I met a man named Franko

It was October of 2001. I still had the jitters so bad I was walking everywhere - no subways for me. My friend was having a barbecue in his backyard on 79th St. I picked up some things at the Union Sq. Greenmarket at 14th, and started walking uptown. I was at about B'way and 28th when I saw this tiny little old man sort of stranded in the crosswalk. He caught my eye then reached out and grabbed my arm. "Is this Harlem?" he said. He was lost. He was a tourist from Italy. He might have been 80 years old. I said I would help him find his midtown hotel so we started walking together.

Franco said, "I was a prisoner of the Americans in World War II. They treated me so well. They gave us Vienna sausages. I want to try them again. When I heard what happened in New York, I wanted to come, because the American soldiers treated me so well when I was a prisoner."

We got in a cab. I took him to the barbecue. He had a hotdog and some chips.

How interesting!

I am so glad my grandfather isn't here to see this desecration of the ideals of our nation.

A couple years ago I had a neighbor, about 80, who still wears a very nicely pressed VFW hat. He would sit on his porch and tell me about his participation in the invasion of Italy in WWII. He told me the one time he killed a man was in Italy amongst some groves when he one-shotted this sniper that had given them problems for days. The other thing i remember from our conversations was the one time he told me what would happen if a Nazi officer fell into the hands of French intelligence (who often accompanied the Allies). He said he walked past by a tent where a Nazi officer was being "interrogated" by French intel, the Nazi had his balls in some twisting device and my neighbor said he never forgot the cries of pain coming from that tent.

That is a hard picture to imagine, painful.

... of the kind you describe. read it in reader's digest ages back...
but i agree- ouch!

I'm 64 years old. I remember WWII and the relatives and neighbors who fought in it. Americans have changed since then. I have noticed it. No one cares about one another anymore. They don't care about their neighbors, their family or what happens to their planet. They do mean things to one another to get ahead and don't think twice about whom they are hurting. What happened?

on his family farm when he was a teenager. They came to work during the day, and ate with the family. They went to a barracks to sleep at night. My father's family spoke German. They were warned against excessive fraternizing, but I know they became friendly with these young men.

Not all the families in his area were willing to take prisoners as farmhands, even if they needed the help. But no one in the community mistreated them.

Maybe we were closer to our roots then. We were more aware that we were an immigrant nation, with some of us not that many generations removed from our foriegn roots. Maybe people then knew what hardship was about. They had just survived a depression. Matters of life and death were more immediate.

We became more affluent after World War II. We learned to be consumers rather than citizens. We lost touch with our roots, and greed set in. Maybe this misadministration is just the natural outcome of our nation's greedy mindset. Maybe this is the wakeup call, to get us back to what is really important.

His father was a POW in WWII. He(the father) was a teenager at the time. He was sent to Ireland by the British, which was neutral at the time. The Irish let the POWs who wanted to, to attend university. He says his father owes the Irish for teaching him English and skills that would enable him to rebuild his life and country after the war. He was very anti-Nazi and pro-democracy by-the-way.

goes faster and faster.. We are addicted now, and cannot get off the treadmill...

We consume more, yet want more..Nothing is good enough or even enough..

Our brains have been rewired.. We used to fix irons, toasters, razors, shoes... :(

We are solitary, insular creatures now..If someone else has something we want, we feel obliged to have one bigger,better, faster, shinier..

If he leaves "his" unattended, we just take his..(he should never have left it unattended)...

Empathy is gone...sympathy is gone...replaced by greed, envy and distrust..

That's what happened to "us"..

Doncha know, it's all Clinton's fault!

We've got a professional, all-volunteer military these days that draws largely from the poorest sections of the population. That's exactly what you want if your desire is to "project power".

But everything is falling apart. Our media is more of a corporate mouthpiece than ever before. Fascists control all branches of government.

I'm actually ahsamed to be an American these days. That makes me furious.

I'm glad Franko chose to ask you for help,but then,I also think that when people need help,they look around at the available choices and pick the person that seems most likely to give it. I'm betting you have a good karma thing going on!

what a precious story and how grand of you to share with that man. thank you for sharing. that was lovely

and why have we changed as america, we dont listen to each other, we all want it our way, and our way now. it is the only way and everyone else is wrong. we are self absorbed and unwilling to do as steph and let that man hold onto her arm, and take him on a bbq with her. we are not accepting to anyone. we have created such a strident way we have to walk thru life with no freedom. without freedom, oh lordy how can we fly

we have so little trust and faith in our fellow man, to allow him to live and be

The American soldiers in WWII treated Franko SO WELL while he was a P.O.W., that when Giuliani said "if you want to help, come to New York, see a Broadway show" Franko did JUST THAT. He LOVED the Americans who IMPRISONED HIM. He wanted to PAY US BACK in gratitude by coming here. He wanted to taste Vienna sausages from a can. He had FOND memories of being a P.O.W. THAT was our grandparents' generation.

we are still that people we just arent seeing it right now. and i believe we will be that person again. the saddest thing about the 9/11, it was a time in our history where we could have kick ass as a person, in love in the grandness of who we are, in such disaster and pain, universally united witht he world. could have been an opportunity in healing and uniting with the middle east too. we chose revenge and anger and fear, fed by bushco, and the last three years this is what he created.

We can be this, and we will be this again.

no bags over his head?

Sounds like somebody didn't know what they were doing.

The Greatest Generation meets Generation X. viva le difference

They weren't all so pleasant. We didn't simply fast-forward from the Italian countryside in '44 to Abu Ghraib '04.

I am glad for Franko that he was treated so kindly. Not every person who has crossed paths with the US can say the same.

There should be - could be - more people like Franko in this world. And there are generations upon generations that must shoulder that fact.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

And most Americans are tops, too!

Only a few side with the NAZIs. The Bushes, for example.

simple kindness...maybe some day we can be again what we once were.

How long has Rush Limbaugh been on the air?

How sad that we are degenerating into the very thing we fought against in that war.

That's exactly it.

There is hope yet. Your story provides it.

:loveya:

/

Please do send this as a LTTE.

And thank you so much for sharing.

*sigh*

received some visiting scholars from China. They had lived through the early years of Mao's revolution and had been arrested and subjected to internal exile during the Cultural Revolution, so we had some interesting discussions.

They said that during the Vietnam War, they received constant news reports about the "American imperialist aggressors," but always with a footnote saying that Chinese people should not hate the American people, only what their government was doing.

Visitors to Vietnam in recent years have noted that ordinary people, even those in the North who were on the receiving end of massive bombing, show no resentment toward American tourists.

When I first went to Japan in 1977, I was leery of visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an obvious Westerner (5'10" and blond), but Hiroshima was fine, and Nagasaki was one of the most genuinely friendly places in the country.

In constrast, our government and media seem to have a need to vilify entire ethnic groups and play upon the geographic and historical ignorance of the American people.

It is shameful to remember that in the days after 9/11, some long-time DU posters were sounding positively freeperish in calling for the nuclear annihilation of all the Arab nations.