My Great-Grandfather's Inheritance

I received a most thoughtful letter last week, addressed to me and my nineteen paternal cousins. It speaks for itself.

Dear S---,

Your great-grandfather Hugo F----- died in the Nazi Holocaust. Like millions of other Jews, he was rounded up and put in a concentration camp. Unlike death camps like Auschwitz, concentration camps didn’t have gas chambers. At concentration camps, the strategy of killing Jews was carried out more gradually, as prisoners were kept on starvation diets, forced to work long hours under intolerable conditions, and denied access to medical care. In the case of Hugo F-----, the strategy worked – he perished after about two years in the concentration camp in Maria-Theresienstadt, known also by its Czech name Terezin.

Like many Europeans in the 1930’s, Hugo F----- bought life insurance as a way of protecting his savings so he’d have something to pass on to his children. During that decade, banks failed, stocks lost value, and if you kept your money at home, it could be stolen or lost its value due to inflation. As persecution of the Jews skyrocketed in Austria in 1938 with the Nazi takeover, Jews had especially strong reason to put their savings into life insurance, since gangs and thugs could steal or destroy Jewish people’s property without being punished.

Because of how the Nazis seized and destroyed all the Jews’ property, Hugo F-----’s life insurance policies – the papers that gave him or his heirs a right to cash in – were lost. So after the war, nobody could make a claim on his life insurance. The same thing happened to thousands of other Jewish people and their descendents. The life insurance companies simply kept the money.

Late in the 1990’s pressure from activists fighting for justice for Holocaust victims forced many life insurance companies to agree to make good on life insurance policies that had been lost during the Holocaust. Aunt Sonia learned about that in a newspaper, and, with help from our uncle Heinz (Hans’s older brother) told the lawyers handling the case that we were Hugo F-----’s heirs, in case they could find any record of Hugo’s life insurance.

Sure enough, they did, and they determined that, with interest, his life insurance policy was worth a bit over $80,000, and that as one of Hans F-----’s grandchildren, your share is $1,043.14. (For those of you who like math, here’s how it works: the total is split 50-50 between Hugo’s sons Heinz and Hans. Hans said in his will that he wanted what he had to be distributed with 50% going to his children and 50% to his grandchildren, of which there are 20. Make sense?)

So, thanks to the love and forethought of your great-grandfather Hugo, and thanks to the generosity of your grandfather Hans, and thanks to the lawyers and activists who fought for justice for Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and thanks to your Aunt Sonia for doing the paperwork, here is your share of your great-grandfather’s life insurance proceeds.

Affectionately, your Dad,

Peter G. F-----
Personal Representative, Estate of Hans G. F-----

I don't know yet what I'll do with the money.

Hurts So Good

What is it about the winter weather in Rochester that feels so mild? Gone are the dull December days of highs in the 40's: it hasn't cracked 32 here for two weeks. But despite weather in the teens and twenties, the air is easy to breathe and walking outside is nippy, but pleasant.

Coming into school today it was sunny with a breeze, and three inches of fresh powder lay on top of the 10 or 12 inches we already had on the ground. But after a nice walk into school, I turn on the computer to learn that it's 17 degrees, with a wind chill feel of 5 degrees. Maybe it's the humidity (58%) that makes the air feel mild; or the effect of living on a large, still unfrozen river. I don't know, but I'm certainly appreciative of how easy it still is to get around walking and - even better - on skis.

(On a related note, I skied a good 10 or 12 miles to and from RIT last night. Awesome trails, packed down by snowmobiles, almost the entire way).

Kerry Finally Gets It

John Kerry has had an epiphany. According to sources cited by the Globe, the senator will not seek re-defeat for the presidency in 2008. The very idea of him running again was laughable to anyone outside his immediate family, and it must have taken strong hints from many of his Democrat colleagues to convince the French-looking politician not to run.

Amusingly, the Globe's sources think that the "botched joke" was pivotal:

According to Kerry associates, the senator's plans changed dramatically in the fallout of his election-eve ``botched joke" about the education levels of US troops. The harsh reaction to that incident -- from many Democrats as well as Republicans -- displayed to Kerry the extreme skepticism within his own party about whether he should mount another run.

To most of us, the very idea of another Kerry candidacy was a botched joke in and of itself.

Hat tip to Drudge.

State of the Union

Still together, but not for long. If you believe everything these presidents say.

Roe v. Wade Turns 34

Happy Birthday to Roe versus Wade, the sine qua non of moralistic judicial activism. The annual pro-life rally sloshed through D.C., receiving elegant lip service from politicians, and wild-eyed weirdo coverage from a half-hearted media contingent, no doubt.

Those who don't like abortion politics often criticize abortion supporters and opponents for being one-dimensional. Aren't there issues that affect the country and the world more? Um, not a lot more. From Wikipedia:

[Yearly], approximately 46 million abortions are performed. Of these, 26 million are said to occur in places where abortion is legal; the other 20 million happen where it is illegal . Some countries, such as Belgium (11.2 per 100 known pregnancies) and the Netherlands (10.6 per 100), have a low rate of induced abortion, while others like Russia (62.6 per 100) and Vietnam (43.7 per 100) have a comparatively high rate. The world ratio is 26 induced abortions per 100 known pregnancies.

In case you didn't catch that, every year 47,000,000 abortions are performed; that's one out of every four pregnancies. In the U.S., 1,365,700 abortions are performed annually according to somewhat outdated Guttmacher data, with a ratio about the same as the world average.

Abortion is a huge issue, and criminalization alone won't solve the problem. Fundamentally, something is wrong when more than 1 in 4 pregnancies are so unwanted that they are terminated. Global Review does not have any easy answers.

Pitchers and Catchers

Twenty-five days until pitchers and catchers report to the Red Sox's Ft. Myers spring training facility.

Graphs Up!

Chatter Rankings' graphs have been updated and uploaded. Check them out as a companion to the post below at Election 2020.