My Father's Nightmare

Preppers of the world unite?

My father was a Holocaust survivor. When I was growing-up, Peter Farago’s tales of life in the labor camps were like any Dad’s war stories: unimaginably horrific and impossibly distant.

I remember Father giving a talk to my middle school class on his years in the camps. Starving, freezing, working. Watching his fellow prisoners die.

He told his story in a thick Hungarian accent, addressing questions in a matter-of-fact style, putting his and his family’s suffering in historical context.

If ever a man seemed to take his past in stride, it was Peter Farago. But there were times when the mask slipped and my father faltered.

One night when I was around ten-years-old, I woke-up to screaming. A blood-curdling sound straight out of a horror movie.

Only it wasn’t a woman screaming. It was my father. The mournful cries, pitiful wails and desperate pleas of the strongest man I knew.

My father was having a nightmare about being beaten by sadistic guards who’d captured him after an escape. An event that happened not once, but twice.

For the next few nights, I put my pillow over my head so I wouldn’t hear the screams that shook me to my core.

That same week, my father bought a Winchester. His thinking: if he had a gun in real life maybe he’d take it into his dreams and put an end to endless torture.

The recurring dream stopped. The shotgun was relegated to a closet. Father found relief in sleeping pills, not a shotgun.

Decades later, I created a pro-gun blog. My father was non-committal on the issue of armed self-defense. Except to say he couldn’t believe Jews – of all people – were leading the campaign for civilian disarmament.

(courtesy courthousenews.com)

As we head towards the Fed’s latest recession, as the media shows us lawlessness, I’ve started wondering if Peter Farago would have armed-up and begun prepping? A little? Maybe?

Probably not. After his experiences as an enslaved teenager, his parents murdered in concentration camps, my father became a fatalist. He was always ready – philosophically – for things to go to shit.

Don’t get me wrong. My father was no killjoy. Far from it. He saw life as a tragicomedy. An epic farce to be endured, ridiculed and, when possible, enjoyed.

If the excrement hits the rotating air circulation device, I will draw strength from the man who survived the Nazi nightmare to live the American dream. With a smile on his face? Not during his years of slavery. But later. When it mattered.