A renewed appreciation for living in the USA | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming our newest contributor to BCN, Kathy Manos Penn, a native of the "Big Apple", by way of the "Peach City" - Atlanta. Kathy is a former English teacher, author of The Ink Penn blog, and a communications professional in corporate America.

    We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Prague and our river cruise through Germany, Austria and Hungary. The small towns were charming and the ship a dream, but it's the history of these countries, particularly over the last 100 years, that has stayed uppermost in my mind and served to remind me how fortunate I am to live in America.

    Imagine for a moment living in a country torn asunder first by WWI, then again by WWII a mere thirty years later. Then layer on top of that the fate of the Czech Republic and Hungary, both occupied first by the Nazis in WWII and then the Soviets immediately after. It was not until 1989 that both were freed from Communism.

    For us, our first sobering experience came in Prague during a WWII walking tour. We visited tunnels used by the resistance fighters, saw a film on the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and the subsequent Nazi retaliation, visited the Jewish Quarter, saw the KGB building from the Communist era and the square where Russian tanks rolled into end the Prague Spring in 1968.

    We encountered the stumble stones, bronze plaques embedded in the cobblestones and sidewalks to memorialize the Jews who were sent to concentration camps and never returned. Today in the Czech Republic and in Germany, children are required to visit a concentration camp during their school years in the hope that recognizing the past will prevent such atrocities in the future.

    Soon after the Nazis abandoned Prague, the Russians arrived and established Communist rule. Our guide was told as a child that Americans did nothing to help the Czechs, that the Russians were their saviors. When a child saw photos with American soldiers and asked who they were, parents knew to lie and say the figures were Germans dressed up as Americans, lest they be arrested for acknowledging that the Americans had any part in the war.

    Our visit to Budapest continued our education. First, we experienced the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial, created to honor the Jews who were killed on that riverbank during WWII. Men, women and children were ordered to remove their shoes and were shot as they stood at the edge of the water so that their bodies would fall into the river to be carried away. The 60 pairs of bronze shoes on the bank represent the shoes left behind by just a fraction of those killed by the Nazis.

    We followed that heart-wrenching experience with a visit to the Terror Museum with its focus on life under the Communists. Films of Hungarians relating their experiences were grim. The story of a family of eight being taken from their home and transported to a barn to live in a single stall for 18 months has stayed with me. These stories coupled with propaganda films showcasing happy factory workers and laborers while touting their productivity gave the day an eerily somber cast.

    This historical perspective makes me increasingly grateful to live in America, an ocean away from the horrors suffered by so many. I am thankful our founding fathers had the courage to stand up for their beliefs and that our leaders and our military have preserved that hard-won freedom ever since. In the midst of July 4th parades, cookouts, and fireworks this year, my mood will be a bit subdued as I reflect on these words from Ronald Reagan:

    "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."