My father, Moshe Weitman, was a Torah scholar, lover of Yiddish, opera, and the violin. He was born in the shtetl Balygrodt, Poland in 1905 and lived a life of piety, poverty, fear, and virulent antisemitism. As a young man he prepared to emigrate to Palestine but, instead, in 1938, miraculously obtained a visa for the US. He worked as a laborer, at backbreaking jobs. And he was haunted by the shadow of survivor guilt.
I think about the life my father should have had versus the one he did have. May his soul know peace in the life beyond.