“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work, reporting or approval of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com.
The Hlinka Men
A perspective from Jeff Lang
The Hlinka Men[1]
She was there, then: Aunt Anna, my father’s sister.
She was the one who told me about the Hlinka Men,
Dressed in black, with ice in their veins,
Who came one day to tap the shoulders
Of people in the streets
In their little town in Central Europe.
And then those people
Disappeared.
But that was long ago, when I was a child,
Safe in America, protected from Hlinka Men
By a law that said everyone had rights.
And that, anyway, I was a citizen,
Even though my father had immigrated,
Because I was born in America.
What happened there, couldn’t happen here,
Not then.
But that was long ago; now I am an old man.
Someone’s told a hateful film-flam man that
He can change any American law, disobey any law.
So maybe one day soon the Hlinka Men
Dressed in black, with ice in their veins,
(And “ICE” on their backs),
May tap my shoulder, and I too
Will disappear.
[1] Written on learning of the Trump tour of the U.S. Gulag in Florida. About Hlinka Men: “On the 4th of May, 1942, on the Sabath [sic] (as usual), Hlinka men (S.S. in Germany), dressed in black entered the main street of Michalovce and covered the whole town. . . . Hlinka men began evacuating whole families, ‘purifying’ whole streets and directing the expelled towards trains.” Benjamin (Berri) Bornstein,“The Life of the Jewish Congregation in Michalovce During the Second World War,” The Book of Michalovce, Mordechay Ben-Zeev, ed. (Michalovce Emigrants in Israel, 1969). “Between March and October 1942, Slovak gendarmes, assisted by Slovak military personnel, units of the Slovak People’s Party’s paramilitary organization, the Hlinka Guard . . . concentrated some 57,000 Slovak Jews in indigenously established labor and concentration camps . . . . ” U.S. Holocaust Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia.
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
