If blood could literally boil due to anger, my blood would be boiling. My paternal grandfather’s youngest paternal uncle, my particularly-tragically- and agonizingly-murdered great-granduncle Bernard Stanley (בנימין שמריה הלוי בן יהודה ואסנת) Czarnecki never got a real chance to live. Born in 1920 to hidden-Jewish parents, Great-Granduncle Bernie received an ignominious “Thanks” from a government which already caused his parents and his brother Tony to keep hiding being Jewish: a “botched shrapnel-removal operation” due to Schizophrenia and PTSD in a 25-year-old WW2 veteran (How could that possibility have even occurred to Granduncle Tony, born in 1946 and being just under 17.5 years old on the secular calendar when his uncle died? Nobody told him, “Uncle Bernie had a lobotomy.” The death certificate began to show me for the first time what really happened, although Granduncle Tony got the answer from Great-Granduncle Bernie himself when he saw him again in 2014.).
The (per the 1950 Census) “mentally ill” Bernie Czarnecki would go on to die in the Lebanon, Pennsylvania Veteran’s Home and Hospital due to a coronary occlusion due to Schizophrenia on July 16, 1963.
“‘It’s a shame what Jankie and Susi did to Bernie.’”
No kidding! Those two kapos exploited him into signing off his Social Security benefits to them when the benefits were supposed to go to their widowed sister, Alexandria Julia (who changed her secular and Hebrew names to honor her father after both of her parents died). Great-Grandaunt Alexandria took care of her brother even after her husband died, and she had a paternally-orphaned son whom she raised alone. Of course, from what I gather, nobody at the funeral home mentioned that the sister of a veteran whom shouldered much of the burden for everybody was exploited, too.
At least Great-Granduncle Bernie is with his sisters (including אסנת יהודית בת יהודה הלוי ואסנת שרה בת יוסף הכהן, ז״ל) as well as nephews, nieces, and other relatives whom did appreciate his sacrifice, and away from Antisemites and bogdim. He’s also away from having to live every day dying a long and slow death because of what was done to him.
