, and we can't remain quiet about it. Hopefully, at some point not too far in the future, we will return to the kind of society that most of us grew up in and value -- one in which people can have differing political views and values but still coexist amicably and work together. We should never make the mistake of taking our democracy and way of life for granted."
      Joan adds, "One point I wanted to make was that as far apart as Dad and I were politically on certain issues (like foreign policy), I always respected him as a principled, intelligent person. I knew that we shared very clear values about what's really important in life and how people should be treated.
      "What became obvious in the presidential campaign and since the election is that something has happened to the shared value system that so many of us took for granted. During the campaign it was acceptable to insult other candidates in a vulgar way, which would have been unthinkable before.
       "Now, some people don't seem to have a problem with neo-Nazis marching in the streets shouting, 'Jews will not replace us' or running over counter protestors. This is not the society I grew up in or want for my daughter and her future children."
---
       I am not going to name the person who offered the second reaction I am sharing. But I will say that it surprised me to an extent. Here it is ...
       "[I] did not intend to go deep into the Trump issue but rather wanted to thank you for making me stop and think and reflect and do some soul-searching. When this latest Trump issue came about, I thought 'here we go again,' and then tried not to get emotionally tied to it as I have too many issues in my own life to deal with. But it wouldn't go away ... and it won't.
       "I think this is the beginning of the end for Mr. Trump -- resign or get impeached, but either way for the good of this country he must go. That is how I truly feel.
       "Your assessment of Trump and the trainwreck his presidency is 100 percent correct. I agree totally with what you said in your blog. Thank you."
---
       One more personal remembrance from Joan Fiser, dating to early 1968:
        "I remember your parents, whom I met at a Tech basketball game. As you know, your mother was one of those people who touched people's lives. I still remember her face as she explained the number on her arm. That is a story I shared with hundreds of students over the years when the subject of the Holocaust came up. Hopefully that story will never be forgotten."

Here is my red line ...

     

Marching in Charlottesville (nbcnews.com photo)

My mother spent 25 years talking publicly -- and privately -- about the Holocaust, and warning how anti-Semitism and bigotry is still out there and can rise again.
       And here we are.
       Thinking of my mother and father, who were Holocaust survivors and who lost practically their entire families at the hands, guns and gas chambers of the Nazis ...
       Miss them, but glad they are not here for these times and this President.
       I have written about my parents' lives and about their Holocaust experiences, and about some of their friends ... because it is part of my history, my family's history.
       I cannot, and will not, be silent on Charlottesville and the aftermath. The President's at-first weak and then defiant response is unacceptable.
       You don't agree, you can "unfriend" on Facebook or "unfollow" me, or tell me to you want off my e-mail list. Fine. I don't care.
       I have waited to express that, even with criticism from old (and not-so-old) friends after my two political-type posts last year. One of those posts was a defense of the media, and my view that "fake news" references are propaganda from a candidate/President who relies almost daily on targeting someone or some entity.
       But if you can find a defense for this, for his "many sides" BS, for any kind of "out" for the white supremacy, Nazi-KKK-alt right creeps -- and I could use much more colorful descriptions, I don't need you. 
       That goes for anyone, friends from 60 years ago, whatever. This is my parting shot.
       Don't want to get too deep into politics and social issues because it hisses off so many people. I understand the difference between conservative viewpoints and liberal ones, and most of you know where I lean. But I don't lean as much as some of my friends and family.
       But this issue, the current uprising of these Nazis and KKK hoodlums, and their "leaders" whose faces and voices we see and hear too much, the torches burning in the night, the violence erupting (and the prospect of much more), no thanks.
       Just as so many of you were critical of the previous President and the losing Presidential candidate, this President can be criticized every minute of every day. I don't have time or space, except to say I trust the media people we watch a helluva lot more. They are articulate -- and he's not.
       They are articulate -- and he's not. (Just repeating, as he does with almost every sentence he likes.)
       That statement he read Saturday was a joke. Obviously someone wrote for him, as they write almost everything for him these days -- and when he goes off-script, that's when he begins hammering anyone he thinks he needs to hammer (including his Cabinet members and his Republican "friends" in Congress).
       Guarantee you he's never said the word "egregious" before in his life.
       He read that statement Saturday, and the one Tuesday, without any real meaning, without conviction, without empathy. But with plenty of fire and fury when admonishing the media and interrupting -- "excuse me, excuse me ... I'm not finished."
       His rudeness, just as in the debates and the campaign, is overwhelming. His supporters love it; he's "being tough." That is a bunch of bull. His indecency is well-publicized, and it matters not to so many. 
       I much prefer a President who shows class -- whether you agree with him or not -- and can empathize and sympathize. This hate- and fear-mongering bully has none.
       I had a friend tell me several weeks ago, "Anyone who criticizes the President is a bad person."
       Unbelievable. Yes, the office of the President should be respected. But the person in the office should earn that respect. So many refused to give that to the last President.
       You could disagree with his policies and the tone of the country, again I understand. But he was -- my opinion -- not abusive. Nor were Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush.
       As for the statues honoring the South's Civil War heroes, I don't have a strong opinion. They honor a history, but if they are offensive to African-Americans -- whose  ancestors were the slaves of so many, including our Presidents and the South's war heroes -- you should understand. 
       Same for the Confederate flag.
       Same for KKK hoods and torches.  
       Same for us, the Nazi flag and Nazi gear and Nazi propaganda, and -- heaven forbid -- Nazi statues. Same for KKK hoods and torches.  
       Much of the past should be the past, not the present.
       So, as I posted on Facebook, here are links to re-posts by a couple of journalist friends I respect. 
       From Bob Mann, former Shreveport Journal writer political analyst/teacher in Baton Rouge, on the synagogue in Charlottesville:     
https://www.facebook.com/nvanthyn/posts/1549580738433195?notif_t=like&notif_id=1502896258022518
       From Evan Grant -- Jewish, a late 1980s Shreveport Times sportswriter en route to covering the Texas Rangers for The Dallas Morning News:
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/15/dallas-holocaust-survivors-past-suddenly-become-painfully-present
       So there you have it. We are always aware of the Nazi/KKK/alt-right/white supremacists history and the Nazi/KKK/alt-right/white supremacists ways. My mother knew, and she spoke.
       During the Presidential campaign, Mr. Trump was slow to disavow David Duke's "endorsement" and -- again -- finally did disavow, after prodding, without much conviction. He's hired alt-right, Nazi sympathizers for his White House staff.
       It was predictable, to me, during the Presidential campaign and the white supremacists' obvious delight with this candidacy -- and again now, with their gleeful response to his Tuesday outburst and blame on the "alt-left," that their protests and violence was not far away. I'm surprised it took six months.
       They now have been emboldened and empowered, and what about those neo-Nazis in Europe seeing this?
       We don't accept the "many sides" drivel, we do not accept the "we want to take our country back" crap, we do not accept so much of what this President stands for and, even more, what he says.
       This is beyond politics. It's bigotry and hatred. You don't like what I'm saying, good-bye.       

