Decades later, Peter the Nazi reappeared in a different guise
The bedtime stories I told my children when they were growing up had one thing in common: They all featured a villain named Peter. Peter was the greedy landowner who demanded exorbitant rent from the hapless Jewish innkeeper. Peter was the town drunk who downed copious amounts of alcohol and refused to pay Moshke for his beverages. Peter was the cruel peasant who terrorized the local Yidden.
In the end, Peter always emerged the loser. Either he landed in prison or he lost all his money or he met an unusual death.
But the story of Peter in my own life had a very different ending.
BEFORE THE WAR, my father was the rav of a town in Hungary. He lost his first wife and their 11 children in the concentration camps.
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