Joe and Al are both patients of mine.
They don't know each other.
They were born in the same year, a few thousand mild miles apart, speaking different languages.
To most who meet them they come across as polite older gentlemen, each with a good sense of humor. They may notice Joe's tremor or Al's speech difficulties, but neither is a major part of who they are.
But to me, they mean a lot after 20 years in practice.
Joe was born in Poland. His father was a tailor, and Joe worked in the store growing up. Because they were Jews, the family business was closed by the government so they had no way to support themselves. He saw his father beaten to death for trying to keep the family together while boarding a train. His mother was put in a different train car and never seen again. His sister was forced to work in a brothel for German officers and was never seen outside that building again. He and his brother were together until they got to the camp sorting area. His brother, who had a bad cough that week, was sent to a gas chamber. Joe was sent to do slave labor, and was still alive when the camp was liberated by allied forces. Joe, at 5'10" weighed 94 pounds by that point, and was hard to distinguish from the dead bodies he'd been forced to carry outside.
After recovering in a military hospital, Joe decided to leave Europe forever. He immigrated to America, settling in Omaha. He went to school, married, raised a family, and spent most of his life in a quiet, unassuming, desk job. Today he's nearly blind and needs a walker to get around. His wife is still at his side, and sometimes one of his kids.
Al was born in Los Angeles. He worked in a grocery store and went to high school until he turned 18, when he was drafted into the Marines.
On the morning of February 19, 1945, he was roughly 6,000 miles from L.A., in landing crafts with 60,000 other Marines, approaching the peaceful-appearing sands of Iwo Jima in the south Pacific. As they clambered ashore and gradually moved inland it was surprisingly quiet, with none of the resistance they'd encountered on previous islands.
About an hour after coming ashore, that all changed. The well-hidden Japanese forces opened up on the beach with machine guns and heavy artillery, creating a hell-on-earth. There was nowhere to hide. Al saw guys he'd had steak & eggs with a few hours earlier (the standard U.S. Marine breakfast for landing forces) collapse around him, dead. Some were wounded, and he and others tried to get them to whatever safety they could find. Then he was hit himself, but worked to help others until he blacked-out from blood loss. He woke up on a hospital ship.
After the war he returned home, finished school, and managed grocery stores until he retired. He and his wife raised a boy and 2 girls. They recently celebrated their 60th anniversary. Today he uses a walker and oxygen tank, and is nearly deaf, but still has a hearty laugh.
At this point both are in their 90's. The horrors they experienced aren't forgotten, but hidden behind a lifetime of mundanity (which, lets face it, mundanity describes most of us, and it isn't a bad thing).
In my mind they're bound together by being (most likely) the last of their kind I'll meet.
I've seen my share of Holocaust survivors, but as the years go by they've decreased, and I doubt I'll meet another after Joe.
Similarly, in 20 years I've cared for plenty of WW2 veterans, but see them grow fewer, and the odds are I won't meet another who fought at Iwo Jima.
Like many of their generation, neither wants to talk about what they went through. The memories are painful, and both men would rather be defined but what came afterwards: their families.
But they, and what they went through, shouldn't be forgotten.
Ever.