Another Holocaust/book update: Mom's friend Hilde

         Hilde Kratzenstein Meier, a Holocaust survivor who we knew as Hilde Cohen, rarely talked about her days in World War II.
       Too painful, too sad.
       In the photo of my mother and her "camp sisters" -- the group of Auschwitz and other concentration-camp survivors -- the woman behind Mom (bottom left) is Hilde.
      She has her right hand on my mother's right shoulder. For the next 60 years, they were connected.
      She soon would become Hilde Cohen, marrying Jacob "Jaap" Cohen, a man with two sons. They all somehow survived those early 1940s World War II years, each with their own story.
      They are stories of family losses, separation, intrigue (hidden survivors), imprisonment, reunion ... and a new start with a new family.
      Hilde and Jaap each lost their first spouses and much of their families in the war years. Each was a native of Germany, and separately, left that country in 1933 to move to The Netherlands and escape Hitler's early reign of terror.
      Rob Cohen, the son born in 1949 to Hilde and Jaap, provided much of the information for this blog piece. He lives, as he always has, in The Netherlands.
      As Rob wrote to me and my sister Elsa a few months ago after reading the book about my parents and our family -- Survivors: 62511, 70726 -- Hilde was unlike my mother in this way: She preferred not to talk about the Holocaust experience. 
      "It took me some time to read the book," Rob wrote. "For obvious reasons. ... Especially the part of your mother during the war. It is, of course, also the story of my mother.
      "But contrary to your mother, my mother was not able to speak (much) about her experiences, mainly because of the loss of her mother, father, sister, brother and husband.
      "And because of her own character. So, for those reasons, she was not able to have much contact with your mother, but I can assure you that she loved her dearly."
      Rob did note one major correction:
      "My mother is mentioned in the book as Hilda Meier Kretsenstein. But her exact name is Hilde Kratzenstein."
      (Let's say that my mother's memory and notes were a bit faulty, and so was my lack of research.)
      The "camp sisters" photo likely was made in summer 1945, some months after the end of their imprisonment at Auschwitz, in the infamous women's Block 10 (and the gruesome medical experiments by the Nazis), and after their weeks-long "Death March" through Poland in the brutal winter cold of January 1945.
      By the time of the photo, they had recovered some health, had been given the hand-me-down uniforms they are wearing, and were waiting to find a way to return to The Netherlands.
      When Hilde returned, she soon reunited with Jaap Cohen. And Jaap had reunited with his two sons.
---        
      Jaap was born in Ochtrup, Germany, on May 16, 1907;  Hilde was born in Schüttorf, Germany, on Feb. 5, 1919. So, Jaap was 12 years older than my father, Louis Van Thyn, and Hilde was five months older than Dad. Mom (Rose Van Thyn) was two years younger than Hilde and Dad.
      In 1940, Hilde married Otto Meier, who lived in Enschede, The Netherlands. It was in Enschede where she and Jaap first met, as working companions -- as Rob notes -- "at Meijer Clothing Shop. My father was a window dresser, my mother a saleswoman."
      Hilde, like my mother, was "picked up" by the Nazis in 1943 and eventually transported by cattle-car train to Auschwitz. Otto died in a concentration camp.
      Jaap Cohen, Rob said, "was a survivor, but not from the camps. He was hidden in Utrecht with the Van de Dorpe family (mother and two daughters, all three teachers) together with his wife Sophia (Fietje, she was called) de Lange.
      At first, their oldest son (Harry, born in 1940) was with them. But for safekeeping, he then was hidden in several places in Friesland, up north in The Netherlands, then and now the most sparsely populated, most rural -- mostly farms with cattle and crops -- province in the country.
      Harry was never betrayed, never discovered in hiding by the Nazis. He was too young to remember where he was hidden. 
      The younger son, Jaques/called Jack, was born in a Utrecht hospital in 1943. Details are sparse, but the mother -- as the boys were told -- died in that time frame, perhaps in childbirth. Jaap remained in hiding.
       This is for certain: The occupying Nazis immediately took the baby and he was sent to the Theresienstadt camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia.
      Here, from the encyclopedia on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum web site and other sources, is information on what is described as a "model" camp -- a stopoff for many Jewish prisoners, but also one where the arts were emphasized and were children of age attended an unofficial school.
       Some 140,000 Jews from all over Europe were sent to Theresienstadt; some 90,000 were transported onto Auschwitz and other death camps; some 30,000 died there from starvation or illness; and the number of children was estimated at 15,000.
       Only 10 percent of those children -- an estimated 1,500 -- survived the war. One of those was Jack Cohen.
       Maybe he was among the 1,200 Dutch Jews which a group in Switzerland -- the neutral country untouched (almost unbelievably) by the Nazis -- ransomed from the SS in exchange for millions of dollars. But maybe Jack and others were in the camp when the Russian Red Army liberated it and the International Red Cross moved in to care for the survivors.  
       What Rob Cohen and his brothers knew was that Harry and Jack wound up together -- and Jaap found them.
       "After the war all children (without relatives) were brought to the Berg Stichting Foundation in Laren (a town in North Holland)," Rob wrote, "where my father found them again and brought them with him to Enschede."
        That foundation, begun in 1909, was a shelter for Jewish children, many of them orphans. But the Cohen brothers, by now 5 and 2, were not orphans. They were survivors.
       By then Hilde was in Enschede, too. She and Jaap met again, and married on March 27, 1947. Rose and Louis had been married five months earlier.
       The Cohens soon moved.
        "A brother of my father had a clothing shop in Hilversum," Rob wrote, "but as he also didn't return after the war, my father got the chance to take over this shop in 1947."
        Hilversum is where Rob was born some       2 1/2 years later.

