past a cattle car that
had carried Jews and others along rail lines to the death camps; we saw piles of unlaced
shoes from Majdanek, reconstructed barracks from Auschwitz, the implements of the
crematoriums, the crayon drawings of children who were gassed and burned to ash at
Theresienstadt.
The next morning, George, Mother, and I were in the Capitol Rotunda for the
ceremonies to mark the Day of Remembrance. We watched as flags from each American
military unit that had liberated the Nazi death camps were carried in. Mother and I
waited, side by side, trying to remember which flag and which unit was Daddy's. Then
suddenly we saw it, the Timberwolf flag, with its signature wolf, head up, mouth open, as
if in full howl. And we both burst into tears. All those years, we had kept his photographs
tucked away in that box, but they were so small, and this horror was so large.
For that moment
dr dre headphone, as we stood watching that flag and remembering, Daddy was
with us.
Then George spoke. "When we remember the Holocaust and to whom it
happened," he said, "we must also remember where it happened. It didn't happen in some
remote or unfamiliar place; it happened right in the middle of the Western world. Trains
carrying men, women, and children in cattle cars departed from Paris and Vienna,
Frankfurt and Warsaw. And the orders came not from crude and uneducated men, but
from men who regarded themselves as cultured and well-schooled, modern and even
forward-looking. They had all the outward traits of cultured men--except for conscience.
Their crimes show the world that evil can slip in and blend in
usa made cigarettes, amid the most civilized of
surroundings. In the end, only conscience can stop it, and moral discernment and decency
and tolerance. These can never be assured in any time or in any society. They must
always be taught."
We felt such overwhelming sadness that day, yet we felt safe. On that morning,
we never contemplated the face of other evils that might slip in.
One of the invitations that crossed my desk that spring was for the opening of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition of Jacqueline Kennedy's dresses. I said yes. The
invitation offered the option of bringing guests, so I asked Regan and her daughter
dr dre beats, Lara,
and Barbara to join me. We arrived at the museum and were met in the receiving line by
Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, as well as the designer Oscar de la Renta and
Caroline Kennedy. It was my first-ever New York designer affair. The last time I had
seen Caroline Kennedy was at the opening of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library
in 1997. I remember that, amid the sea of Carters, Fords
dr dre headphones, Clintons
Beats Studio, and Bushes, she was
standing there alone. So I went over and introduced myself, and we began talking. She
was just a few weeks shy of turning forty then, eight years older than her mother was
when she assumed the title of First Lady of the United States. At thirty-one, Jackie
Kennedy was such a young woman when her husband became pre