The Cohen family, 1950,
 in Hilversum, The Netherlands

     And Hilversum -- 16 miles southeast of Amsterdam and longtime base of the Dutch national radio and television networks -- is where I remember the Cohen family from visits there with my parents in the early 1950s. Rose went to see Hilde, Louis became friends with Jaap, and Elsa and I were along for the trips.
      Elsa, too young then to remember our visits, recalled her 1963 trip to The Netherlands with Mom -- their first time back after we left late in 1955 -- and told Rob, "I have such a clear memory of Jackie and his motorcycle. ... Remember how nice he was and actually took me for a ride. As a 12-year-old girl, I remember him being so handsome ."
     Elsa returned for visits with our parents in 1972 and 1975 and also told Rob that we had a home movie of him diving into the water near their lakehouse in Loosdrecht.
      "I have such wonderful memories of your family," Elsa wrote.
---

Frouke van Eijk and Rob Cohen

      Rob now lives in Almere, which is 14 miles almost straight east from Amsterdam -- although that straight line goes across the Ijmeer lake.
     For many years, Rob was a tax advisor ("still working a bit") and an active soldier in the Dutch National Guard. He retired in 2009 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
      Married in 1970 to Gisela Bässler (a German native, not Jewish), they have two children -- Claudia (1972), who is married and lives in Jerusalem (where she became an Orthodox Jew) and Peter (1975), a divorced father with two sons who has another son with a new partner and lives in Woerden, The Netherlands.
     Gisela died of a stroke on Dec. 31, 2006, at age 60.
     Since September 2009, Rob has lived with Froukje van Eijk in Almere.
     Brother Jack died of cancer on May 6, 2003. Harry lives alone in Sweden and, says Rob, "is doing well."
---

Jaap and Hilde, 1973

     Jaap Cohen died of cancer on July 23 1979, and soon after that, Hilde -- now alone -- moved to  Benidorm,  Spain, where she lived the last 25 years of her life.
     She died on March 11,  2006 -- so some      2 1/2 years before Dad and four years after Mom.
     She left Rob a memorable keepsake.
     It is a symbol of the great care the United States soldiers gave to Mom, Hilde and the other concentration-camp survivors in Poland in the spring of 1945.
      "Attached I send you," Rob wrote in an e-mail, "the emblem of the 69th Infantry Division, which my mother got for her memory from the American captain and which she always kept in her wallet.
      "I am proud to have it now  because it symbolizes the great gratitude we feel to our brave liberators."
       Rob's lasting memory of his mother and her Holocaust experience is "she did not want to talk about the history. It made her sick. So that is the reason she did not stay in touch with your parents and anyone else from her past."